Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, our Amendments 114A and 122ZB would apply the same provisions to FE.

Under Clause 39, once a school was deemed “exempt”, it would never again need a Section 5 inspection. Like other noble Lords who have already spoken, we believe that freeing schools from any future inspection is a very dangerous step to take. Our amendments would therefore require regulations to provide for a range of local bodies to be able to trigger inspections where there are concerns. The most obvious of these would be local authorities and parents, but it is possible to imagine, for example, information from the police or appearing in the press being sufficient for Ofsted to decide that an inspection is justified. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, called it fire fighting, which may be what are talking about. We are certainly talking about recognisable incidents or failings which have triggered concern and therefore an inspection.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, there is no obvious purpose behind the clause. It is not clear what the rationale is, where the demand is coming from or how the resulting inspection void will be filled. We have considerable sympathy, therefore, with the movers of Clause 39 stand part.

Section 5 inspection reports are not just about a crisis of some kind; they are also extremely useful to parents and pupils, whether the pupils are already at the school or prospective pupils. The reports help parents and local authorities understand the strengths of a school and the areas where improvement is needed. They mean that parents can send their children to a particular school with a high level of knowledge about the quality of the learning experience that their children can expect. They also help local authorities hold schools to account and support them. The benefits for parents and the wider community of exempting schools are therefore unclear. Perhaps the noble Lord can explain that to us.

It is also not exactly clear from the legislation what conditions would render a school or college exempt. I understand that it was indicated in the Commons that it would be when a school was judged to be outstanding by Ofsted, but it is not clear that they would be the only circumstances in which a school would be classified as exempt. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that. If they are the only circumstances, can the Minister confirm that it is quite likely that a school, once deemed to be outstanding, may not be subject to an inspection for six years or more? In other words, a whole cohort of children could pass through it without it ever being subject to inspection. Surely, as has been pointed out around the Committee already, there is a risk that once a school has been judged to be outstanding, its standards could subsequently decline.

We, and no doubt others, have received comments from bodies such as Barnardo’s, Children England and Save the Children, echoing concerns about making exemptions from inspection. For example, unfairly selective admissions processes, lack of support for pupils with special educational needs or support to improve their behaviour, or dips in attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds may not be picked up. In addition, a school’s ongoing performance as a newly converted academy, with all the change and upheaval that it might entail, may not be considered and identified.

During the course of the Bill, we have debated the future of a number of education quangos. Thankfully, the Government have recognised the importance of Ofsted and that it needs to continue. They have also recognised that Ofsted inspections are still considered to be the gold standard which teachers respect and parents rely on. If they are going to apply to only a certain proportion of schools, is there not a danger that that whole brand and that authority will diminish over time? One of the great strengths is that it is something that can be compared across the whole spectrum of schools as things stand at the moment. The clause allows exempt schools to request an inspection themselves, and a number of outstanding schools have already indicated that they may be forced to make such a request because they fear that parents will not be interested in reading a report about them that could be five years out of date. The fact that Ofsted will be able to charge for those inspections raises the spectre that there may be another fundraising subtext to these proposals, and I would be grateful if the Minister could debunk that suggestion.

As the Bill stands, local authorities cannot trigger an inspection, yet local authorities are the champions of education in their areas and they are very well placed to identify concerns within a school, either through direct experience or through receiving concerns and complaints from the local community. Local authorities and parents are losing out in the way that these increasingly fragmented inspection systems are being introduced.

Our amendment would enable parents, the local authority and other interested bodies to trigger an inspection on an otherwise exempt school. I recognise that if this amendment were agreed it would need to be worked upon to identify what the threshold should be for triggering an inspection. For example, would there need to be a number of parents or prospective parents requesting an inspection and how would Ofsted assess the seriousness of the concern raised? We believe that that could be spelled out in regulations. We hope that our amendments go some way towards providing some checks and balances, but we are also extremely sympathetic to the wider issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and other noble Lords in this debate.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I have put my name to the Motion that this clause should not stand part of the Bill. I find it quite extraordinary that the Government are proposing that schools should be exempt from Ofsted inspections. I am not an uncritical admirer of Ofsted. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I have seen some inspections which have not done the required job and have often had a disabling effect on the teachers because of the conduct of the inspectors. None the less, overall, Ofsted inspections provide important safeguards for the public.

We are not told very much about the rationale for this. The Explanatory Notes state that this will allow the Secretary of State to exempt certain schools, and one has to look at the debate in the Commons or at the Minister’s comments at Second Reading to find that the intention is that outstanding schools should be exempt. Like my noble friend Lady Jones, I would like the Minister to confirm that. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, suggested earlier that academies would be exempt. I would like the Minister to confirm that that is not the case and that it is, at the moment, the intention that only outstanding schools will be exempt.

At Second Reading, my noble friend Lady Morgan, the chair of Ofsted, commented on this. She said,

“outstanding schools and colleges will in future be inspected only where there is cause for concern”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 737.]

I have considerable concerns about this. The fact is that not all outstanding schools remain outstanding. The figures that Ofsted published in answer to a Written Question I asked a few weeks ago show that of the 1,155 schools judged to be outstanding at their penultimate inspection, 302 were judged to be grade 2 at the most recent inspection, 58 grade 3 and one grade 4, so over 30 per cent of schools experience a reduction in their grading on a subsequent inspection by Ofsted. What possible basis could there be to say that we will exempt outstanding schools for all time?

We are told that the Government believe that the risk can be reduced because Ofsted is developing this risk assessment approach to include a basket of indicators, which will flag up concerns. It will also be influenced by complaints from parents or local intelligence from the LEA—although given that the Government are taking so much power away from those LEAs, it is difficult to know how they will have much local intelligence in future.

We know that Ofsted is planning this matrix system, where data on schools can be checked to trigger an inspection, but we all know about data. In any case, the data will be historic so the risk is that when an outstanding school declines, the trigger mechanism does not come into play until children have been adversely influenced because of that decline. Given that top-grading already allows inspections to be postponed it is clear that nearly a third of outstanding schools take their foot off the gas when regular inspection is not imminent, so how much worse will that become if we have no regular inspections at all?

We have heard a number of examples. The most obvious is when the head and a cadre of senior teachers retire at the same time. I know that noble Lords will have seen examples where the school has declined rapidly in the event of that happening. Perhaps I might give another example, since the previous debate on governance was very interesting. There are outstanding heads who do not welcome strong governance and use their influence to make sure that weaker governors are appointed. My experience is that the person most influential in appointing governors is the head teacher themselves, so you can have a situation where there is a very strong head and a weak governing body. When the head retires, the governing body appoints a new head but then does not know how to deal with the incoming head, who may not be up to the job. The absence of regular Ofsted inspection means that there are fewer safeguards for parents than there would be if Ofsted continued to inspect those institutions.

The suspicion is that this is driven by resources and that a pared-down Ofsted will have to focus on the weaker schools, but surely we owe it to all parents who send their children to the schools affected for Ofsted to have a continuing role in relation to those schools. To give an example from the National Health Service—I declare an interest as a consultant trainer in the NHS and as chair of a foundation trust—NHS trusts have gone through a similar process of regulation, both by the Care Quality Commission and by Monitor. If you achieve foundation trust status, Monitor does not just go away and not darken your door for six or 10 years. We are in a quarterly reporting mechanism and if we fail to meet the top four or five targets, the chair and chief executive can expect to be called in at any time to account for the problems. I do not understand why the Minister’s department is taking such a different approach than to other parts of the public sector. I fail to see how you can justify not having regular inspections for all schools.

I also have concerns about the nature of Clause 39. Why do the Government not specify which category of schools is to be exempt in the Bill? The Bill could be used by the Secretary of State to exempt academies, if he wanted to, or faith schools, if he wanted to, or free schools, if he wanted to. There are absolutely no guarantees that he will not do that in future. Finally, why is the order-making power negative? I would have thought that something as important as the exemption of categories of school from Ofsted inspections would, at the least, deserve to be treated as an affirmative order. I hope that the noble Lord will reflect on these points. It is clear that there is concern around the Committee on these issues, as there will be among parents unless the Government are prepared to reconsider this.