Education Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I am not saying that it is true or untrue. The difference—it is very small—is that in the past the appeals panel could insist that the child went back to the school, while the review panel can now simply say, “You got the decision wrong. We ask you to consider again”. The only difference between what a review panel can do and what the previous appeals panel could do is the power to reinstate. In any case, to allow a child to go back into a school when all this process has taken place is a terrible thing for the teacher who asked for the exclusion in the first case, for the governing body which made the decision and supported the head, and for the authority of the head themselves.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I know what effort heads and teachers make when children are reinstated into schools in difficult circumstances, so I am very pro what is going on; they work very hard. Does the noble Baroness not accept that the child who finds that their case has been upheld but is still told that they are not able to go back to their school would see this as a total injustice? As many of these children are struggling anyway, this simply reinforces their feeling that society is simply not just, so why should they conform and join in with it?

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I want to talk about Amendment 47, and then make some general comments on the other amendments. Amendment 47 is clear and concise: it is about the £4,000 fine, which is a blanket fine for all schools. For some schools, that might not seem a lot of money; for others, it is a considerable amount. For a small school—a rural village or a small urban school—it is a significant sum. In my area, there is a secondary school with 10 forms of entry. Next to that is a small Roman Catholic primary school with 101 pupils on roll, I think, and £4,000 equates to that school’s entire literacy and numeracy budget. Down the road, there is a small maintained school, for which £4,000 equates to its entire special needs budget. For a large secondary school, £4,000 is perhaps its promotion budget. We might need to link the sum in a fair and equitable way. On this occasion, one size does not fit all.

I turn to some comments made during the debate. I declare an interest as a head teacher of 25 years. I have never excluded a pupil at all. Why? First, we forget that the important thing is not the end of the process but all the things that you put in place beforehand. As I think I said last week, if you have a robust behaviour management policy, you will involve parents at every stage, and the parents are the greatest way of ensuring that a pupil does not have to be excluded from school.

Having said that, my wife is a secondary teacher in a large inner-city school and I have seen teachers’ careers destroyed by disruptive behaviour. We are not talking about teachers who should not be in the classroom but, because of the circumstances—because of poor leadership, because the other issues have not been put in place—their lives as teachers can be wrecked, as indeed can those of the pupils.

Some of you may recall that I said two things last week. I agreed with a noble Lord opposite who said that any exclusion is a tragedy. I also said, however, that teachers have a right to teach and pupils have a right to learn. Pupils also have a right to ensure that a system is fair and just and they are the first to know if something is not fair. In any school it is the pupils who say, “Hey, sir, that’s not fair” or “Hey, miss, why are we doing this?”. If we have an exclusion policy which is not fair and just, pupils will be the first to see that and that is why I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Walmsley.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for arriving late. Sitting on the M11 was not the best place to be; I would rather have been with all of your Lordships. I wanted to ask a series of questions of the Minister. I regret missing the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, because I always enjoy her speeches on behalf of children. We have just heard that disruptive children are challenged children; they are not very often evil children. However, they can be very difficult. From my time as a director of social services and an assistant director looking after assessment centres where some of the most dangerous and difficult children are contained, I know that there are children who cannot be on the school floor. Those children who destroy classes for teachers and other pupils should not be in school. But those are not the children we are talking about. We do not need to change the legislation for them, and we do not have to change the legislation to make it successful.

One of the points that I was going to make was made eloquently by the noble Lord; that is, in good schools, the work is done beforehand, with the child, with the family and with the involvement of the local community. In my local primary school up in Norfolk, I know that things get done beforehand.

There is of course a great lack of services for some of these children. We know that teachers are crying out for good psychiatric support, psychological assessment and therapeutic support. Those are the areas where we should look if we want to provide for the next generation. However, what concerned me when I was looking through the legislation, apart from its fairness, was how decisions would be made across the country. The Government are setting up a range of new sorts of schools which will be settling their ways of working. What will the criteria for exclusion be? Will the powerful head set the criteria? How will we therefore ensure consistency? Will a child be able to move districts and find that their behaviour gets them excluded in one area but not in another? How will we ensure consistency? If Ofsted will not be inspecting all schools, how will we achieve that balance from one area to another, as we can at the moment?

How will we ensure that an assessment is made by those responsible for children’s education and welfare to understand the circumstances leading to the problem? Who will carry out that assessment across the country? Most of all, what will happen to the children thereafter? We know that some will go to a referral unit. I was a social worker on the ground, if you like, in the days when my kids went off to the sin bin, as they called it. I am not against special provision if it is properly put together, but if it is a constant stream of children moving in and out, with some children not moving at all, I should like to be clear about the basis on which the children are being put together. What worries me most is that the heads of those special units can also exclude children. I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will express more than anxiety about what happens to children who will often have been in care and are showing difficult behaviour, for all the reasons we know.

I did not want to make a long speech. I simply wanted to ask that series of questions to get a clear picture of how this is going to work by the time we get to Report stage.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I will briefly make three points, unless something else occurs to me as I am on my feet. First, will the Minister tell us how many schools have actually asked for this? I have listened carefully to what the last noble Lord said, but in my three years as Schools Minister no school ever asked me for this power. I would be really interested in what evidence there is for a demand for it.

Secondly, I listened to what the noble Lord said about the fact they we should trust schools and leave it to them to decide whether to use the flexibility that they are being given in this Bill. I refer back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said about schools not necessarily fully understanding the circumstances of some of their pupils’ families; her example was whether or not they have caring responsibilities. I was shocked to talk to some schools where they did not know that parents might be in prison. All sorts of things happen that families do not necessarily want to go around talking about but which affect the nature of the home environment, and would then affect whether it would be appropriate to give a detention without notice on the same day after school.

Finally, on reinforcing the discipline from the school at home, when I was given detentions at the prep and independent private schools that I went to for things like forgetting my towel or—God forbid—being cheeky and a bit mouthy, which I know would shock noble Lords, there was always a letter home that went with the detention. That was always the worst part of the punishment: your parents knew that you had been given a detention. Giving 24 hours’ notice so that your parents are informed of the detention is a really important aspect of linking up the discipline of the school with home. We know that the single most important determinant of the success of a child’s education is the involvement of their parents in that education. I strongly believe that it is really important that we ensure that that linkage through the notice is there in every school.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight, because I found it extraordinarily surprising that this Government, who stand very much for working with and alongside parents and making sure that there is accountability and responsibility at home, can suggest that they would give a detention without informing parents. Having worked with the Minister, Tim Loughton, on other issues and knowing how important it is for the Government that children should be safeguarded, I find it astounding that they can suggest that children can be detained in the evening and be allowed to go home without their parents knowing and without safeguards. I expect better.

Detention is not always about discipline. I got my detention for leaving my French homework on the bus and not producing it.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

Quite right!

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am the Minister who is in receipt of applications for powers to innovate. I have not been overwhelmed over the last year and a half by applications for powers to innovate. It may be there but the point is that for it to be there it is a more complicated process than it ought to be. Every school would have to apply individually. They apply to officials and officials put up submissions and Ministers decide and opine and then the power to innovate, like Zeus, is given. It is time-limited.

As a way of dealing with the issue, if one accepts that this is a permissive power, as it clearly is, and if you say to schools that all those that might want to use this power have to go through the rather cumbersome and protracted process of applying for a power to innovate, no one will go through the process of applying. They will say that this has been made difficult for them, whereas something that is simple, which gives them the opportunity and which applies to all—to choose either to use or not to use—with safeguards in place, seems a more rational way than making every school try individually.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Could I respectfully say to the Minister that this is not about powers and process, it is about message. If the message you want to convey is that you want to support schools and head teachers in whatever powers they wish, that is a message that will go out. But it will not be generally helpful in forging relationships between families, communities, parents and schools or indeed between children and their teachers. That is what it is about. It is about ethos and message. A better message is that these powers do exist. I am a strong believer in discipline in schools. Children learn much better if you have discipline. You need these sorts of structures in schools. But it is unhelpful to put into statute something which every speaker in this Room, even those who think we should do something, sees as unsafe and as poor communication with parents. I hope the Government will re-think how they convey that message of support to teachers without putting children into danger.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I want to be clear what she is saying. Is she saying it is okay to have short-notice detention and not to tell the parents, because that seems to be the message? That raises all the concerns that people around the Room have raised. By all means have short-notice detention but make sure the parents are told. It seems she is saying it is not necessary. All our amendment is doing is to make sure the parents are told. That is a safeguard—the check and balance that is needed. I have not heard a convincing case why we should not insist that parents are told.

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord’s point, which reflects that of my noble friend Lady Massey. These issues should be discussed more openly in the round through personal, social and health education and other discussions that take place in schools. If such bullying happens to them, pupils will then feel safer and more confident in declaring what has happened to them.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I briefly add a point about this being a Forth Bridge issue. It is perpetual and we must work at it all the time. I am interested in what the Government’s strategy for tackling bullying in schools is. The previous Government certainly had a strategy, which I assume the current Government will carry on and build on.

When I was involved with Childline, bullying was the most significant issue for children. I understand that this is still the case now that the NSPCC runs Childline. It came above safeguarding, relationships and issues to do with friends. It had an emotional impact on children. I know this because I spoke personally to hundreds of them over the telephone about their view of themselves, particularly young children from ethnic-minority communities, for whom this was a very confusing issue. More recently, we know that homophobic bullying has become much more rife, with names being called in the playground. Therefore, I recognise that collecting statistics may not be the Government’s way of taking this forward but I should like to hear more about what they are doing strategically. This is not something that needs a plan for today or yesterday; it has to happen all the time.

I remember advising the head of a school in the south of England where a young man had taken his own life. He said, “But we don’t have bullying in this school”. I said that the healthy position was to recognise that every school has bullying, but to have a strategy to deal with it that involves its pupils. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the strategic position.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, first, like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for raising this important issue and, if I may say so, for doing it in a very thoughtful way and getting the debate off to such a good start. He and other noble Lords have described the terrible impact that bullying can have on a child. I agree with him and other noble Lords that schools, pupils, parents and the Government must work together to tackle bullying in schools, and prejudice-based bullying in particular.

We set out in our White Paper, as the noble Lord mentioned, our clear expectation that schools should take a tough and firm stance on all forms of bullying. They should seek to identify what bullying is happening in their school and take steps to support pupils who have been bullied and prevent it happening in future. To support schools, we have issued the guidance to which the noble Lord referred, setting out their legal powers and duties, the principles that underpin the strategies used in successful schools, and the specialist organisations that can provide information to help schools to understand and tackle different types of bullying. This guidance makes it clear that primary legislation, introduced by the previous Government, already requires head teachers to determine measures to prevent all forms of bullying among pupils. The Equality Act 2010 further requires them to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and to consider how they can positively contribute to the advancement of equality and good relations.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said—and I agree with her—bullying is a problem which happens to children and young people in schools on a spectrum of severity and for all sorts of reasons. The noble Lord’s amendment addresses a particular kind of bullying, which is particularly horrid, but if one is on the receiving end of bullying all kinds of bullying feel completely horrid and vile. It is, as has already been explained, a complex issue that is too often hidden from parents and teachers, as noble Lords have said. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that in order to tackle bullying schools must have a good understanding of what is driving bullying in their schools. That is a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, made as well. We need a much broader approach. Schools must also understand the types of bullying that are a problem. It is crucial that they create an environment where pupils know that bullying is not tolerated and feel able to report it where it occurs.

The nature of bullying changes over time. If the noble Lord, Lord Rix, were here, he would talk about the concerns that he and others had about the rise in bullying of disabled children. If we had been here 10 years ago, we probably would not have had a debate about the rise in homophobic bullying. Therefore, understanding the issues and how they change over time is extremely important and will require different action in different schools. I have been told that 35 per cent of bullying goes unreported, so any system that relies on reporting alone cannot give a full picture of what is happening in a school.

The most effective schools use a range of approaches to monitor bullying. They combine evidence from incidents reported with other sources of information, such as anonymous surveys of pupils, surveys of parents and making use of school councils. We want to see more schools take a sophisticated approach that allows them to understand the problems in detail, address them and improve their approach based on evidence of what works. The new, more focused Ofsted framework will encourage schools to do this. Inspectors will have more time to look at how schools address poor behaviour, including bullying. That greater focus will flush out some of these things. The report that Ofsted will produce will provide information to parents about the detail of a school’s approach and how effective it is.

All that having been said, on the specific amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, I fear that there are potential practical pitfalls with requiring all schools to collect and publish information about bullying in one way. That point was alluded to by my noble friend Lady Brinton. Information about bullying is by its nature fairly subjective, and the amount of bullying recorded will not necessarily depend on the amount of bullying taking place. I can envisage a situation where a low number of recorded incidents could mean that a school was exemplary at tackling bullying. Alternatively, it could mean that staff were not aware that it was going on or that children were afraid to report it.