Education and Adoption Bill

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be taking part in the Second Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, so I apologise to your Lordships if I cannot be here for much of this afternoon’s discussion.

Listening to this debate, I think back to the experience of my half-sister, who for many years was a school librarian in Canada. She would complain about fathers coming in and taking books for their three year-olds about the planets and stars, which were completely inappropriate for the age of the children in question. Fathers were expecting children to understand things that they had no possibility of understanding. I think that probably happens a lot in the education system and outside it. People feel very strongly that certain things are important and others are less so.

My concern with sponsors is that they may have a very strong vision; sometimes that is a very positive thing, but sometimes that may not be so helpful. That is why I am interested to hear from the Minister, in a letter in due course, about the selection, training, support and development of sponsors, and why I have some sympathy with the concerns expressed by the Committee about who these sponsors are and who guards the sponsors. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make just a few comments on this group of amendments. I, too, apologise that I will not be able to be here for the whole Committee sitting. Unfortunately, because of other commitments I will be in and out a little bit.

I support the spirit of Amendment 25. I cannot see any reasonable and valid arguments why chains of academies should not be routinely inspected. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, made the point that that discretion could be left with Ofsted, but if it does not actually inspect chains I do not know how it will know whether or not it needs to inspect them. They ought to be brought into the fold of those organisations that Ofsted routinely inspects.

I want to focus on parents and what I believe is the right of parents to be both informed and consulted about significant changes to the status and organisation of the school in which their children are pupils. We touched on this in an earlier meeting. We have since had, just before this Committee session started, the response of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who raised some of these issues. It is now clear from this letter, notwithstanding the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, at the previous meeting, that in relation to a failing school the governing body does not have a duty to inform parents; it is required to take reasonable steps, but we all acknowledged in Committee that in many instances that does not happen. So there is not a duty on the governing body specifically to inform parents if Ofsted has decided the school is failing and that consequences will follow.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, also admits in the letter that:

“There are no requirements within the Bill for the governing body to have to inform parents that the school has been identified as coasting”,

by the regional schools commissioner; nor is there a requirement on the regional schools commissioner to inform parents that he or she has decided that the school is coasting. It seems that, when it comes to these important matters, parents are falling between a number of bodies which may or may not decide that they should inform parents and which may or may not consult them. It is in the gift of the Government to make that a duty and to bring the rights of parents to information and consultation to the fore in the Bill. Surely that is right.

As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, the only argument we have heard against that so far is that the Minister thinks that that would delay things at a time when speed is of the essence in setting matters to rights when a school is not performing. But that is within the Government’s own gift. The Government could set strict time limits. They could set down the means by which that consultation should take place. They could set that in statute or in regulation to minimise any delay, but that could still involve putting the rights of parents to information and consultation to the fore as an equally important principle, along with the others in the Bill.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to that point, because if he is still relying on the very weak argument that this would cause unnecessary delay, he really has to say why the Government do not grasp that nettle and bring forward proposals that would minimise delay but still involve parents in decisions about their children.