Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

As the noble Baroness will be aware, we have a debate on this later today. The EBacc is designed to leave at least 20% to 30% of the curriculum for other subjects within it. We have had reviews from Darren Henley on music and culture in schools, and we are taking forward his recommendations on such things as art, design, music, dance and so on. We hope that there is every opportunity for young people to be able to take advantage of those sorts of activities within the school day.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, will the Government undertake that they will allow schools to continue to offer the IGCSE and will they continue to report the results of that examination in the annual performance tables?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, that is still under discussion, as is the key stage 4 curriculum. Perhaps I may come back to my noble friend if that is an incorrect answer.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Monday 11th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening on my noble friend—

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, this is a Second Reading. We are a self-regulating House. Whips have no business telling us what to do. We are listening to my noble friend with great fascination and I hope that he takes another 10 minutes.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

Before my noble friend sits down, will she agree to write to me saying exactly where community cohesion is dealt with in the draft framework document or the evaluation schedule? I must be reading the words wrong, missing them or misunderstanding how they work.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I will certainly write to my noble friend.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

No, but they still need teachers. You are quite right: they do not need qualified teachers, but they need teachers who help to communicate and teach subjects to pupils.

In conclusion, we believe that much of what my noble friend intends is already possible and is already happening. To the extent that it is not, I would ask him to recognise the value that a good teacher can add to the educational experience of a pupil. We recognise that there is a growing place for technology, alternative teaching and learning provisions. Many of us will remember, with gratitude, the impact of inspirational teachers during our own education and the difference that that personal motivation and contact made to our enthusiasm about learning. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend has been reassured that those freedoms already exist and that we may not need to return to this on Report. Therefore, I urge him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

I am very encouraged by what the noble Baroness says about all this being possible. I am also very pleased about what she said on the role of the church. I entirely agree with her. I hope that she will have a chance to pass that news on to the prison education service which appears determined to eliminate teachers and do it all online. Doubtless, I will come back to her or, I suspect, to my noble friend, on the subject of funding, which has arisen from time to time. The complexity of the guidance offered by this otherwise excellent department confuses local authorities from time to time and certainly schools as to whether particular arrangements qualify for funding and, if so, on what basis. To take a particular example, if a home-educated child wishes to go to a further education college at the age of 14, they can get no funding for that. Perhaps that is something to be followed up by letter rather than in this forum. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

I have a quick question. Is there a measure that is easily understood and easily available to judge the progress that schools make in improving a child’s education? The Committee was discussing comparing schools. Is there a quick and easy measure that is easily accessible to say that this school is particularly good at taking children from one level to another, rather than judging all schools by one standard? Does that make sense?

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, the difficulty is that the key stage 2 and key stage 1 data that are published are so coarse. The idea that you can effectively chuck children into one of three pots at the age of 11 and sensibly use that as a measure of anything is not something that I am comfortable with. If there were a better assessment, a teacher assessment, of where children were on a finer scale, you would have something that you could more reliably use to chart progress. Because of the coarseness of the base indicators, you can really only measure these things when large numbers of pupils are involved and the coarseness evens out. At the level of a primary school it is really pretty difficult, but at a big secondary you can get somewhere. Perhaps the Minister has something to add to that. I hope that the Government will consider releasing more and better data as part of what they are doing to improve the value-added indicator, which is a pretty important part of looking at how schools do.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Before my noble friend sits down, the Government are looking at progress reports for schools, which would give a more descriptive picture of where schools were moving.

[Lord Lucas]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I know that many in this House share my noble friend's view that public performance of music should not be licensable in schools. We agree that schools currently face unnecessary bureaucracy when they organise events such as school plays, concerts or swimming galas, and we are taking steps to address that. We heed the warnings of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but we have announced our intention to consult on Schedule 1 to the Licensing Act 2003, which currently regulates the public performance of live music and performance of other creative and community activities, such as dance, plays, film and indoor sport. Our intention, subject to the consultation, is to deregulate those activities as far as possible in schools. That is possible through secondary legislation.

The Government have also expressed clear support for the Live Music Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, which completed its Committee stage on Friday. I know that, because I was there. It seeks to deregulate in certain circumstances the provision of live, unamplified music in most locations and live, amplified music in workplaces such as schools, as well as licensed premises such as public houses, subject to restrictions on audience size. These planned changes will free schools from the unnecessary bureaucracy they currently face and allow them to use music in a sensible way to deliver the best possible education for their pupils. On the basis of that reassurance, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very content with that reply and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[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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[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.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s first amendment. Making sure that British education around the world is of high quality does Britain a great deal of good one way or another. There are many countries where our education system comes under far less criticism than it does here and where our qualifications are very highly regarded. All the work that we put in here to make sure that they are even better is important. Now that the system of inspection here, with which we are happy, reaches out to some of those schools, we should acknowledge that by extending to those schools the abilities in terms of raising young teachers that we would accord to them if they were in the UK. They are schools following the British system, using British qualifications and mostly British teachers. I see no reason why we should cut them out of that.

I disagree with my noble friend on his second amendment from two points of view. First, if only 15 or 16 people are failing, why are there so few? What kind of rigorous examination has so few people failing? It really cannot be a mark of quality that so few people fail their induction year. I cannot believe that, as set up now, the processes that allow someone to begin an induction year are so perfect that only that small proportion should fail.

Secondly, I want to argue against the premise that people who fail should not be allowed to retry. I know one of those 15 people and I have had a long conversation with him as to why he failed. In my view, the basic reason is that he wanted to make maths fun and would not put up with the Gradgrind methods that he was told to use. It was silly of him to argue. He should have just knuckled down and gone through it for a year. Then he would have been free to teach and to explore his own way. But he did not because he is a headstrong young man and full of what strikes me to be very good ideas as to how to enliven a subject that I have always enjoyed but many people have not. Where such people have come up against what in my mind is the wrong verdict or have tackled things in the wrong way, they should be given another chance. I look at this in both ways: a lot more people should be failing and they should be given a second chance.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I thank my noble friend Lord Lexden for giving us this opportunity to talk about induction, which is an important part of ensuring we have good teachers in our schools. Induction is like a probationary period. It provides a statutory national framework for supporting new teachers to make the transition from initial teacher training to their career in teaching. It ensures that NQTs receive support, training and development. At the end of this time, new teachers have to pass an assessment and can then become full members of the teaching profession. Before I come on to the amendments in detail, let me set out briefly some of what the Government are doing to get excellent teachers into the profession, because induction is at the end of the process and needs to be viewed in that context.

Our initial teacher training strategy, which we recently launched, includes the following measures: we will attract the best graduates by offering one-off training bursaries of up to £20,000; we will double the size of Teach First, a scheme that has been highly successful in attracting graduates from some of our best universities into teaching; we will raise the bar for entry to teaching by funding training only for those with at least a second class degree, and by introducing literacy and numeracy entry tests; we will focus teacher training better on the skills that teachers need most, including managing behaviour and teaching early reading, items which we have already touched on in this Committee; and, we will give more schools a strong role in the recruitment and training of the trainees that they will go on to employ.

Alongside these reforms, we have been reviewing teacher standards, including those that trainee teachers must meet. We expect shortly to produce new, clear standards that raise the bar for newly qualified teachers who enter induction, so the Government are doing much—

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the schools will need to be judged outstanding by Ofsted, so there will be levels of academic attainment within that. However, we are in no way underrating the value of schools such as the one to which the noble Earl has referred. They may well be able, say, to work in partnership with a school that was rated outstanding, bringing the special skills they have developed in those very challenging schools to bear on the induction period.

Finally, let me turn to the issue of induction at British schools overseas, which was my noble friend’s other amendment. The British education sector overseas is growing rapidly. It appeals both to English-speaking expatriates and to local parents in many parts of the world, who want their children to have an education instilling British values and ethos. For those reasons, I agree with the noble Lord that British schools abroad should be able to offer induction.

In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, there will be no impact at all on current arrangements between England and Wales and between England and Scotland—those will not change.

The good news is that primary legislation does in fact already allow this. These schools are legally independent schools, and independent schools are able to offer induction to their NQTs if they choose to do so, providing the teacher has QTS and the school can provide a suitable post. However, there is currently a legal barrier to this happening, in secondary legislation. Following our review of induction arrangements, I have therefore asked officials to ensure that proposed amendments to the induction regulations will include changes that allow certain British schools abroad—those that have been inspected under the British schools overseas arrangements and accredited by COBIS or other reputable British schools overseas organisations—to offer statutory induction to their NQTs.

I hope that my remarks have provided some reassurance to my noble friend Lord Lexden, and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, since the noble Baroness is in writing mood, will she enlarge slightly on the questions that I asked in regard to the second amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden? If we are focusing hard on trying to get high-quality teachers, we need to be careful to ensure that we have not built into the system disincentives to getting rid of teachers who are not up to the grade. It was always the problem with hanging someone for stealing a sheep that juries would never convict. It seems to me that we have a similar situation here, as the penalty for failing an induction year is so harsh—the person may never teach in a maintained school again. Most people strain to get these individuals through their induction year and to pass them just because the penalty is so harsh rather than because they have done well enough to be passed into the teaching profession with all flags flying. Therefore, I would like to understand the logic behind the Government’s decision to keep it as “once only” rather than allowing a second chance.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I very much regret the decision of the usual channels that this Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee. It is an important Bill with many crucial aspects. It has clearly commanded wide support in the House. Fitting 50 people into the Moses Room will be a considerable struggle. As I understand it, that arises from the failure of the Government to give us any major Bills to start with in the Lords so, as usual, they are all piling up at the end. We are therefore expected to leave the Chamber clear for whatever other business the Government have by making this a Grand Committee Bill, for which, to my mind, it is not suitable. I very much hope that this is a matter that we shall return to when we debate the procedures of this House.

Can my noble friend at least give me the assurance that we will not have Committee on this Bill on any day when, in this Chamber, there is Committee on the Localism Bill? Many of us take an interest in both matters, and it would seem to me quite unreasonable to try to run the two in parallel.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that the business planning of the House will try to take into account, as far as we possibly can, that there are no major clashes between Bills and discussions in that way.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Low, echoed the point that I made on Amendment 8 about how we keep academy agreements up to date. If I remember rightly, he said that for existing academies the only way to do this is to terminate the agreement and renegotiate it. Will my noble friend undertake to give notice of termination to all existing academies so that the arrangement that he has arrived at for special educational needs can be incorporated into their agreements? I imagine that most of them will choose to renegotiate ahead of time and not go through the catharsis of termination. That would seem to be the procedure that we ought to go through in order to bring all academies into line with what the Government now believe should be the line.

I also ask for his assurance that with this Bill it is the Government's intention that the model agreement should allow for the obligations on academies to update in line with those placed on maintained schools generally, and that we will not have to go through this procedure of issuing a notice of termination every time we change the SEN rules, the admissions rules or anything else that academies are supposed to follow.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the Minister and also flag up that we have complementary amendments coming up in the same group as Amendment 22. We have had a query from TreeHouse, which deals with autistic children, asking for assurances on the funding for non-maintained special schools. Under these arrangements, the funding will go directly to academies and not via local councils. Currently, local councils top-slice 7 to 10 per cent from the dedicated schools budget, which includes placements for children at non-maintained schools. Will the Minister reassure us about these arrangements?

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I shall speak to Amendments 138, 139, 176, 184 and 193 in this group. First, I thank the Minister for the considerable time and trouble that he has taken to talk through the many concerns about special educational needs that have been raised as a result of this Bill. We have received full and helpful replies to many issues, but raising them in Committee ensures that there can be no misunderstanding about the debate and the decisions.

Amendments 138 and 139 are intended to clarify what will change once a school becomes an academy. Under academy arrangements, considerable freedom is given to the governing body and head teacher to vary the operation and organisation of the school. Although there is a requirement that the academy should cater for pupils of differing abilities, we would welcome confirmation that that requirement will be enforced and monitored.

At Second Reading, we raised the matter of exclusion of children with behavioural difficulties. Can the Minister say whether there has been any risk assessment of increased exclusions from the new academies? That, in turn, could lead to the need for more referral or specialist units, which would have cost implications. We know that local authorities have responsibility for placement of pupils with statements. It is not entirely clear how the local authority is to be supported in placing pupils in an academy. If parents feel that the provision is not adequate, as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, mentioned, they have recourse to complain to the Secretary of State. That sounds like a measure of last resort. If there are local problems, would consideration be given to a more local route by which complaints could be channelled in the first instance?

In the annexe to his letter of 15 June, which has already been referred to today, the Minister clarified that academies do not receive local authority funding for SEN transport. Co-ordinating school transport is a responsibility that local authorities have carried out in the past and, presumably, will continue to do. Amendment 139 would confirm that responsibility but would leave open the question of how it would be done most effectively when some pupils need transport to academies and others to maintained schools. There is an additional need to ensure that any complexity in the system does not lead to any pupil who requires transport being overlooked.

Amendment 176 concerns SENCOs. It arises from the fact that academies are not covered by the 2008 regulations for special educational needs co-ordinators, which stipulate that SENCOs in maintained schools must have qualified teacher status. The spirit of the code of practice implies that SENCOs should hold qualified teacher status, but that is not explicitly stated.

SENCOs are key post-holders who co-ordinate provision across the school to secure high-quality teaching and learning for pupils with special educational needs and the effective use of resources to meet the educational needs of children and young people with SEN. The position involves obtaining resources, managing the work of learning support assistants, advising and supporting fellow teachers and liaising with statutory bodies and voluntary agencies, as well as with parents. SENCOs are also expected to contribute to the in-service training of other staff. Those varied duties suggest that SENCOs should themselves be qualified teachers, both to ensure that they have a full understanding of the professional skills of teachers and to give them appropriate standing within the schools in which they operate.

Amendment 184 follows from the previous amendments. It would bring the proprietors of academies into line with other schools as far as their duties relate to SEN pupils.

Amendment 193 is offered to help the Minister. The term “proprietor” is mentioned frequently in the Bill, but no definition is given. In practice with academies so far, the person in Clause 1 often establishes another body to be the proprietor, not least because the proprietor has to be a corporate body and a charity, yet the person in Clause 1 can be an individual. The definition offered in this amendment is:

“‘proprietor’ means the person with whom the Secretary of State enters into Academy arrangements once the Academy has been established”.

[Lord Lucas]

I had better address my amendment in this group, since it is the exact opposite of two of the amendments just spoken to by my noble friend. My noble friend Lady Walmsley and I will be in perfect time at eight o’clock tomorrow morning as we practise for the Lords versus Commons rowing race, but there seems to be some dissonance at the moment.

It has long been said that the only people capable of organising school transport effectively are local authorities. I have never seen any evidence produced for that. It seems to go with the assertion that local authorities organise everything best. If that is true, there is no danger in giving academies the right to organise school transport because they will always turn to the local authority, as it does it best. However, I suspect from the practices of local authorities that I have experienced that that will not be the case. Many local authorities, particularly in rural areas, will not offer transport outside the catchment area of the school, even if there are others a mile or so beyond it who might conveniently be reached by the bus going an extra mile.

Many local authorities are not responsive to the requirements of schools and parents in other ways. They just want to organise things efficiently for the network as a whole. The idea that what is efficient for the network as a whole is in some way best for schools and parents and is cheapest is extremely arguable and the best way to test it is to give academies freedom to organise school transport for themselves. When it is more efficient for them to do so, they will do so; when it is not, they will use local authorities. That way we will get the best of all worlds.