Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I have quite a lot of sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. As others have said, the TDA has achieved a great deal. We changed its name from the TDA to the TTA about three or four years ago because it was to deal not just with teacher training but with continuing professional development. That is extremely important.

I worry about the degree to which the Department for Education can undertake all the tasks that it is taking unto itself. This is set up as an agency, to some extent at arm’s length from the Government; it has a very particular function to fulfil, and has fulfilled it very well. One of the areas where we as a coalition want to see expansion of recruitment is through Teach First. It has been doing a lot to bring in many extremely good young graduates into teaching. But it cannot do everything, and it does not propose to. We still need something like the TDA, and I worry that the department is being landed with so many tasks that it will not be able to take on this one as well.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I echo a number of the points that have been made and emphasise the question back to the Minister. It appears as though the numbers of teachers being recruited has dipped. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that we need robust statistics in this area, but it also appears that there is a correlation with the stopping of intensive marketing. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s analysis. Does he recognise that there is a correlation between those two facts? Where does he think that the impetus for the encouragement of that new generation of teachers will come from?

That brings me on to my second point. I do not understand where the demand for this change has come from. We had a very good and effective organisation that was delivering, yet it feels as if we have to be seen to be abandoning anything that happened before and starting again for the sake of it. I am sure that the Minister will have a different view, but it feels as if we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Thirdly, I am sure that the Minister will say that some elements of the TDA’s functions will be transferred to the new Teaching Agency, although my understanding is that the marketing element will not be. In his letter to us, he says that it is a complex task and requires sensitive handling. He has made himself an enormously big problem, which did not exist in the first place. I do not understand why such an upheaval is really necessary. Perhaps the Minister will answer that point as well.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I rise to speak to our opposition to the Question that Clause 18 stand part of the Bill. While we welcome the initiative of those who tabled Amendments 78A and 78B, regrettably we do not feel that they have gone far enough in maintaining a national framework of pay and conditions for support staff.

Perhaps I should also make it clear at this stage that I am an ex-UNISON employee, and spent many years observing in schools how the distinctions between teaching and non-teaching staffs have, quite rightly, been breaking down over the years. Support staff are increasingly playing a professional role. They make up a range of functions crucial to the whole school learning environment as teaching assistants, welfare support staff and specialist and technical staff. They make a huge contribution to improving learning outcomes, which was confirmed by Ofsted in its fifth report.

As we have heard, since its establishment the SSSNB has been playing a crucial role in preparing core documents setting out the wide range of non-teaching roles being carried out in schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, when it was established it was not opposed by any party. Since then it has received widespread support from teachers, heads, governors and parents. There was certainly no chorus of concern calling for its abolition. Importantly, its remit when it was established was to combine national consistency and local flexibility in pay and conditions, and it was working to deliver that model. However, when the clause was debated in the Commons the Minister argued that retaining it would involve,

“creating and imposing additional rigidity on schools” .—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 22/3/11; col. 595.]

But that argument fails to recognise that the SSSNB was not like other negotiating bodies. It has the power only to recommend, not prescribe, and as such the local flexibility and autonomy is maintained.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly identified, in abolishing the SSSNB now, the Government are scrapping it before it has had time to finish delivering the job profiles that it was set up to produce. That is wasting good work. Already more than 100 support staff roles have been profiled and were being tested by schools; a school-based job evaluation scheme was being designed; and a pay and conditions model was being developed. Given that these job descriptions would have been recommendations, not prescriptions, it is hard to see how they would have hindered schools going forward. On the contrary, having job profiles could have been used as benchmarks, which would have cut the time and cost. Self-governing schools would otherwise have to use their own time to create their own job descriptions. Apart from the more general use for those benchmark job descriptions, schools and local authorities would then have a greater chance of avoiding being subject to equal pay challenges.

In addition, without the work of the SSSNB, there is a risk—perhaps even a likelihood—that the status of support staff in a largely female workforce will be undermined and that over time their terms and conditions will become less favourable in some schools than is currently the case. Ofsted itself identified that,

“members of the wider workforce and their managers were confused and uncertain about pay and conditions attached to the increasingly diverse roles that have developed as a result of workforce reform”.

It went on to urge the Government to provide more detailed guidance on pay and conditions. This is exactly what was happening. In the Commons Committee stage the Minister said:

“The Secretary of State has made it clear to trade unions and support staff employee organisations that he believes that there is a clear argument for completing some elements of the work begun by the SSSNB, on the basis that the outputs might be of some use to employers and schools”.

He went on to say:

“Those elements include the set of support staff job profiles, for example, and the associated job evaluation scheme. Should trade unions and employers deem that it would be a useful way to proceed with support staff pay and conditions to continue with that development work independently of the Government, I believe that that would be a positive outcome”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 22/3/11; col. 596.]

Once again, we seem to be playing the game of dismantling a perfectly good mechanism for dealing with a need in education only to have to assemble it in a different form. That point was made by a number of noble Lords on Second Reading. The Bill seems to be focused on structures rather than on improving educational outcomes, which we are all trying to grapple with. Can the Minister confirm whether those elements will be in place to continue the work that was established by the SSSNB; what organisation they have in mind to continue them; and by when? Interestingly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, the people who have been working on the job profiles have not gone away; they have simply been absorbed back into the Office of Manpower Economics, and are therefore available to carry on with the work where they left off, so there is no great saving to be had by abolishing the SSSNB.

Finally, I hope that I will be forgiven if I mention another injustice to support staff arising from the abolition of the SSSNB. Last year when the Chancellor announced a two-year pay freeze in the public sector, he promised that all staff earning less than £21,000 would receive at least £250 in each year. But the Secretary of State for Education says that he has no way of delivering this to school support staff despite having the power to direct it because the SSSNB has been unable to clarify who would qualify. As well as the indirect difficulties that this clause will cause support staff, it makes them all £250 a year worse off. We still believe that school support staff are entitled to fair pay and conditions. The SSSNB would have delivered a framework to make this happen and we believe that it is worth maintaining it to deliver that programme.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I very much want to speak against Clause 18 stand part, and I will talk to the other amendments in due course. I guess that it is just an occupational hazard of being an ex-Minister that when a new Government take over you hold your head in your hands as you watch some of the things that you slaved over to create for many hours, days, weeks and months being abolished at a stroke. There were quite a few in the first few months of this Government, but this is one that I found really hard when I heard that the School Support Staff Negotiating Body was to be scrapped before it really had had a chance to get going.

To some extent, that reflects a view—I am sorry to say a default view in Sanctuary Buildings—that you start thinking about schools in respect of secondary schools and secondary schools in London. You then start thinking about the workforce by thinking simply about teachers. We saw that in earlier clauses, such as Clause 13 which we discussed at some length in Committee, on false allegations being made against teachers not being extended to support staff. That reflects an attitude of mind. We heard in the excellent speech of my noble friend Lady Jones about the importance of support staff. They perform a vital range of functions in schools. An additional 130,000-plus since 1997 are working in schools, performing roles not just in classrooms as high-level teaching assistants. Many of the people in classrooms work one-to-one supporting those with special educational needs. There are also non-classroom roles, from school business managers and those assisting them in the school office, through to caretakers, crossing patrols, dinner ladies—or is it catering assistants? I cannot remember the correct term but dinner ladies will do.

A really important range of roles is performed and valued by schools and those in the school community, such as parents, pupils and staff. I have taken quite an interest in reflecting back on how we should improve schools in the future and the underachievement of white working-class boys, in particular. I have visited and talked to those who are running some of the particularly successful academies doing work in that area. The Richard Rose Federation in Carlisle in Cumbria has turned round a very difficult circumstance. The North Liverpool Academy in, as the name suggests, Liverpool, is within sight of both Anfield and Goodison Park football grounds in a very tough environment for schools to succeed. What was interesting was that, in both circumstances, they are now doing really well in narrowing attainment gaps for white working-class boys. When I asked them how they did it, one of the keys was the deployment of support staff and how they were using learning assistants and others to engage the home.

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[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

If things happen as have just been described and responsibility for working out these arrangements passes, as in the most successful schools in the world, to local bodies, to schools, who exactly are we talking about? Is it school heads and human resources people within schools who devise, buy in, outsource or whatever, job descriptions and all the rest of it and then apply them? Who will form the checks and balances against inappropriate practice or perhaps deficient practice in that area? Will it be the governing board, about which I am terribly concerned? The skills and competences around our table are hard enough to put together already. Where will the staff come from? Who will do the controlling if it is passed to a local level? Our local authorities are being diminished and sidelined. More responsibilities are coming on the governing board. Are we now going to be in a position where we have to check on the way things like this are being settled in the workplace?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords—

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Perhaps I may respond to that point because we want to get on. We are proposing the perpetuation of the current situation. The people who are currently responsible, the local authorities and other bodies, would continue as now to be responsible. The legislative regulatory framework in terms of employment law, equality law and everything else remains in place. It is not the case that the proposed abolition of the SSSNB would change what we currently have going on. The change would have been if the SSSNB had gone ahead.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I was going to make some comments on the content of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but I am struggling, as I gather are other noble Lords. I know that we got rather a lot of e-mails this morning in rather a hurry but I do not believe that I have seen the e-mail referred to by the noble Lord. This raises a wider question. Here we are trying to scrutinise legislation properly, but how on earth can we get involved in a debate when we are debating blind assurances that the noble Lord has been given that we do not appear to have seen? Forgive me if it is somewhere in the ether and I should have received the e-mail by now.

The comment that I should like to make—and which this infamous e-mail might answer—is that the amendment is very stark. I suppose that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that teachers do not go into teaching to fail. The onus should be concentrated far more on identifying what has gone wrong and identifying support mechanisms than on simply setting out provisions such as those in the amendment for the disciplinary measures to be taken against an individual. Somehow the context is missing, although it may be that the Government have now provided it.

My only other point is that, as I said, teachers do not go into teaching to fail, but there should be a requirement on all teachers, not just those who are struggling, to get involved in continuous professional development. Under this amendment, if all else fails, we will get them to do some extra training. It should be a requirement for all teachers at all times to update their skill-set. Those are my only comments, but it would be interesting to see this e-mail. Perhaps we can have the opportunity to come back and make further comments when we have seen it.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I want to comment briefly and probably will be told off by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in his summing up, but I do not know why we are debating this at all. If I was sitting on one of my boards I would be saying that this is an executive matter and not a governance or policy matter. If I look at the amendment and think about the number of disciplinary procedures that I have had to write, and the number of development programmes in which I have had to be involved, I can see all the difficulties and loopholes that this would lead to in terms of the present HR legislation and the difficulties that people would face trying to implement it. Not having seen the famous e-mail, I do not know whether it answers these questions. However, I would respectfully say to my colleagues that these sorts of issues are much better not dealt with in legislation.