Education (Exemption from School Inspection) (England) Regulations 2012

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Lords Chamber

I do not know what my noble friend is going to do when it comes to deciding whether to press the Motion to a vote, but I feel very strongly about this.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I am surprised that this measure has come back as a statutory instrument, given our debate during the passage of the Bill. It is an ill advised piece of legislation. Like my noble friend who moved the Motion, I want to look at it on the strategic level and on points of detail.

The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, made a significant contribution because there has been agreement over the 30 years since her colleagues’ 1988 education Act that inspection constitutes an essential part of the infrastructure of education policy and it was the first time that I had heard any senior politician from any of the parties be so critical of inspection per se as part of the framework. If I follow the logic of what the noble Baroness said, I am left wondering why we are letting Ofsted into any school in the country. If Ofsted is so weak and if we should now start to question its role in the education service, it cannot be just for outstanding schools; it must be in respect of the schools for which we worry far more, which are the satisfactory and less-than-satisfactory schools in our education system. There was no logic in that.

I, for one, still believe that inspection has been an essential part of basic education policy for the past 30 years. Successive Governments have abided by this. The narrative goes something like: “We want to give more freedom to schools, to encourage them to innovate and take on local character, to trust them more and more, and we are more confident in doing that if there is an accountability mechanism at its core. The better the inspection framework and the better our testing and the publication of that data, the more successive Governments have felt that they could free up so much more of the education system”. I still abide by that. It has been a shared concern across the parties and I am really worried if Members on the Government Back Benches—and perhaps the Front Bench, from whom we will hear—begin to challenge that shared understanding that we have had for a number of years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, talked about a fall in standards in our schools over the past few years. I fundamentally disagree with her. That is not what I have seen, and I do not believe it describes what is going on in our schools. However, I do remember—because I taught in it—the school system before we had any inspection at all. I would not want to go back to that. The standard of education, the quality of teaching and the number of children being let down was far greater before we had this accountability framework, including inspection, than it ever has been since. That is my first point. Strategically, the Government are pushing freedom for individual schools. Logically, they have every reason to care more about the inspection framework and the accountability framework, rather than less. They are throwing it away.

My second strategic point, or point of policy and substance, is that if you read the Explanatory Memorandum—which I think was disingenuous in many ways—it says that allowing outstanding schools not to be inspected by Ofsted is a reward for good performance. We have spent years trying to persuade schools that being inspected by Ofsted is not a punishment. It is something that is good for schools and good for teaching, which they should accept. If being exempt from inspection is a reward for good performance, what does it say about those schools that we are asking Ofsted to go into more frequently? It must be that it is a punishment for underperformance.

If struggling schools see Ofsted inspections as a punishment, rather than as something that can be an essential step in improving their performance, that absolutely takes away all the progress that has been made over the past 20 years in trying to get a new generation of teachers to view Ofsted in a completely different light.

The second point the Explanatory Memorandum makes is about freeing up staff time. Ofsted inspection should not be taking up lots of classroom time. That is why we have moved to shorter notice for inspection and to inspectors being able to come in with two or three days’ notice. It is an admission by government that having Ofsted in your school wastes the time of teachers. Frankly, if we want to free up time, it ought to be for teachers who are teaching in schools that still have a long way to go, rather than in those that are outstanding.

The last point, of course, is saving money. If this is a money-saving measure, say so. Let it be. Let us talk about that, but let us not pretend that it is a decent educational measure.

In terms of local accountability, one of the things about Ofsted is that it gives a national framework for inspection, and it does not actually rely on local accountability. I want a system where the schools in the poorest areas are compared with the schools in the richest areas; the south with the north; the east with the west; the poor with the rich; the ethnic minorities with the affluent white. Unless we have a national inspection framework, we will never get that.

On details of policy, most of these points have been made, but I will make one more. The panoply of bureaucracy that is being built up as part of the risk assessment will take away any extra time or money that might have come Ofsted’s way. As the years go by, there will hopefully be more schools that receive outstanding Ofsted reports, go into that category and will have to be risk-assessed every year. We are assured that there is no trigger or tick box, so careful judgments about all these schools will have to be taken into account.

I will finish with two or three questions, some of which build on those which have already been asked. First, I want to pursue one of the questions outlined by my noble friend Lord Hunt. He asked whether schools will be reinspected. If in future Ofsted criteria change, will schools be inspected again or will they be allowed to be free for life from inspection against a set of criteria that is no longer being used?

Secondly, why are special schools not in this group? If we are going to exempt outstanding schools, then why are we not going to exempt special schools?

Thirdly, the Explanatory Memorandum talks about, I think, 60% of people who were in favour of a risk-based approach to inspection. I am in favour of a risk-based approach to inspection, but I am not in favour of this. Will the Minister let us know what the consultation report said about the number of people who were in favour of this particular recommendation?

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for raising this very important subject. I share many of her concerns, particularly the concerns raised by several noble Lords about the rapid changes in school quality and how we can be sure we get on top of that in good time and do not allow some of these children’s education, and their time in school, to be wasted.

In one particular aspect of our education, which is faith schools—we have heard about creationism—there has been a lot of concern in debates on education Bills in this House about how they work in practice. Many faith schools deliver great education to children, but they are a special complexity for this country, and there is therefore concern about how this regulation may be implemented in that regard.

I have sympathy with the Government’s position. I listened with great interest to what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, said. I was reminded of the experience in Finland, where there is no school inspection system. Finland's Minister of Education says:

“Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work, and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

Why are the data less reliable with those schools than they are with non-special schools? That has been the thrust of the Minister’s argument: that data are strong enough for us to be able to take this course of action. The data are the same for the special schools, so what is the problem?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

There are some harder judgments to make about some of the children who might typically be in special schools or pupil referrals. That is a fair point. Given the particular sensitivity about those schools we would prefer to proceed cautiously in that respect.

At bottom, this is an argument about trust, not just about trust in schools—and I am not seeking to make a political point—but about whether we feel that we can trust Ofsted to do its job. There is a difference of opinion between us over the meaning of “proportionate”. What the Government have been doing has been made possible by the great increase in information that we have encouraged, as well as by the further strengthening of risk assessment that has been put in place, partly as a result of concerns expressed by Members of this House. It is no more than a logical expansion of developments in recent years. I commend the steps that we have taken to the House.

Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I am glad to be able to contribute to this debate and congratulate my noble friend Lady Jones on bringing it to the Chamber. I do not think that anybody is going to speak against improving the well-being of children or meeting their personal and social needs. I shall wait to the end of the debate to see whether any noble Lord does—perhaps the Minister will. However, it is an area of contention, where there is genuine debate and some uneasiness about how we are progressing. The crucial thing is not to persuade the world, those in the educational system or politicians that those things are an important part of education; it is to try to understand why we do not do it very well and to overcome those barriers.

However, the world has moved on and we now have a better understanding of the consequences of not getting this right, which in some way increases our support for it. I shall refer to three areas, two of them being pretty obvious and the third being the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Layard. First, there is a body of knowledge about sex education, drugs education, physical education and physical well-being that needs to be given to young people. That comes under this area of learning. There is a set of skills and attitudes— resilience, teamwork, self-esteem and confidence—which children and young people need to develop if they are to do well in the world. We have come to accept during the past few years that schools have a role to play in that, because for some children all those things are developed at home. Some children would get all that knowledge and all those skills without going to school, but the truth is that many do not and everyone could contribute to good-quality education in that field. I accept the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester that, years ago, the church called it “character”; it was the same debate.

As my noble friend Lord Layard pointed out, we have become stuck because we have seen these things as competing forces—it has been an either/or. We have wanted either education for qualifications or a rounded education. We have pitted one against the other with terrible consequences when we come to evaluate our performance. What is new is the body of evidence and research that shows those approaches not as an either/or but as interdependent. If we can get social and emotional literacy right, children will improve their academic skills as well. More than that, we are now developing a pedagogy and ways of working in school that are beginning to lead to progress in how we teach SEL effectively in the way that we have been trying to make progress in how to teach literacy and numeracy effectively in years past. The pedagogy in this area is therefore slowly catching up. The more it catches up, the more powerful is the case for making it an integral part of what we would do.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Layard about the research coming out of America—Joseph Durlak and Roger Weissberg have done some excellent randomised control studies. I disagree with them slightly on the social, emotional, and academic learning programme. With the primary SEAL programme, the evidence about the effects of that sort of learning on academic attainment and well-being is far better.

This is a very important time. We have a choice: either build on these changes which are taking root and try to take what we can from them in delivering a good quality of education; or ignore those seeds that are shooting through. That is the crux of this debate. The Government of whom I was a member could be criticised for being top-heavy and too instructive, but we tried to put in place a structure on which these things could develop. Whether it was the PSHE programme, compulsory citizenship, SEAL, the sports partnerships, the creative partnerships or training teachers, it was a structure which allowed those things to flourish.

My great worry is this: I am seeing that structure decline and fall away. I do not think that this area of pedagogy and effective teaching is sufficiently strong to withstand that. The danger comes from two things that the Government are doing. First, if they hold true to their pledge to let teachers decide about curriculum and teaching methods, the risk is that this area of school activity is not well enough rooted to withstand that. Too many schools, often those which lack confidence or are in areas where children are disadvantaged and behind in basic skills, feel that they do not have time for these things. The second risk is that—even if the Government do not keep to their pledge, as seems likely, to leave it to schools to develop curriculum and pedagogy—the messages that they are giving are not about this area of teaching. I do not have much of a problem with poetry; I do not have much of a problem with literacy or numeracy; but I look at the utterances of Ministers and cannot find the speeches. I cannot see the press releases; I cannot read the leaked documents in the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail that talk about this area of the curriculum. Quite simply, schools and teachers get the message inadvertently—because I do not believe that the Government take this view—that it is not valued.

We are at a vital time where it is for the Government to help us make the decision on whether we build on this growing body of knowledge, understanding what we did not know 10 or 15 years ago, and put some support in there for us to do better, or we go backwards and turn our back on the progress that has been made.

I look for three things from the Minister: first, an acknowledgement of what the research is telling us and how the Government might build on it; secondly, a clear signal, which the Government may give in any way they wish, that this area of teaching is valued and that schools are expected to do it, with the impact that it can have right across the academic curriculum as well as in its own right being explained to them; and thirdly—and this is where I am most likely to disagree with the Minister—the Government should provide some sort of infrastructure. If they do not like the structure that we had, that is fine, but they need something, because all the evidence and all the experience of past years tells us that, when the going gets tough, this gets left out. It deserves better than that.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I have said before in this House that the most important thing for a student is the quality of the teacher—not the qualifications, necessarily, but the quality. There can be the best buildings, the best resources, but unless there is quality teaching, then that child will not be able to make the progress that they deserve. If you have poor teaching and a poor teacher, that child loses the year, and the year can never be repeated. It is lost for good.

Since I have come to this House, the one thing that has struck me in education debates is that in every speech and contribution I have heard, the child is at the centre. I have felt quite emotional, to be honest, about the care that has come to me from the comments that people have made. We had a debate on special educational needs, and I was absolutely stunned by the remarkable contributions from everybody in this House.

However, one thing said constantly in that debate was that it needs to be about training, and about understanding the child. You cannot just put anybody in and expect them to be able to teach, understand, and relate to the child. It has to be a whole package. That is not to say that everybody must be a qualified teacher. There are examples of people who have a natural gift for teaching but are not qualified. How do we make that system work? Well, we have a system presently that allows that to happen.

I speak from practical experience. At the tail end of the summer term, I had a situation in my school where a teacher left. Working in that classroom was a teaching assistant; an advanced, higher-level teaching assistant, who was—to use an expression—“stunning”. The pupils thought the world of him. Being a conscientious, thoughtful person, I checked with my local authority, which said, “Yes, as long as he has a higher-level qualification and you’re happy with him, he can take the class”, which he did for three weeks. He was fantastic. The children progressed. I have to say, I would rather have had him than—no, perhaps I should not say that. He progressed and did incredibly well. He was also supported by the school and other teachers, who were able to compensate for any areas in which he needed to develop. As a result of that, he has decided that he will not just be a higher-level teaching assistant; he will go on to be a teacher.

There are occasions when you can put people who do not have the formal qualifications in the classroom, and they can do a remarkable job. My noble friend Lady Benjamin constantly reminds me that pupils from the Caribbean often need a very different type of teacher, and that maybe the qualities that we currently have in our teaching profession are not always able to deal with those situations. That is dealt with, again, by encouraging teaching assistants who are working with teachers in the school environment.

When the Minister replies I hope he will deal with the questions that have been asked by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I also hope he will reflect on how we might combine both desires.

I do not have a problem with free schools. I remember the first free school, which was Scotland Road Free School in Liverpool in the 1960s. What I have a problem with is saying that you can have non-qualified teachers in an educational establishment. If free schools are to be successful, they cannot be seen to be on the margins. Parents will soon think, “Oh, these are inferior places. They haven’t got any qualified support in those schools”. They will not send their children to them once the initial idea has started.

I will make one further point. There are whole areas of teaching that, in a complex society and a modern world, people who work with children need to know about—safeguarding, for example. Are we saying that these adults who will teach in free schools will not have any training in safeguarding, or in the problems of special educational needs? The list goes on. We need to be absolutely sure that we get this right.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I also support this amendment, on which there is a fair degree of unanimity across the Chamber. My position is approximately the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. We do not want schools where everybody has the same qualification. Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have very much moved to having different qualifications in schools. Clearly, what we want is for someone to be qualified to do the job that we are asking them to do, and for people to know what they are qualified to do and what their training is. We have never had that in the past. We have been a one-qualification profession. We ought to be more like medicine and move away from that, to having a number of different qualifications.

We have a record of getting this right. The movement of bursars into the maintained sector has been hugely successful, as have the teaching assistants and higher-level teaching assistants to which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, just referred. Therefore, we are on a journey of trying to get this right. The issue that faces us now is: where do we go next? I should have thought that where we go next is to look at the evidence of what has worked so far, the skills that are needed in the school and what training is needed. I absolutely accept that there will be some individuals who have experiences and a skill set that teachers and head teachers will want to use in schools. Some of them, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, will be absolutely excellent in their field. They may have a skill set that teaching would go alongside.

There is a fair degree of unanimity across the Chamber over our vision of what we want schools to be like. Therefore, the question is whether the legislation that the Government are putting forward will arrive at that end. I do not think that it will. I cannot see why this big debate about how we get a qualified workforce—whatever the qualification may be—is being squashed into free schools. I would have thought the debate was bigger than yet another freedom that we can give to free schools. The debate is about the qualifications we need for all our schools, whether they be maintained schools, community academies or free schools. The Minister must address in his reply what this has to do with free schools. It has to do with all schools. I am not sure why he has cornered and corralled this debate into free schools. It is bigger than that.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am moving Amendment 76, which was tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, at his request. The amendment would delete Clause 39, which we have just been debating in respect of the government amendments. As we have heard, the clause amends the current requirement under Section 5 of the Education Act 2005 for the chief inspector to inspect and report on every school. The clause provides for certain schools to be exempt from such inspections in future, as we have heard, subject to necessary regulations being approved by Parliament. I recognise that exempt schools may still be subject to inspections as part of the chief inspector’s surveys of general subjects and thematic reviews, but I remain concerned, as does my noble friend Lord Hunt, that this still leaves a potential gap in the inspection regime.

According to the Government, the aim is to introduce greater proportionality to the inspection system for schools and, in particular, to reduce the inspections for outstanding schools. The concerns about this are for two principal reasons. First, the open-ended nature of the clause would allow the Secretary of State to exempt other categories of schools, such as academies or free schools. We all know that Ministers have either been in a state of denial or embarrassed when academies have not done well in their Ofsted inspections. No doubt we will see the same phenomenon with free schools. Will the Minister confirm that the Government have no intention of seeking to exempt academies and free schools en bloc from regular inspections in future?

My second objection is to the principle of exempting outstanding schools per se. This flies in the face of the Government's approach to regulation in other sectors and the evidence is that not all outstanding schools will remain so. Indeed, of the 1,155 schools that have been judged outstanding by Ofsted, on subsequent inspection over 30 per cent had a reduced grading, including 58 that went from the top grade of outstanding to the third grade of satisfactory. Given that, I find it difficult to understand why outstanding schools should be exempted. Perhaps it is because the Government do not want to fund Ofsted to do these extra inspections properly and this is simply a way in which to reduce the cost. If that is the case, I would be delighted if the Minister was frank enough with your Lordships to say so.

The Government apparently believe that risks can be reduced, because Ofsted will develop a risk assessment approach, including a basket of indicators that flag up concerns. We have heard described very well by my noble friend Lady Morgan the risk-based approach being undertaken by Ofsted but, because the data that will inform that approach are likely to be gathered a number of years after a school inspection, there is a real risk of a school deteriorating and students suffering for some time before any intervention on that basis is triggered. For example, I would be concerned about the impact of a free school being established in an area where an outstanding school has a catchment area, attracting children who would otherwise enrol into that school, however outstanding it may be, and causing a sudden deterioration just because of a loss of funds.

There are all sorts of scenarios that are not just around a change of leadership. I remind the Minister of the debate that we had on Monday around admissions, when I put it to him that the fundamentals to which the Government have to have regard in a free market-based system of school improvement such as that which they are adopting are fair funding, fair admissions and inspection as a form of accountability. He replied:

“These are the three principles that we need to uphold”.—[Official Report, 24/10/11; col. 642.]

So he agrees—and yet, as with admissions, he is watering down inspections in the context of moving to a more market-based schools system.

I am grateful to the Government for reflecting on the debate in Committee. As we have heard from the Minister, the Government are now proposing that any move to exempt a category of school will be subject to the affirmative procedure. That is welcome, but, of course, this House only very rarely rejects such legislation. This really is our only chance to decide whether or not we are happy with some schools being exempted from inspection, potentially for ever.

I have also noted the intention to trial the new approach in schools where a new head teacher has been appointed, and the Minister has made it clear that Ofsted will adjust the risk-assessment process so that at least 5 per cent of outstanding schools will be inspected each year. As far as it goes, this is welcome too, but it does not go far enough.

I would contrast, as has my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford, what the Minister is currently proposing in education with what is happening in other sectors. Let me refer him to the NHS, as she has done. This summer, the health regulator CQC announced it was replacing its light-touch style with an annual inspection of each NHS and independent sector provider. As the CQC says:

“When people’s lives and well-being are at stake, the public don’t want to hear about light-touch regulation.”

That philosophy should surely apply as much to education and the teaching of our children—to the life chances of children—as it does, perhaps, to our death chances in the NHS. What is so different about children that we do not want to regulate and inspect their education? Indeed, let us look at this in a commercial context. Would a big retailer such as Marks & Spencer not quality-assure its best stores as much as its underperforming stores? I put it to your Lordships that Marks & Spencer would quality-assure every retail outlet that it has.

I find it extraordinary that Mr Gove, the Secretary of State, is seeking to exempt outstanding schools when he was recently so critical of the methodology used by Ofsted to rate outstanding schools. Only five weeks ago, at the National College for School Leadership, he voiced this concern. Yet now his Minister in your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, is seeking to exempt the very same schools from regular inspections. The public and parents surely have a right to know whether standards are being maintained or not. If the inspection system is to retain its credibility, regular inspections are essential for all schools.

Finally, I would simply say to the Minister, who I am afraid was floundering around about why he needs to proceed with this exemption—he has had to compromise and come up with all the whys and wherefores in making this all right—would it not just be easier to drop this and give way to common sense and have all schools inspected? I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I shall start with what I think is going to be my only line of agreement with the Government on this. To take the attitude that intervention in schools should reflect the risk of schools doing badly, and to say that we should intervene less when schools are successful, is absolutely right. As my noble friend has just said, that is a principle that was followed by the previous Labour Government, so I am with the Minister on that. We should not be constantly going in to excellent schools and getting in the way of them doing an excellent job; that is an absolute principle.

The second absolute principle is that inspection should be universal for all our schools. Does the Minister really think that one visit every five years is going to be a big burden on outstanding schools? One visit by Ofsted inspectors every five years; that is what happens at the moment, that is what the data say.

The reason for drafting this clause perplexes me. I am trying to think what motivates it because, to be honest, I never thought that the Tories would go soft on inspection, and that is what they have done with this clause. They fought hard to put Ofsted in the legislation, they fought hard to put it into schools, they have argued the case with head teachers and teachers, almost all of whom were opposed to inspection when it first started, and the Labour Government did the same. The political parties have been on the same side on this; we have thought that inspection was a necessary part of raising standards. So I am absolutely perplexed why the Tories, of all parties, should go back on this now. This is a principle, and you would have to come forward with some absolutely outstanding reasons why this principle should be broken. That principle is that in a devolved system, more than ever, every school should be inspected. Every parent has the right to know that the school which their child attends should be inspected. Every child should have a right to be reassured that the school which they attend should be inspected. That is an inalienable right and should be a fundamental structure of our school system.

The second question is: is doing that once every five years a terrible burden on schools? I do not think it is. To some extent, that is where the argument finishes. If you believe that those rights should not be given to parents and teachers, vote against this amendment. If you really believe that one inspection every five years is a terrible burden—do not forget that some children will have gone almost right the way through a secondary school in that time while there has never been an inspection, as they will have started in year 7 and might leave in year 11—then vote against this amendment.

I am going to be really helpful to the Minister here. I am going to warn him not to get into a position that I know I got into when I was a Minister. It is a great ministerial habit when you come up with an idea. Listening to the debate, I have to say that when the Minister responded to my friend Lady Hughes on the previous amendment it was the most troubled that I have heard him in the whole consideration of this Bill. I did not believe that he had convinced himself, let alone the House. What is happening now is that the Government have a policy but they are, in honesty, persuaded by the arguments against it. Rather than withdrawing that policy, they are seeking to put plaster in the holes and rearranging the bricks: “Well, let’s have greater risk assessment. Let's talk to the heads when they are new. Let’s do this, that or the other”. I can tell your Lordships that that is how the camel was invented, rather than the horse.

I remember when we ourselves got into exactly that position. You do not want to backtrack, because this is politics, so you start trying to plaster up the cracks. But what you end up with is so disastrous that in two years’ time you are asking, “Why weren’t we just brave enough to say that we got that wrong”?. I say to the Minister that he is at that point now. He should take a deep breath and protect himself from having to come to your Lordships’ House in two years’ time to answer many questions and queries about an inspection system that clearly will not work.

I have two more points to make. I really worry that the Minister may have constructed a terrible bureaucratic tangle in order to get out of the political difficulty that he is in. He will now have an army of Ofsted inspectors doing more risk assessments. They will have to weigh and measure the schools and collect the data. Now they will have to go and talk to every new head when he or she is appointed to a school—perhaps the Minister could tell us how many interviews that is going to be in a year—just to check their plans for that school. The Government would not have to do that if they backed this amendment. From the schools’ point of view, we are meant to be freeing them from this terrible burden of one inspection every five years, but what is the Minister putting in its place? He is making them provide more data. He has the local authority checking on them, so that it can refer back to Ofsted. He has the new heads having to talk to Ofsted and he has a third of them having to be inspected every five years. They will not know where they stand. I can assure the Minister that it would be easier for them and less of a burden if he would just say, “Once every five years, and that’s it”.

My last point is this, and to some extent it is the most important point for me. From the point of view of the Ofsted inspectors, it is crucial that they measure the standards of every single school in this country by the performance of the best. That is absolutely central to effective Ofsted inspection. If you say to your average Ofsted inspector—not the ones doing the one-off thematic reviews—who spends their time going into schools, “Thou shalt not be seeing any outstanding schools”, how do they know what outstanding looks like? When they go to the satisfactory school, it might be the best that they have seen for six months and they might think that that is outstanding. To help the Ofsted inspectors, it is crucial that, as part of their job, they see outstanding schools as part of their regular inspections.

To be helpful to the Minister, I think I know why he, or his colleagues—I am sure that it was his colleagues and not him—came up with this terrible idea: it is this idea of having a long list of freedoms which you can grant to schools to prove that the policy of granting freedoms to schools works. We saw it in the debate on admissions on Monday and we have seen it today. These are wrong freedoms, because they are freedoms that answer the political drive of the Government and they stand in the way of raising standards. This is the moment when the decision is made: go on and the camel will have several extra humps in two years’ time, I promise the Minister that. I passionately support this amendment, more than anything else in the Bill, and hope that noble Lords, having listened to this debate will vote to preserve universal inspection. I praise the Tories for bringing it in in 1988; I think it would be terrible if they voted to get rid of it now.

[Lord Quirk]

While the Minister is taking the deep breath that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has urged upon him, may I give him an extra couple of minutes of breathing time by saying what a difficult job he is going to have in offsetting the arguments presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight? Surely it is the outstanding schools that need to be inspected in order to have reports coming out showing what can be done in state sector, mainstream schools. Once every five years is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, nothing compared to the extra bureaucracy which we are threatened with in some kind of compensation for this. I hope that the Minister will bow to the wisdom that has been cast before him this afternoon.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I see that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is exercised by his inability to define what a parent’s responsibilities are. Along the same lines, he is looking for us to define what “fair access” is tonight.

I would like to speak to my Amendment 70 in this group. It is identical, I think, to the one that I tabled in Grand Committee when I raised this issue. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, said, we are making some changes in this legislation to the powers of the adjudicator. I was concerned that, since the adjudicator cannot look at wider issues but only at the complaints put before him or her, there was nobody who could take a view across the piece and see whether injustices were arising in different places in the country. Indeed, if one could see a pattern emerging, somebody ought to do something about it.

I followed up our debates in Grand Committee by raising the issue with the Secretary of State. I pointed out that we on these Benches do not usually want to give additional powers to the Secretary of State, but in this case we thought that it was necessary, partly because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said, the schools landscape is becoming more and more complex and diverse and many schools are now their own admissions authorities. So I am pleased to say that, along with my noble friend the Minister, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is of the view, as I understand it, that he already has these powers and duties. The only reason I tabled my amendment again was to give my noble friend the opportunity to put it on the record under which statutes the Secretary of State already has these duties. If that is perfectly clear, I see no reason to press my amendment.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the amendments and I, too, look forward to the Minister’s reply. I learnt last week that I cannot speak after him, so I may as well speak now in anticipation of what he might say.

I think that this is a really tricky issue. My noble friend was right to say that if more schools are becoming their own admissions authorities, that is when the problem sets in. The system can just about cope with one or two schools being their own admissions authorities, but, to recall a bit of history, the reason why the legislation that is now being repealed and changed got on the statute book in the first place was that some London boroughs were already in a position, mainly through the predominance of church schools, to make their own admissions arrangements. The sort of situation that my noble friend described of some children always missing out on the oversubscription criteria, through no fault of their own, is not something that he imagined; it actually happened in some of the London boroughs. That is why what I can see might look like a fairly complicated system of controlling admissions came about. It could be even worse if we move to a situation where nearly every school is its own admissions authority.

I have two or three points on this. I do not speak for my party on this because I know that this is not my party’s position but, frankly, I have never seen why being your own admissions authority is a freedom that one should have. Heads need freedom to run their schools but not to select the students who should go through the gates and enrol on the register in the first place. That has always been my view, even when my party was in power. Maybe one could live with it then because there were not as many schools with their own admissions arrangements, but I really cannot see the point of it. I cannot see what advantage there is to a child or a child’s parent.

The reason why this is so important is that we all know the trauma that some parents and children go through when unable to secure an appropriate place at the age of 11. We have all seen children whose start at secondary school is blighted by the fact that they did not get the place that they wanted. We have to live with that; life is not fair and not everyone can have their first choice. Imagine this, though: we create a situation where some child gets to the age of 11 and cannot get a suitable place because they do not fit the rules. That is not the same thing as not getting your first choice. No one wants you, and you end up getting your fifth or sixth choice, all because of this contradictory oversubscription criterion.

I come to the same conclusion as others, despite my relatively strong views on this. I do not say that this is a freedom that schools ought to be granted but, if I accept for a moment that that is to happen, I honestly cannot see how the system will work unless there is a referee in the middle putting down some ground rules. The amendments, containing an overarching duty to ensure fair access, are right.

My last point is this. Let us be clear: schools will play these rules for all they are worth. All the history of schools being their own admissions authorities shows that some of them—not all, but a good number—will seek to admit the children who they want to admit, and they are not usually the poor, the dispossessed and those who do not like turning up to school. I am not just making this up. There is no greater advocate or defender of teachers than me in almost all ways but all the evidence shows that, when the admissions arrangements can be controlled, the schools tend to do so in the schools’ favour and not in the pupils’ favour. We are not on a level playing field here. Schools will not play fair without some overriding principle, and the one that is in the amendment would suit the purpose very well. I support it.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, in some ways there is not much more to add, but I want to reinforce this point. I understand and have sympathy with a model of school system improvement that builds on the international evidence by the likes of Michael Barber, through his work at McKinsey and elsewhere, on the importance of school autonomy, even if it is autonomy collaborating with others, as part of driving forward school improvement. If you go for that big time, as this Government have done with the rapid expansion of autonomous schooling through academies and free schools, there are certain fundamentals that we have to be clear about the Government retaining responsibility for.

I suggest that the core functions that the Secretary of State has to hang on to and be held accountable for in this Palace are fair funding, fair admissions and objective inspection. We can argue about some of the other stuff, such as how much of a curriculum there should be and the teaching of history in school—we debate that beautifully and with much erudition. At the core, though, it is those three things that the Government should be concerned about in order to ensure that the operation of the market, which is almost what autonomous schools become, does not disadvantage those who are least articulate, least advantaged and least able to help themselves. It is a struggle for the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, to define fairness in this context but for me fairness is ensuring that no child or family is disadvantaged by who they are, where they live and what their income is, and that they have equal opportunity to access good schooling.

As has been said, the growth of autonomy leads to growth in the number of schools that are their own admissions authorities. I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lady Morris; some co-ordination by local authorities in administering admissions makes it much easier for parents. However, I recall that in my day it was the schools, rather than the local authorities that were admissions authorities, that were most likely to fall foul of the admissions code. I do not think that it was anything to do with the fact that they were largely faith schools or with their faith foundation; it was the fact that they were their own admissions authorities. Some aspects of the code were quite complex and they did not have the expertise in-house or within the school to ensure that they were compliant with the code. We found some gross non-compliance with the code, which is why things were toughened up.

In many ways, I do not have a problem with the Government’s code. What I have a problem with is ensuring that there is proper regulation of the code, with teeth. To remove the admissions adjudicator’s ability to direct schools and the adjudicator’s power to look at the admissions arrangements is to remove teeth. The Government are still unable to answer this through their amendments which we will discuss later. The code has to be independent to protect the Government from charges of political interference, because sometimes these issues become quite political at a local level and Members of Parliament are asked to be involved.

This amendment is the minimum that the Government could get away with. If they are not minded to accept this amendment, we should think again about introducing something tougher at Third Reading and, if we need to, restoring some of the adjudicator’s powers.

--- Later in debate ---

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, was concerned about situations where more schools become their own admission authority. As she said, that is the case in some localities. However, it is also the case that all academies have to abide by the code, which requires fairness. It is based on a principle of fair access, with particular safeguards for looked-after children and children with SEN and disabilities. We are allowing complaints against academies to go to the adjudicator for the first time. Local authorities have a duty to co-ordinate all admissions to state-funded schools in their area, which includes the provision of information and advice to parents to help them choose the right school for their child. They have oversight of all admission arrangements in their area and they have not just a power but a duty to refer any arrangements that they suspect may be unfair to the adjudicator.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

I see that the Minister is trying to be helpful and I entirely accept what he said about the Secretary of State having powers to take action to ensure that a school’s admission arrangements are fair. I accept that and I think that the Minister has made that point on a number of occasions. However, the problem arises as regards co-ordinating different schools with different oversubscription criteria. In a local authority area each school could be applying the admissions criteria fairly but a child could still be unfairly ignored by the system because of the way in which each of the separate rules apply to him. In that case, who has the power to go in and sort it out?

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I rise to support these amendments, in particular those mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. The whole business of giving advice to children early is, frankly, crucial—and it is not just advice, but a rather wider range of intelligence about the world in which they are going to emerge. I recall my experience in the early days at the Equal Opportunities Commission when girls’ schools were not very good at giving the full range of possibilities, not least the range of likely earnings in particular careers. I think that some degree of inheritance remains that probably needs coping with. I would particularly want to target girls’ schools in this respect. I notice that they have not really been mentioned in any of the briefings.

The country’s need for skills at a particular time needs stressing. After all, those are the areas where you are likely to get jobs, although, frankly, it is not going to be easy in these economic conditions, whatever your age is. I have another worry about this whole area. Although I appreciate this business of wanting to give as much discretion as possible to local government in how it distributes its resources, it is important to see that some degree of uniformity is continued. Yet UNISON, having done its research, says that, of the 144 local authorities, only 15 are likely to maintain substantially what they are doing at the moment. There seem to be cutbacks everywhere. I, too, welcome the letter from the Minister of 20 October, in which he set out very clearly the Government’s aims, particularly for those with special needs, for whom there must be a very early introduction to the kind of possibilities that are available. Indeed, a great deal of encouragement still needs to be given to employers to provide the flexibility that is going to be required in many of the job and skills opportunities for the future.

I think that is enough from me, but I certainly think that we are going in the right direction in many of the amendments that have already been tabled and accepted by the Minister.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments put forward by my noble friend Lady Jones and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I think there is agreement across the House about the importance of the careers advice and guidance service. It has always been important, but never more so than now, when the world is very complicated. The more you give young people choice, the more you have an obligation to assist them in making effective choices. That is just the world in which we live.

A lot has been said about giving impartial information and advice. I agree entirely. I know that, certainly in the past, some schools and colleges who had a vested interest in keeping young people have not acted as professionally as they ought to have done in that matter. I am absolutely on board about that. However, we have spoken less about how young people make decisions. For me, that is one of the most important things. My experience tells me that giving young people accurate information does not mean that they will make a wise decision. I accept, in this age, and especially with young people and their ability to deal online with information, that we could indeed get a system where the facts of the case—accurate information about the options available to them— could be effectively delivered online. What you cannot do online is work with a young person to make the appropriate decision for them. That bringing together of their attributes, their aspirations, their strengths and their weaknesses and matching them to the information that you have is the essence of guidance and of counselling. I do not see that in either the legislation or the extra information that the Minister has offered.

If truth be told, I do not think that the careers guidance service has ever been as strong as it ought to be. I think it has always struggled to have its voice heard alongside the voice of quite powerful and strong heads over many years. It has always struggled to get in there with schools and hold its own. When I was a teacher, I remember very many caring teachers who did their best and acted professionally to work with young people and help them reach the right conclusion for themselves. To be truthful, when the careers guidance officers came into school and worked face-to-face with these young people, the quality of work that was done was seismically different from what was done with even the best teachers. Working with people, not just to give them information but to help them reach an effective decision, is a skilled job. I do not see how it can be done other than face-to-face, and I worry about it being done by someone without an appropriate qualification. For those reasons, I support the amendments.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply. We would all agree with some of her opening remarks that there is strong public support for good behaviour in schools. We all know that that helps children to learn. However, I do not accept there is strong public support for this particular measure and like the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I, too, did some research over the summer with some ordinary parents and I had exactly the same responses as the noble Baroness.

The Minister said that schools must do this in a way which is most appropriate for the pupils with whom they are dealing. Where does it say that? It certainly does not say it in the legislation. It must say it, or something like it, in the guidance. My noble friend carefully went through the other duties that schools have to safeguard children, which have been laid into other statutes. I accept all that. Punishments have to be proportionate and reasonable and travel arrangements have to be considered. They are already there, but the question for a teacher looking at the guidance is: where are they? The guidance needs to have these duties clearly spelt out on the same page where a teacher is being told what they can do under this new law. It needs to be very clear.

I often wonder where this idea came from. My noble friend the Minister has told us that it came from the ASCL. Why does the ASCL have such influence over this Government? The other head teachers’ union does not have the same influence and other ordinary teachers’ unions do not. I am afraid I have a nasty suspicion that this bit of the Bill seeks to enable legislation to catch up with practice, and that some schools are following this practice without giving 24 hours’ notice. I accept that notes in satchels do not always get to parents and that the current requirement for 24 hours’ written notice often does not reach the parent and the parent is not notified. We are asking for something better than that. We are suggesting a way of ensuring that the parent is informed to enable them to make other arrangements for the child to get home safely, if possible. If they are not able to do so, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, because they do not have a car and an alternative bus is not available, they can make the school aware that there could be a safeguarding problem if the child is kept in. It is then up to the school under the other duties that my noble friend has outlined to punish the child at a different time.

My noble friend suggested that some unco-operative parents may fail to answer the phone and let the message be recorded on the answerphone. I do not think that these parents have a crystal ball. When the phone rings, they cannot possibly know that it is the school ringing up to say that little Johnny will be kept in after school that day. That is stretching things beyond reality.

I am delighted that my noble friend has accepted that there is scope for strengthening the guidance. I was very pleased to hear that. She made it very clear on the record from the Dispatch Box that teachers should not do anything that compromises the safeguarding of the child. That gives me comfort. If we can work together to ensure that that is made crystal clear in the guidance, I will not feel that I need to return to this at a later stage. Can my noble friend nod and affirm that we can do that work and get the guidance to say something of that nature? It is vital that we help teachers to make good decisions about when to use this weapon in their armoury.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

Before the noble Baroness concludes, will she also reflect that essentially what we are setting in place is a two-tier style of punishment? If you think of it from the teacher’s point of view, what is underpinning this is that a detention on the same day as the crime that has been committed is more effective because it is closer in time to that crime. We will now have schools with two groups of pupils—those pupils who are eligible to receive that punishment and those who are not.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I apologise to the noble Baroness but I am double tasking as a government spokesman and a Whip today. The rules at Report state that a noble Lord may not come back after the Minister has spoken.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I support these amendments, but I am bound to say it is with a heavy heart. I will explain why. I have been involved with education, educational philosophy and research into education for more than 50 years. When I think about what I believed when I started out, I realise that I must have been hopelessly naive. If I had been asked what the nature of a school was, I would have said that it was a place where people went to learn and teach, where values were developed and where one’s life was enhanced. Central to that were the teachers themselves. All of us know the difference that they have made to our lives. When I consider this group of amendments, I am forced to ask myself what has happened to our society. This section of the Bill, headed “Discipline”, could have been written for a prison or a concentration camp—but it is written for a school. It is also simply a repair job: at best, an Elastoplast. It does not solve any fundamental problems whatever.

I believe strongly that my noble friend's amendments do improve matters. They certainly make the Bill much more sensible and deal at least to some degree with the role of the teacher and the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. However, the fact remains that what is stated totally changes what some of us feel the teacher/pupil relationship should be. I do not believe for one minute that the Minister will accept the amendments, but it would be right to do so. It would certainly be right to test the opinion of the House on these matters. Some day, despite Governments of all parties kicking and screaming about these things, we will have to face up to the problem of social improvement and ask what has happened to our way of life and whether there is anything we can do about it.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments—in particular Amendment 10 —and to say how much I welcomed the words of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. In a strange way, I do not think that there is a difference of purpose across the House about what we want to achieve. We understand the importance of good discipline in schools and we want to equip teachers to be able to secure that discipline in their classrooms, and for head teachers to lead in that. There is no difference of opinion here. We are talking about the necessary safeguards that need to go alongside it in an area as crucial as physical contact and search.

I remind Members of the House how we have already come unstuck on this in a different context, 10 or 15 years ago. There is confusion among teachers in schools about touching children at all—even about putting their arm around a child's shoulder to comfort them, patting them on the head to say well done, or acting in a human way towards children, however small they are and whatever their needs. We politicians know that what teachers think is the case is not the case in law and has never been the intention of Governments of any party. I remarked in Committee on the Bill that the Minister was sending out further guidance on the circumstances in which teachers could appropriately touch a child. It sounded just like the guidance that I sent out 10 years ago—and it will probably be just as ineffective. The lesson we learn from this is that once practice is embedded in a school and a set of things is believed by teachers, it is very difficult to shift it. What you cannot do in an area such as this is to set it in motion and then try to back-track at a future date. The guidance, the intention, the parameters and all those things have to go out clearly with the initial message, otherwise teachers get fearful and do not know what is expected of them and the law becomes confused. That is why when I look again at Amendment 10 in the light of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, I see it as letting the Government stick to their wish to empower teachers to keep discipline. It has regard to the necessary safeguards for children, but does not make the mistake we made by not adding the clarity that we need at this early stage when we are giving teachers new powers. The Minister may reflect on that in his response.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have listened to this debate with mounting unease, concern and sadness. It is just over 50 years since as a young graduate schoolmaster I began to teach in a school. I listened with great interest and considerable sympathy to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, a few minutes ago. What has happened over those 50 years is that we have seen the destruction of childhood innocence and an erosion of trust. We have seen a situation where normal and reasonable behaviour—to take up another point that was made earlier—has to be legislated for. It is a very sad day. I do not know exactly what the solution is, but we must reintroduce trust into our lives at all levels, if we possibly can. We have got to be able to trust parents and those who teach. The way in which those who teach have been deprived of virtually all sanctions and all powers to discipline children is something the Government are seeking to address in the Bill, as their predecessors sought, very reasonably, to address it.

We have reached a very sorry state when we have to legislate for searches and decide when they are permissible and when not. I have one overriding feeling here. It is that if legislation seeks to prescribe and proscribe in too great detail we are continuing on a very slippery slope. I have great sympathy with the Minister’s desire to have notes of guidance to give advice, but at the end of the day we must be able to trust head teachers in schools to orchestrate discipline within those schools and to know what it is proper for children to bring to school, how they should be dressed and how they should address those who teach them, because the absence of any form of respect in many schools is at the root of the problems within those schools. Let us move towards a situation where in all schools, as in some that we have read about recently—sink schools that have been rescued and become beacon schools—we really trust those who are in charge to behave normally and reasonably, and have the expectation that those they teach will behave normally and reasonably and that the parents do likewise.

Just to take up one point that has been alluded to, I do not believe that any child of any age should be allowed to have a mobile phone in his or her possession during school hours. It may be necessary to have possession of a phone as a means of communication outside because of transport and all the rest of it, but they should leave it in a secure place—a locker—when they get to school and remove it when they go, but not be allowed to have it in school. It is entirely permissible to examine those instruments if there is reasonable ground to suppose that they are being misused in the way to which the noble Baroness referred a few moments ago.

I close my random remarks, which I was not intending to make but felt provoked into making, by saying that unless we can reintroduce trust and recreate a climate where childhood innocence is regarded as a precious commodity, we are not going to achieve what I think in all parts of the House we want to achieve.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend Lord Storey said about the importance of a high-quality professional teaching workforce. As the noble Baroness said, in some of our earlier debates in Committee we have talked about some of the Government’s plans for improving teacher quality such as raising the bar for entrants to ITT, strengthening performance management arrangements, our proposals for teaching schools and the expansion of Teach First, which the previous Government introduced and to which I shall come back in a moment.

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for mentioning continuing professional training. I agree with him and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, about the importance of that. We have also asked the Coates review to revise and improve the standards that underpin QTS, and we have announced that we will adopt the clearer and more focused standards recommended by the review. Therefore, we are not talking about some wholesale move away from a commitment to the highest possible standards. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, we require academies to employ teachers with QTS through their funding agreements. The decision not to require QTS for all staff in free schools is simply intended to allow the possibility of greater innovation at the edges of the maintained sector. We have done this because we are keen to give free schools the ability to recruit experienced teachers who might have a background in FE, the higher education sectors, the independent sector or in other walks of life, who can bring their wider experience to bear in the classroom. It may be a way of getting—I have seen this in a school where I was a governor—a brilliant mathematician with a brilliant degree into teaching more speedily when there is a desperate need. It may be a way—this point was raised by my noble friend Lord Storey—of getting people from the Armed Forces, who might be able to engage particularly well with teenage boys. There are practical cases at the margins where this extra flexibility might help.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will recall, during the passage of the Academies Act we made commitments to ensure that additional safeguards are in place for vulnerable groups regardless of the type of school they attend. The free school funding agreement requires free schools to appoint a special educational needs co-ordinator and a designated teacher with responsibility for children in care, who hold qualified teacher status.

My next point links with the more general point made by the right reverend Prelate. Free school applications have to undergo a rigorous assessment process and have to demonstrate how they intend to deliver the highest quality of teaching and learning. However, as he argued, more generally they will be directly accountable to their parent and pupil bodies for the quality of education provided. Clearly, they will want to provide the highest quality education both in order to be approved and to continue to succeed. Like other academies and state-funded schools, they will be required to collect performance data and publish their results, and they will be inspected by Ofsted under the same framework that applies to all publicly funded schools, including on safeguarding. As free schools are intended to respond to parental demand for change in local education provision, it will be incumbent on free school academy trusts to ensure that their teaching staff are properly equipped to deliver their particular educational vision.

The core of the Government’s argument is that all Governments seek to innovate. The previous Government took the decision to set up Teach First, which is an innovation I applaud; it was intended to bring about more flexible entry into the profession. I am sure that at the time there were some people who argued that this was a dangerous innovation, and I am glad to say that the previous Government persevered with it. We see this as being no different. It is a modest innovation, it is a permissive measure, and it is subject to the strict accountability measures that I have set out. I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, with respect, I am not convinced by the Minister’s arguments. I agree with people who have said that there is room for people without qualified teacher status in the classroom. They can bring a lot to the school and they have a set of experiences and often a set of qualifications that are not QTS, but which lend themselves to effective and imaginative teaching. I am pretty sure that that provision is in the 2002 Act, but I could be wrong. So we have that flexibility.

This measure causes me some difficulty, and that is why I wanted to wait until the Minister had spoken. Given that that exists already, and that probably everybody here could cite examples of people without QTS who are effectively teaching in schools—we have had a lot of examples already—what is going to change? This is primary legislation we are talking about. It is not sufficient to say that this measure allows something at the edges, a fraying of the boundaries, a bit of give and take. With respect, that is not good enough for primary legislation. It is about laying down what is allowed and what is not allowed.

Secondly, if this really is not much—if it is just a bit more blurring of the edges, on top of the blurring of the edges that was set up in 2002—why free schools? Is the Minister saying that these people have nothing to offer to academies, have nothing to offer to maintained schools? Let us just think about it. We could have an example—let me be kind—of a brilliant person with suitable non-teaching qualifications who wants to and is willing to teach this nation’s children. The only place they could do that is a free school. Why should the Government stop children in 99.9 per cent of the system being able to benefit from that teacher’s experience?

I think the Minister is caught between two extremes. Either it is nothing, so put it everywhere—just say. One way might be to produce an edict saying, “Remember that there are people other than those with QTS who can work alongside those with QTS and good leaders in our schools, and we welcome you and please populate our schools”. Or it really is a shift in the law that is going to draw the boundary in a different place in terms of the qualifications that teachers need. If it is the latter, with respect again, we need more than we have had so far about where those boundaries will be drawn. Saying that it is a bit of fraying it at the edges, a bit of give and take is not really good enough for primary legislation.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, at a seminar in Birmingham recently, many parents from the black community were in favour of an alternative system of education, because they felt that schools were failing their children. They favoured free schools because, as I said, they felt that the present system was failing their children. They wanted education to strengthen their children’s identity, and found that sometimes that comes from individuals who can assist the teachers in the classroom by giving them support. So unless the teaching curriculum changes and reflects the needs of these children, we might need to have unqualified teachers in the classroom.

I know of one particular unqualified teacher who already helps to teach in the classroom. She says that she has made a great difference to the children’s lives, giving them confidence and self-esteem, especially young black Caribbean boys. She says that she has had all the checks and has had everything done in terms of training and child protection. So in some cases like these we need to consider having unqualified teachers in the free schools, because there are lots of black communities out there begging for this to happen, for we feel that we are failing our children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I think that we should take the opportunity of the freedoms afforded by the move to an academy education to explore ways in which we can reach some parts of the education system that have been left fallow by the current rather less imaginative arrangements. I am thinking of some elements of home education that would benefit very much from having partial access to school. I am thinking of prisoners and Travellers and I am thinking of others who, for one reason or another, find it hard to attend a mainstream school on a standard basis.

There are such schools around. There are schools that are purely internet based. I am thinking of InterHigh, but there are certain others. There are schools in the state system, including one recent free school which is prepared to make arrangements with local home schools so that pupils can attend school some days a week. As far as I know there is nothing along these lines in prisons and young offender institutions, but it would be a very good innovation to start getting real schools into those institutions and allowing pupils to interact with real schooling rather than the cut-down version provided in prisons. Indeed it would allow them to continue being educated at the schools they have left behind, if that were appropriate.

Travellers could get into a situation where they could have a relationship with one school rather than having to switch school every time they move site. There is no reason why these people cannot be visited and looked after. The Travellers Education Service does a very good job and there is no reason why that cannot continue in terms of human contact. Allowing academies to explore ways in which they can look after these rather low volume and eccentric demands provides a way for small rural schools to flourish. That has been the motivation, by and large, for looking after home schoolers. It allows small rural schools to draw in a rather wider, larger number of people, to address a local need on a more widespread basis, and to allow village schools to continue, whereas otherwise they might not.

This is the sort of freedom that we should be encouraging and of which we should take advantage. We should never lose sight of the need for quality and proper control, but we should take advantage of the liberties we are looking at in terms of academies, to address these small but, none the less, interesting and worthwhile problems. I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, this is an interesting amendment. It is certainly worthy of discussion and perhaps of support when the vote comes at some later point.

I have a couple of questions. Why only academies? I think that this is quite interesting for all schools and I am not sure why the amendment should restrict it to academies. My feeling is that there are initiatives like this already. I can think of an online school based in Birmingham, and I think in other areas, where children who have been excluded from school or just do not turn up—the school refuses to take them—are now educated online and are not based in school. If my memory serves me right, the legislation on Travellers means that children can stay on a school’s register even when they are travelling, and the Travellers Education Service would then aim to keep in touch with them.

My point is really that the beginnings of this are already happening, and this has been precipitated by the advances in information technology which have helped a great deal. I have no problem with a debate that furthers that. You need very strong boundaries so that children are not denied opportunities by somebody who does not have their best welfare at heart, and that would have to be discussed.

For the purpose of this debate, I invite the noble Lord, when he responds—or he may want to intervene now—to explain why he would restrict this to academies and not to any school in the system.

[Lord Lucas]

Just to fit in with the Bill.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

It seems that we have two sets of legislation, one for academies and one for everyone else. Such duplication is probably the biggest cause of further legislation than anything else. We duplicate everything. In this case we have one set of legislation for academies and one for the community schools. If we go ahead with this, we shall follow the Government’s normal practice of duplicating legislation at the appropriate point. That seems to me an absolute waste of time, but that is another issue.

[Lord Elton]

I warmly endorse my noble friend’s idea. The measure could be extremely fruitful, particularly given the circumstances of Travellers, to whom reference has already been made, but for many others as well. However, it is likely to miss the trend of this Bill, unfortunately, as it is not sufficiently involved. Therefore, I hope that he will take the opportunity between now and Report to provide an order-making power for the provisions that may need to be made; for instance, for examinations, which students cannot undertake at a distance unless they are supervised at some central point, in a way that, for instance, the City & Guilds is accustomed to organising. I hope that the Minister will have an open mind on this and that the amendment that eventually emerges will facilitate the development of this measure before we reach Third Reading.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas has spoken persuasively on this occasion of the merits of cyberlearning. We thank him for sharing that range of evidence and experience with the Committee. There is no doubt that this is an area of growing relevance, importance and potential. I am pleased to say that academies already have significant freedom about how they organise the education they deliver to best meet the needs of their students. This includes the use of distance and online learning where that is appropriate. Indeed, I understand that schools in this country increasingly provide services of this kind to deliver greater choice of subjects and teaching methods for pupils. That is clearly a good thing. It can also clearly be valuable for online teaching services to be available for pupils who are unable to attend school regularly, such as those groups which my noble friend Lord Lucas and Lady Walmsley have mentioned, which would, of course, include Gypsy and Traveller pupils, whom we discussed earlier this week, those who have been excluded or those in hospital, young offender institutions or prisons. Again, academies already have the freedom to provide such services for their pupils and maintained schools will have similar freedoms to do so. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that these freedoms will be available for maintained schools as well as academies.

We think that the noble Lord’s amendment goes a little too far in providing for the absence of a teacher. We think that the role of the teacher is crucial to the quality of provision to ensure coherence of the overall educational experience for the pupil. There remains an important role for an experienced professional and for a personal relationship between teacher and pupil. In the Government’s view, distance education of the kind described in the amendment, without the presence of a teacher at any time, represents a risk to pupil outcomes and educational experience.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

On a point of clarification, and drawing together two debates that we have had this evening, if a school were to open as a free school, would that not mean that it would not need a teacher?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Free schools still need teachers.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

Not qualified teachers.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

No, but they still need teachers. You are quite right: they do not need qualified teachers, but they need teachers who help to communicate and teach subjects to pupils.

In conclusion, we believe that much of what my noble friend intends is already possible and is already happening. To the extent that it is not, I would ask him to recognise the value that a good teacher can add to the educational experience of a pupil. We recognise that there is a growing place for technology, alternative teaching and learning provisions. Many of us will remember, with gratitude, the impact of inspirational teachers during our own education and the difference that that personal motivation and contact made to our enthusiasm about learning. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend has been reassured that those freedoms already exist and that we may not need to return to this on Report. Therefore, I urge him to withdraw his amendment.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. We have seen a great change in the training of teachers in recent years. In the past, teachers typically were trained for three years to their bachelor educational degree, which was a good long grounding. We have seen that period reduced to one year, and more and more teachers are being trained on the job. I welcome the move to more classroom-based learning for teachers but we have to be sure that it is right. There is a risk to that strategy and I look for reassurance from the Minister that teachers will be getting an understanding of SEN in that training. Perhaps I may make a further comment—we should not forget that more and more classroom assistants are those who work one-to-one with children with SEN. They too need the high-quality training.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a brief comment and ask a question. I have some sympathy with the amendment. When I first saw it I thought that it was perhaps overprescriptive, but having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Low, I have sympathy with it. Throughout the proceedings on the Bill we have understandably heard a lot from the Government about not putting heavy regulatory burdens on schools. Given that that is the direction in which we are going, it is obvious that at some point in the system there should be a fair amount of regulation—otherwise the system collapses and no-one would know what is going on. My understanding from the teaching schools—of which I am a great supporter and I hope that they do very well—is that this is one of those areas where the Government have accepted that there will have to be a lot of monitoring and a fair amount of regulation. You can see that by looking at the criteria for a teaching school. For instance, a head has to have been in post for three years—a matter with which I have always quibbled in my mind. However, I am not going to quibble with it because I accept that this is one of those bits of the education system that the Government really will have to keep their eyes on.

I can therefore see the argument, given that one of the great weaknesses in our education system is the quality of training for SEN that teachers get, that there is never enough time in initial teacher training to do that adequately. It is not properly covered in the induction year—it did not happen when I was in power and there has not been much improvement since. There is a genuine problem and I am persuaded by what the noble Lord says—these are the areas where these institutions need to be properly regulated. Losing this opportunity, which we should seize to raise the standards of teaching those with special needs, would be again to commit the mistake that we have all committed through the years, which is to pass legislation and then in future years see how we can tag SEN on to it. That has been a huge fault of government for decades. We put something in place and a few months later think, “Ah, how can we make this relate to SEN?”.

My question is this—how many schools designated teaching schools have not been awarded an “outstanding” category by Ofsted? What is that overlap, and how many schools not in that category have applied to become teaching schools? Perhaps the Minister can provide a little analysis of the comparison between schools which have been awarded the “outstanding” category as a result of inspections and those that are “outstanding” in SEN.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, regarding the legislation passed in the previous Session, which enabled and made necessary the identification of people suffering from dyslexia and that group of disabilities, it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us to what extent the number presenting themselves as suffering from these disabilities has increased. That would give us an idea of the workload.