Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, as the Minister has indicated, we have tabled Amendment 84ZLA in this group. Its aim was to reinstate the rights of students and staff to be represented on FE college governing bodies. As the Minister has described, last night we had a useful meeting on this issue with John Hayes. I think it was acknowledged at that meeting that the proposals had arrived rather late and that there had not been time to consult the stakeholders effectively on the implications of these changes.

I am therefore grateful that the Minister has agreed to reconsider this issue and to come back with a form of words that will reinstate the right to student and staff representation at Third Reading. On this basis, we are prepared to withdraw Amendment 84ZLA. We of course reserve the right to return to this issue at Third Reading should we feel that the new proposals are lacking in any way, but I am sure that that will not be the case. For the moment, I thank the Minister for the progress made on this issue.

In the mean time, we are still absorbing the wider implications of these governance changes. I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether one consequence, intended or otherwise, is that governors of FE colleges will be able to be paid in the future. If he does not have that information to hand, perhaps he could write to me.

Moving briefly to the issues covered by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in Amendment 83, this issue was well aired in Grand Committee and very much supported by us at that time. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said during the earlier debate, colleges should be,

“a dynamic nucleus within their communities”.—[Official Report, 12/9/11: col. GC 141].

FE colleges have worked hard in the last decade to advance strong partnerships with local businesses, and have the inside track on local employment markets. Their links with local youth services are now more important than ever, as resources shrink.

The Association of Colleges has argued that while it highly prizes the work that local colleges achieve in their communities, this work will carry on whether or not there is a duty to do it. The Minister said something similar in Grand Committee. I would turn this argument on its head; if the work is so prized and so effective, should we not take the precaution of leaving it in the original legislation to ensure that it continues, rather than sending a signal that it is no longer a requirement on colleges, which might otherwise develop different priorities?

With these comments, I look forward to the Minister’s response to the debate.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this grouping, Amendments 83 and 84. They do indeed pick up the issue that we spoke about in Committee, which is the duty on the part of colleges to promote the well-being of the local area.

I thank the Minister for bringing forward this raft of amendments. As he knows, I am chairing a commission on behalf of NIACE, the AoC and the 157 Group, which is looking into the role of colleges in their communities. The issue of the reclassification by ONS cropped up in our deliberations on this commission. Our intention is to promote the role of colleges. As the noble Baroness says, we have used the term “dynamic nucleus within their communities”—they should be proactive in developing partnerships and in promoting well-being and community cohesion within their communities. Since that is the case, we are very anxious that they should not be inhibited from this by a statistical classification, and therefore we have been backing the moves made by the department here. I put down some rather naive amendments in Committee in order to pave the way for this, and I am delighted that we have—I hope—managed to come forward with a way that prevents this reclassification.

In relation to my own amendments, I have spoken at some length both with the AoC and with the department about this issue. As I have suggested, the report, which is going to be presented at the AoC conference later this month, will in fact suggest a wider role for colleges within the community, and I think there is a fair amount of good will towards the promotion of this role. In the light of that, I have decided that it would not be appropriate at this time to press my amendments. There is good will on all parts, and the assumption is that colleges will be promoting the well-being of their local area as part of what they will be doing. There is no question of that, but it does not necessarily need to be in the Bill, so, as I say, I shall not press my amendments today.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

84A: After Clause 52, insert the following new Clause—
“Academies: school teachers’ qualifications
(1) EA 2002 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), in subsection (6) (schools to which this section applies), after paragraph (b) insert—
“(c) an Academy, including a free school,(d) a city technology college, or(e) a city college for the technology of the arts.”(3) At the end of subsection (6) of that Act insert—
“(7) Nothing in subsection (6) should prohibit a school’s ability to employ non-qualified individuals to provide educational support in relation to non-‘specified work’ in so far as it would positively contribute to pupils’ educational development”.
(4) Any individual employed under the terms of subparagraph (3) above shall be supervised in their work by a qualified teacher.”

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, Amendment 84A has a simple but fundamental aim—that is, to ensure that all teachers practising in the classroom have qualified teacher status. Until recently this was the case in all state schools but the Government have decided that this will not be a requirement for teachers in free schools. This was debated at length in Grand Committee and the need for teachers to be qualified, as I recall, had virtually unanimous support. For many noble Lords it was what I would colloquially describe as a no-brainer. During the debate the Minister said that the Government’s reasoning for this was,

“simply intended to allow the possibility of greater innovation at the edges of the maintained sector”.—[Official Report, 14/9/11; col. GC 227.]

He repeated this argument in a letter to me of 25 October. I do not think that many of us were convinced by this argument at the time. It was, with respect, completely lacking in evidence or justification.

The Minister then went on to argue in his letter that a skill in measuring the progress of each pupil and the delivery of good-quality subject materials were important elements of teacher training but that he,

“believes it is possible for a teacher to be proficient in them without having attained Qualified teacher Status”.

My simple challenge back to him is: how would he know? How would parents or even head teachers know if these people were truly up to scratch?

This issue goes to the heart of the professional standing of the teaching profession. Whereas most sensible participants in this debate—including the teachers—would argue that the challenge is to drive up standards in the classroom and increase professionalism, the Government seem to be pulling in the opposite direction.

In our earlier debate, a number of noble Lords contrasted the status of teachers with other professions. For example, we wondered whether allowing doctors in certain hospitals not to be qualified would enable “greater innovation”. We wondered what concerns colleagues would have about the standard of patient care in those circumstances and what would be the impact on successful treatment rates. Of course, you can make a similar analogy with other professions.

It is difficult to see why positive innovation is more likely to come about where people are not trained to the required standards in their profession. It is all too easy to see, in the case of unqualified teachers at free schools, how cohorts of children could be failed by teaching quality below the expected level of a qualified teacher.

Our amendment in part is about the Government showing to the teaching profession that they value and want to build on the professionalism in the sector. More than that, it is about ensuring standards in what we believe is one of the most important jobs that it is possible to have. It is in the interests of us all that the next generation is taught to a high standard by trained professionals, and it will do us all a disservice if it is not.

As I mentioned in Grand Committee, the reasoning for the Government’s position is unclear. I noted that the Secretary of State had said of free schools:

“We want the dynamism that characterises the best independent schools to help drive up standards in the state sector … In that spirit, we will not be setting requirements in relation to qualifications”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/11/10; col. 623.]

I question the presumption that a highly performing independent school is the result of the fact that its teachers do not need to be qualified, although of course many already are. Surely the more significant factors are those such as selection processes and smaller class sizes.

If the Government are serious about building on the successes of the previous Government in raising standards of teaching; if the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are serious when they say in the White Paper that is indeed called The Importance of Teaching,

“no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers”;

and if the Government seriously want to learn from international best practice, about which the OECD says:

“many of the high performing countries share a commitment to professionalised teaching”,

how can the Government at the same time say that in some of our schools teachers do not need to be qualified to teach? As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, argued in Grand Committee, it is almost Dickensian.

As colleagues rightly said in Committee, we are not saying that everyone who stands in front of a class should be qualified. I recognise that, for example, trainee teachers are and should be permitted to teach as part of their training. I accept the points made that people without teaching qualifications, such as teaching assistants, add real value to the classroom and make a difference to children’s lives. What is important and what our amendment aims to achieve is that the progression of each pupil should be overseen by someone with a teaching qualification.

It is a basic right of pupils to be taught by a qualified teacher. Parents expect it and the teaching profession seeks it. There is no research or evidence to show that pupils will benefit from this change. I hope noble Lords will feel able to support our amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I am seriously concerned about the issue of having non-qualified teachers in a classroom. Qualifications for teaching are not just about being qualified to teach maths, science or languages; they are about having some knowledge of child development. It is crucial for teachers to learn about how children grow, how they learn to think and how they learn at different ages. It is different if a parent or grandparent goes into a classroom to hear children read or other such activities. Those people are under supervision and fit in with what the class is doing anyway. I would not like someone who was not qualified to be teaching chemistry or physics. It seems quite a dangerous thing to happen. I certainly would not allow into my house an electrician or a plumber who was not qualified. Why would we allow people who are not qualified to teach children? My young nephew recently trained to be a soccer coach for young people. He had to learn not only the skills of teaching soccer but various techniques of teaching as well as first aid. Having non-qualified people in classrooms could miss out all those extra things that teachers learn.

I have some questions for the Minister. How will these non-qualified teachers be recruited? Who will they be? Supposing that they were predominant in a school, what kind of education would those children receive? This is a very serious issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, we have had a very good and wide debate on this issue. I ask noble Lords to read the wording of our amendment because it is not as stark as some people would have us believe and we have tried to craft the wording carefully. It is not saying that only qualified teachers can teach in the classroom. It says that people with all sorts of skills can come into the classroom—they can be inspiring leaders, or as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, they can be specialists in teaching children how to operate lathes. All those people have a role in the classroom, but the wording of our amendment is that they have to be supervised by a qualified teacher. We feel that that is vital because of the arguments that have been made around the Chamber this afternoon.

You can be the best specialist in the world at maths, science or whatever, but you need to have some teaching and education in child development, behavioural issues and the different ways that people learn, adapt and interact with each other and a whole range of SEN issues. I do not think that someone who has had a professional job outside teaching would necessarily understand or know about those issues. The issue, which is carefully spelt out in our amendment, is that those people should have a role but that they should be supervised by somebody with qualified teacher status.

At the moment the proposals are at the margin; we are talking only about free schools and it may apply to only a handful of teachers. What signal is that sending? As a number of noble Lords have said, if this is so wonderful—as the Minister said, let us access the greatest pool of talent—will the Government say, “Great, let us extend that beyond free schools”? That is a very dangerous road to go down because, as people have rehearsed round the Chamber this afternoon, the issue of professionalism and driving up standards should be at the heart of what we are doing. We should not be trying to undercut and undermine the profession by deprofessionalising it.

The core point that I put to the Minister, which he did not really answer, is: where is the evidence that unqualified teachers provide better education than qualified teachers? The Secretary of State has put great onus on this in a number of his speeches. He likes research and likes everything to be evidence based, but that strikes me as being a stab in the dark. There is no evidence that in the independent sector it is the fact that teachers are unqualified that drives up standards. I am not convinced from what the Minister has said that there will be sufficient monitoring. It is almost as if we are entering a wild experiment with no terms of reference, no end date and no assessment of whether the experiment has been successful. We are doing that at the expense of a generation of young people, whose education could potentially be damaged by this.

For all those reasons, the proposals are going in the wrong direction. Our amendment says that there should be a qualified teacher who oversees the work of what happens in the classroom. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to request and it is in all pupils’ interests. I am not convinced by the Minister’s argument this afternoon, and I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

84B: Clause 55, page 45, line 40, leave out from “England” to end of line and insert “applies for an Academy Order, there must be a consultation on the question of whether the conversion should take place.
(2) The consultation must seek the views of such persons as the person carrying it out thinks appropriate, but must include the views of parents of registered pupils, registered pupils, school staff and the local authority.”

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, under existing legislation, before a maintained school can convert into an academy, its governing body must consult those it thinks appropriate on whether the school should convert into an academy. However, Clause 55 allows a school to convert into an academy with absolutely no consultation with the pupils, the parents of the pupils, staff, the local authority or other interested groups. Our amendment would require consultation before a school applies for an academy order and require that consultation to seek the views of four categories of stakeholders: parents, pupils, school staff and the local authority. We regard it as a matter of courtesy, democracy and common sense.

As we made clear in Grand Committee, we do not seek to set out in legislation a long list of everyone who should be consulted, but it is our view that any Secretary of State considering granting an academy order would need to be assured that the views of the four key groups were being taken into account, so any consultation should be required to include them. Indeed, the Minister said to my noble friend in Grand Committee:

“I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that it is quite difficult to foresee situations where it would not be appropriate to consult the kinds of people that she mentions”.—[Official Report, 14/9/11; col. GC 242.]

I wonder whether, on reflection, the Minister has come up with a possible situation in which it would not be appropriate to consult these four groups and, if not, whether he will concede that, in order for any Secretary of State to make a well informed decision, these groups should always be consulted.

I also agree with the concerns previously raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that under the new proposals one of the bodies allowed to carry out the consultation, apart from the school’s governing body, is the organisation with which the Secretary of State proposes to enter into an academy arrangement. As she rightly pointed out, this is no guarantee of an objective or neutral consultation. We therefore believe it is important to build in some additional checks and balances to ensure that a new academy is truly desired by the local community. By requiring the consultation to include the views of these four key stakeholder groups—pupils, parents, staff and the local authority—those applying for an academy order will need to demonstrate to the Secretary of State that there is local demand for the conversion, not just from the organisation with which the Secretary of State has proposed to enter into academy arrangements but from the wider stakeholder community. If this clause was allowed to go forward unamended, it would be yet another example of those stakeholder groups being denied a voice.

I recognise that, strictly speaking, the granting of an academy order enables a school to convert into an academy only at a future time; it does not automatically trigger conversion. By denying the chance for parents, pupils, professionals and the community to have a voice before the academy order is made, to a large degree it presents them with a fait accompli. Indeed, our amendment would ensure that the key stakeholders were consulted on a timely basis so as to be able to influence a decision whether or not to apply for an academy order. It would mean that the Secretary of State would need to take account of those views when deciding whether or not to grant that order.

I hope noble Lords will recognise the sense and the democratic underpinning of this amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords—

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the Minister for their responses. Several issues are fundamental to this. The first is: how can we be assured that the Secretary of State is in the position to know that a full consultation has taken place? The guidance to which the Minister refers is fine, but we are seeking something that is more of a checklist setting out some of the fundamental rights for certain groups, rather than just the issuing of good practice and guidance. We feel that local democracy on this issue is important.

Our amendment engenders bringing the consultation forward to an earlier stage. We feel that that is right because the evidence appears to be that people feel that once there begins to be a head of steam around a debate about whether there should be a conversion, even if it has not formally been made, it is nevertheless more difficult for local people to put a brake on it or to raise disquiet, or for them to have a voice that is heard.

We do not believe that we have gone into too much detail. The Minister said that they do not want long lists. I said at the outset that we, equally, did not want a long list, but we did want to reassure some of the key stakeholders about their role in all this. As I say, this is very much about our belief in local democracy.

The noble Baroness asked what evidence there was. I would say that that is something for the department to respond to. I am not in a position to collect evidence. I can say, anecdotally, that I know of parents and local authorities who feel that there has not been sufficient consultation. I think that in part the onus is on the department to measure the level of complaints, and the Minister could perhaps respond at some level on this.

I do not think there is anything wrong with our amendment. I do not think that it is too detailed, that it expects too much of the legislation or that it spells out too much detail about what should be required. We have identified only four key stakeholders. This is, to us, a matter of principle. It would give enormous reassurance to people in the locality that their views will genuinely have a voice, and on that basis I beg leave to test the view of the House on this matter.

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[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I very much welcome these pilots and I am very grateful to the Minister for having listened to the Special Educational Consortium and others who have been talking to him about this.

I have been asked by the Association of National Specialist Colleges to raise two issues which possibly have already been covered by the discussions that have been held, but as I have not been party to those discussions I would like to raise them and seek assurances from the Minister. First, in the original draft of the pilot scheme there was a suggestion that colleges could be asked to return an element of the funding to local authorities in order for them to make a direct payment to the students who were already attending the colleges. The Association of National Specialist Colleges felt that this was overly bureaucratic and was a somewhat artificial approach to the pilots. The suggestion does not appear now in the published information, but it would be helpful to know whether it has been dropped or whether it is likely to be retained in additional guidance as the pilots proceed.

The second issue was one of transport, which has always been a major issue for those with special educational needs because local authorities are supposed to provide the funding for such transport and very often they have been derelict in their duties. A direct payment allows for students to pay for transport. The Association of National Specialist Colleges has significant concerns about the lack of transport funding for young people with learning difficulties or disabilities to get to both specialist and mainstream colleges. Unless there is a transport budget available for local authorities to include within the direct payment, it was concerned that the ability of students to pay for transport, as well as other requirements, would be impaired. They wondered, therefore, whether there was any way of ensuring that the local authorities had included an allowance for transport in the direct payment before there was any expectation that the students would be paying for that transport. Perhaps the Minister could clarify those two points so that they are on the record.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, like many noble Lords in the Chamber, we welcome the direct payments initiative. It is right that it should be piloted and closely scrutinised. We will play our part in that. I hope that the Minister is able to reassure us that the outcome of the pilots will be fully debated by your Lordships' House in due course. I suspect that we will find that, as with many initiatives, it is the detail that matters and how the new powers are interpreted by parents and local authorities alike. We need clear advice and updates on how the pilots are working in practice. The outcome has to be an improvement in the provision of SEN services in schools and the pilots will need to demonstrate that all SEN children, not just those of middle-class parents, have an improved quality of service.

Noble Lords have raised a number of important questions in the short debate, but there remain some concerns that I hope the Minister will be able to help me with. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I say that these points may have been covered in the discussions, but forgive me if I am not up to speed on some of the discussions that have taken place. First, how can we be assured that the payments will be enough to cover identified need so that the parents will not be expected to make up the difference from their own budgets? Secondly, how will other families be assured that other budgets will not be cut to fund these payments, thereby adversely affecting other services provided by the local authorities? Thirdly, how will the special position of looked-after children be protected? For example, foster carers will potentially administer the payments but might be perceived to have a conflict of interest, as they are also employees of the local authority. Lastly, on the level of support and advocacy provided to parents, which the Minister touched on, can he reassure us that that will be independent of local authorities because undoubtedly parents will find the system new, potentially difficult and overwhelming in terms of the choice and the bureaucracy with which they are faced? Perhaps he could clarify the level of independence that would be available.

A separate, procedural point is that we find ourselves, once again, tonight making policy on important issues on the hoof. These issues would have benefited from a longer period of consultation, both within the House and outside. The legislation, as drafted, has been placed in completely the wrong part of the Bill; it is in Part 7, which deals with post-16 education and I do not suppose that the Minister is suggesting that these payments are restricted to post-16. The Government should do better than this and, if they do not, they cannot complain when humble Back-Benchers follow their example and try to misuse the structure of Bills to put bits of legislation in the wrong place.

Notwithstanding all that, we support the intent of the Government’s proposals and we look forward to the future scrutiny which, we trust, will occur in due course.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am grateful for the broad welcome from all sides of the House for what we are attempting to achieve with these pilots and for what we are trying to do to get a better system for the most vulnerable children in the country from all backgrounds. As a number of noble Lords have made clear in their questions, there are a number of important issues to get right and that is the point of the pilots. We shall work through some of the issues that have been raised as a result of the pilots.

The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, raised the issue of evaluation. There will certainly need to be very careful evaluation. We would want to share that with noble Lords. I was very grateful for the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, about the way in which we have managed to work with him, others and the Special Educational Consortium and I want that to carry on. The first evaluation results will probably arrive next April and there will be another report next September, but we want this to be an open process. I am very happy to share the findings as we go along and to work on ensuring that everything works as we want it to. As I said before, I think we are all agreed on the direction in which we want to go but, of necessity, difficult questions arise, some of which have been posed, about funding. The only way to answer those questions is to work through them with an open mind, and not to prejudge the outcome but to try to come up with solutions to them.

My noble friend Lady Sharp asked a couple of questions, first, on behalf of Natspec, in relation to the element of funding to local authorities. During the pilots, a local authority and a college will need to agree before a direct payment can be made. We think it is right to do everything possible to give students greater control over the services that they receive, so we are testing direct payments through these pilots to ensure that we learn everything about how to make them work in practice.

On transport, the pilots of direct payments will not affect current local authority duties or budgets, including those for transport, so if a local authority were to agree a direct payment for transport with a student, it would need to agree what the payment was for and exactly how much it would cost. My noble friend Lord Lingfield asked about top-ups: will parents be required to top up? The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was concerned about that too. In no circumstances should the amount of the direct payment be set at a level that would require someone to pay from their own resources in order to secure part or all of the provisions set out in the child’s statement of SEN or the young person's LDA. If an individual wishes to purchase support that is additional to that needed to meet the assessed needs, it would be open to them to do so.

That links in to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, about what is in the statement, as the statement determines what is delivered, how much things cost and so on. We know that local authorities are currently required to specify the provisions necessary to meet the needs of a child in the statement, but we also know that the quality of statements and learning difficulty assessments varies significantly. We think that the process of establishing a direct payment should, by itself, help in this regard because in order to make a payment to a family, the local authority would have to quantify exactly what provision is required. Our experience with the individual budget pilot supports this view, and parents report the initial discussions to establish a budget as one of the significant benefits of the overall pilot. I think that will help address that concern. So far as the question about the independence of the support is concerned, I will follow it up and write to the noble Baroness with more particulars on it.

I am grateful to noble Lords for the support for this. I hope it will mark a significant step forward. We hope these pilots will work.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I end with a whimper and not a bang. As noble Lords will recall, we agreed four government amendments when we discussed school inspections last week. Those amendments to Clauses 39 and 41 mean that, with the exception of the first set of regulations made under the new powers inserted by these clauses, regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure. I refer to the amendments that I introduced in response to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

The two amendments before us are consequential to those amendments and were unfortunately overlooked. Amendments 89ZC and 89ZD make minor drafting changes to Clause 78, “Commencement”, so that it refers to the right subsections, including those applying the affirmative procedure. This does not affect the commencement of the clause. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I was trying not to get drawn into ending on a whimper as well. I was not going to say anything, because there is nothing to be said, except to thank the noble Lord for his courtesy so far. I look forward to Third Reading in due course.

Amendment 89ZC agreed.