Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I want to raise an issue on the back of this amendment and ask the Minister to reply to it. More than a few members of the Committee were very concerned to see a report in the Telegraph this morning that the Government have issued what they call in their press release the,

“final, clearer guidance for teachers”,

on how they should deal with bad behaviour. This final, clearer guidance includes and enumerates all the issues that we debated not so long ago, upon which a vote has not been taken, as we are in Grand Committee. Therefore, I contend that there is as yet no final resolution of this House, nor of the other House, on these matters. I feel that this is precipitous in the extreme of the Government and quite discourteous to the House. I fail to see how final guidance can be issued which refers to matters that we have yet to decide upon.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, it may help the Committee if I speak at this stage. According to the news, this guidance appears to be coming out at the same time that we were discussing these matters in Grand Committee. But this consultation ended in May, so the guidance has been published on the back of that. It relates to the current law, not the legislation before us at the moment. Again, the timing seems curious, but it is a consequence of it referring to another law rather than the Bill.

Let me speak briefly about what is in the guidance. We will ensure that Members of the Committee are issued with the guidance which has come out today to help frame our further discussions.

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving us the opportunity for this debate. We agree with much of his amendment. Of course a teacher should be able to comfort a small child who has fallen over or show them how to hold a violin bow or a tennis racket. The notion of no contact seems to me to go against our instincts as humans and, indeed, as teachers. There is nothing in law to prevent it. When pupils are on school premises, or off site but under the lawful charge of the school, teachers and school staff are acting in loco parentis. This means that they are, in the eyes of the common law, effectively stepping into the shoes of a parent unless there are statutory provisions which specify otherwise. No parent would think twice about sticking on a plaster or showing a child how to hold a rounders bat, and a teacher should feel equally able to do these things. I would strongly encourage any head teacher to make this clear to his or her staff.

Our guidance on this issue is also clear and it is made clearer in the papers in the consultation that has come out today. The guidance states:

“It is not illegal to touch a pupil. There are occasions when physical contact … with a pupil is proper and necessary.

Examples of where touching a pupil might be proper or necessary: holding the hand of the child at the front/back of the line when going to assembly or when walking together around the school; when comforting a distressed pupil; when a pupil is being congratulated or praised; to demonstrate how to use a musical instrument; to demonstrate exercises or techniques during PE lessons or sports coaching; and to give first aid”.

Of course this is not an exhaustive list but I think it demonstrates our clear expectations.

We agree that teachers who are subject to a complaint that they have used inappropriate physical contact should not routinely be suspended. This is why our new guidance on behaviour, and the associated guidance on dealing with allegations of abuse against teachers and other staff, makes clear that employers should not automatically suspend a member of staff who has been accused of misconduct pending an investigation.

We agree that teachers should and do need to have contact with pupils on a day-to-day basis. The law already allows for such contact. Our guidance reinforces this message and encourages schools to take a common-sense approach to physical contact between teachers and pupils. I hope that that has set out the background to this consultation and that, in that light, my noble friend will not feel the need to press this amendment.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, from what I read of this guidance, it has a section on restraint of pupils who might be misbehaving. Last week I was in a useful meeting with the government adviser on behaviour, and he gave more than one example of having to restrain a child who needed to be physically touched to calm them down. The Minister has not mentioned issues of restraint, which could be quite dangerous for teachers and for pupils. Where does that fall in the guidance?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, we will be sending round guidance on that. My noble friend’s amendment includes different forms of physical contact between pupils and staff. The Government’s adviser on behaviour, Charlie Taylor, who gave us such an impressive presentation last week, brought out occasions when physical restraint would be necessary. It will be in the guidance which will be sent round to all Members of the Committee as soon as possible.

[Lord Elton]

My noble friend mentioned guidance to staff. I want to put into her mind that it is necessary to talk to parents as well so that they realise how the children are going to be treated and will not take fright when the child comes back and says that he has been handled in a certain way.

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[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, perhaps I ought to say a brief word about that as president of the National Governors’ Association. Almost anything that we are discussing has a reference and an importance for governors. We have specific clauses later on where we can look at this in rather more detail but it is another illustration of the somewhat difficult sorting-out of whose responsibility everything will be in future.

I entirely confirm the brilliance of teachers, and everything else. I admire very much the skills that they possess and the attempts of the Government to get them even more skilled and better equipped. Nevertheless the whole business of who is responsible for which bits of it, and indeed of proper respect for each part of the establishment, needs quite a lot of examination. I hope we are going to be giving a lot of time to it a bit later. I am particularly glad to see that there is a growing number of people who have been governors, because under the previous Government there did not seem to be quite as many around who were available and wished to talk about the role and responsibility of governors, or indeed the composition of the governing body.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I shall not respond to all the points made in this useful debate but I would draw out one particular aspect. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, spoke about previous guidance which did not seem to make much difference. One thing that has come out of this consultation was that previous guidance was over 600 pages long; this is 50 pages long. Equally, the guidance on the use of force has decreased from 30 pages to seven. There is an argument that this, much more succinct guidance might be more effective. We can only hope so.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, can the noble Baroness assure us that the long version will be withdrawn and that the short version will not be added to it?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Government. It is exactly the answer that I had hoped for and I look forward to it being applied in schools. I can think now of several that I shall be e-mailing when I get home to point out the URL of the new guidance. Perhaps I might say two things to the Minister. First, the brief advice given by my noble friend Lord Elton is absolutely crucial—parents should know what the school’s policy is. If my parents asked me what a week in school had been like, I can remember that I would say, “Well, I got slippered twice and my maths teacher hit me over the head with a slide rule and drew blood”, and that they would then ask, “Oh—what had you been doing wrong?”. In those days that was the policy. Parents will take what they have agreed to; it is if something happens by surprise that they get upset.

Secondly, when the Minister gets back to the department could she please give a long hug to whoever produced this guidance and say, “But you could have done even better if you had circulated this to the Committee when you published it”. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, lest my noble friend think that she is on her own, I am with her.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I apologise for the lack of the e-mail going round the entire Committee. Perhaps I may indicate that it refers to a consultation that we began in May on a set of proposals designed to make it easier for schools to tackle performance issues. Those proposals have been on the website since May. Obviously we should have drawn noble Lords’ attention to the website, for those who have access to it, before the debate, but the e-mail will be circulated to Members of the Committee.

The evidence on the importance of teachers is clear. We entirely agree with my noble friend that the current arrangements for tackling poor teacher performance do not work as well as they might. They do not help teachers or the children in their care. The performance management arrangements and capability procedures were developed separately. They are complex, prescriptive and overlap, which we believe contributes to making some head teachers and governing bodies reluctant to take action, as we have heard from noble Lords today.

Our proposals have much in common with my noble friend’s amendment. They include: a duty on schools to give teachers a written appraisal of their performance against their objectives, which is a feature of the current regulations; a requirement that, as now, schools should identify teachers’ development needs and how they will be addressed; guidance that addresses the issue of support and monitoring for underperforming teachers—a school’s first response to underperformance should be to provide support to help teachers to improve, but where a teacher’s performance remains poor and does not improve after support has been provided, schools must take action quickly, effectively and fairly; and a model performance management policy incorporating capability procedures, where necessary, and an appeal stage, which is much simpler than the two policies it is designed to replace and is consistent with the ACAS Code of Practice—Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures.

Our approach has been to retain only the essentials, removing as much prescription as possible. In this approach we differ somewhat from my noble friend. We think that school leaders are currently too constrained by the arrangements and that they have too little freedom to exercise their professional judgment when tackling performance issues. I think that this summary shows how much our proposals are aligned with those of my noble friend Lord Lucas. We agree that teacher performance is vital and that schools need to take effective action to tackle underperformance where it occurs. However, I hope that my noble friend will agree that it would be more appropriate to address this issue by amending the current regulations and guidance than through primary legislation. I think that the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, was linked in with that.

The noble Lord asked two questions, the first of which was whether a teacher should be supported to find another post. That would be a matter for individual schools. Secondly, he asked whether reviews by pupils should be part of the system. There is nothing specific in the proposals to suggest that pupils should have a part. Once again, that would be up to schools to decide what evidence was appropriate when evaluating teacher performance. I hope that he and other noble Lords will look at the proposals on which we are currently consulting and give detailed comments on them. The consultation will continue until August. My noble friend the Minister, officials and I would be delighted to meet him and other noble Lords to talk over any suggestions or concerns. I hope in light of that, my noble friend will feel free to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Howells of St Davids]

I may have missed it, but can the Minister say whether the teacher who is being disciplined will be able to bring in a representative when meeting with the head?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes, I understand that they certainly would.

[Lord Lucas]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Howells. This does not belong in legislation but this is the way in which we get a chance to talk about it. Secondary legislation and guidance can all flow past us without having a chance to stick a pin in it. I am delighted that my noble friend is thinking along the same lines as me. This is one of the difficulties in making schools good, which ought to be cleared out of the way. I am very cheered that something is being done about it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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What we have now with the youth sports partnership and its links into sport outside school is an excellent thing. I know that we are not there yet but it is the best basis for sports education that we have had for a very long time. That happened because it had some central direction and resource. More than that, it had a clear message from Government that sport mattered. I remember the former Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, making a lot of speeches about sport. It needs that leadership to give school leaders and teachers confidence that that area of learning matters. That is my worry on this: for a broad and balanced curriculum, we cannot rely just on what is written in the curriculum. It needs to be about messages given and the assessment adopted. On the latter two, I agree with my noble friend Lord Knight and those who moved the amendment. It is leaving us wanting and I am really fearful not just of a narrow curriculum next year but, unless something is done, of even worse in subsequent years.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening. We are hearing some tremendous speeches, but they are more Second Reading speeches than for the Committee stage of the Bill. Could I invite Members of the Committee to focus their remarks solely on the amendments that we are considering?

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, could I thank the noble Baroness for the kind words that she said about me and fashioning the national curriculum? I am usually criticised more than praised for it these days, but it fell to me and to many hundreds of others to fashion that curriculum 25 years ago. For the first time, we were putting on to the statute book a national curriculum. It was very broad and very balanced; that is what I was criticised for. It could not have been more broad or balanced. It had many things in it which have now been dropped: languages up to 16; art and music up to 16; history and geography up to 16. All of those have disappeared and gone, but it was certainly broad and balanced.

I have now come to the conclusion that if I was given the task of fashioning it today, a much more fundamental change really would be needed. I would actually stop it at 14. I am now quite convinced that the right age of transfer in our English education system is 14, not 11. I draw some strength from that because the Board of Education, meeting in 1941 to plan the pattern of education after the war, in the event of victory—it actually met before El Alamein—said to have selective grammar schools, selective technical colleges and secondary moderns and that the transfer age should be 13 and 14. The decision to change that never went to Ministers, as far as I can see from the records. It was decided by the Permanent Secretary of the day, who simply said, “You can’t have selection at 13 or 14 because grammar schools start at 11”.

It was a great opportunity missed. Why do I say that? First, I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, was saying. During the fashioning of the national curriculum everybody wanted everything in it. Not only that, but he will remember the battles on the content of the national curriculum. I set up independent committees to advise me on maths as on maths there can be no controversy. Surely you can define a maths curriculum. Feudal armies marched across this battlefield. Some said, “You must teach children tables by heart”. Others argued, “No, that is appalling”. Some said, “You mustn’t let them use calculating machines”. Others asked, “Should you teach calculus before 16 or not?”. Blood was spilled on these battlefields. When I came to English, I thought I would outwit all these people by appointing the most reactionary and right-wing educationalists I could find, who wrote the black papers, who would deliver the sort of English curriculum I wanted. I was bitterly disappointed. They produced a curriculum, which said, “Don’t worry about spelling and don’t correct the grammar of little boys and girls who get it wrong at the primary level. Let them enjoy it”. I had to turn to an engineer in Bristol University to right the sense of that. When it came to the history curriculum, I knew perfectly well it was going to be a battlefield, so I appointed someone who owned a castle to write it. He was also a highly intelligent scholar who became the chairman of the British Library and produced a very good curriculum. Having done all of that, why do I now say it should really be at 14?

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[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have my name to one of these amendments and should have it to the other one as well. I absolutely support what my noble friend has said. In relation to the first amendment in the group, if such a report were made by government, could the Minister look into the technology centres that are closing in a number of local authorities? They are centres of excellence and expertise and are of enormous value to schools that are trying to make the best use of technology not just for children who need assistive technology—that is a very important group—but for every child. Unfortunately, a lot of them are closing. That means that not only is the expertise going but the actual knowledge that helps schools to buy cost-effective equipment and have the technical support they need to ensure that the equipment works properly all the time. I would like to see that issue included in the report.

Amendment 107C concerns a subject which I am pleased to say my party will be discussing at our party conference in September. If the Government are set on reducing inequality and the achievement gap, making sure that every child from a deprived family has access to a computer and broadband is something that we should be prioritising. It is not a luxury. It is a tool for education and in this modern world it is an absolutely essential tool. It is very important for every child, not just, as my noble friend has said in his amendment, those from secondary age upwards, but going downwards as well. Knowing the sorts of deals that government can do with equipment suppliers and with the telecoms companies, I do not think that that would be anywhere near as expensive as it might at first seem given that you would be buying things in bulk. Not so long ago, there was talk of providing children with little laptops for £50. I reckon that you could probably get very basic ones for less than that now. Broadband should be able to be provided very cost effectively given the quantity that government would be interested in. This is an important measure. It is achievable and is absolutely in line with the coalition agreement and this Government’s stated aims in regard to education.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on Amendment 83ZA be adjourned.

Motion agreed.