Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Bill. It has also been welcomed by many in the education service. It is significant that the Association of School and College Leaders, which leads our educational institutions, has also given it a warm welcome. I shall concentrate on two major areas that underpin the philosophy of the coalition and its approach to public services. First, the Bill tackles underperformance. Secondly, it offers teachers more autonomy and freedom from bureaucracy and regulation, which have done so much to undermine their professionalism and morale.

Underperformance has been one of the major concerns of recent years. It is simply not acceptable that there are schools at which less than 20 per cent of pupils achieve the basic standard of five good GCSE passes, while in other schools more than 90 per cent of pupils achieve this standard. Nor is it acceptable that the gap between the lowest and the highest achievers in an age group has grown steadily wider over the past decade. It is therefore with pleasure that I see the coalition proposing in the Bill to offer free early years education to the most deprived small children. Early intervention can, we know, make a huge difference to underperformance later in life.

We also know that the absence of effective discipline is one of the barriers to pupil achievement; indeed, it comes first in any school or classroom. The first requirement of a good teacher is to command the attention and respect of her or his class. If pupils are fooling around, playing up and occupied with anything but their work, they are simply not learning. In the best of worlds, teachers can achieve good discipline without needing extra powers, but sadly the world in many schools is now tough and even violent. Where a teacher has every reason to believe, for example, that an aggressive teenager is carrying a knife, the right to search is a basic protection for other, more vulnerable children in the school. The Bill’s provisions for giving back to teachers the power to exercise good discipline in various ways, even in extreme cases, are therefore much to be welcomed.

A further measure to tackle underperformance is the new power for the Secretary of State to close schools at which pupils are manifestly underperforming, regardless of whether there is an Ofsted judgment. Ofsted’s own performance has not always been reliable. It is good to see that its judgments are not to be the sole arbiter of a school’s success or failure. I ask my noble friend to consider new mechanisms for rewarding schools whose performance is outstanding, whether or not Ofsted has so judged them.

Another major contribution to tackling underperformance is the requirement to maintain international comparisons. As has been said, in the past decade the UK has fallen behind many other advanced countries in performance in key subjects. We need our young people to emerge from the education system with skills as good as, and better than, those of our competitors. It is therefore essential that we keep a sharp eye on how we match up.

Trusting teachers is the theme most dear to me. Teachers, as we have frequently urged from all sides of the House, are the heart of the education enterprise. Their contribution is the one essential determining factor in success at school and individual pupil level. Teachers have particularly welcomed the Bill’s provision of anonymity for those accused of improper behaviour. As has been said, it is an appalling thing for a teacher to be falsely accused. It can destroy their career, even their marriage and family relationships, yet it is such an easy thing for a pupil to do. Those who need persuading that this measure of protection is needed might consider that in the past 10 years, 1,785 teachers have been so accused, of whom only 158—less than 1 in 10—were taken to court, and of these fewer than half, 64, were finally convicted. Yet the lives of those other 1,721 had in many cases been turned upside down.

I am pleased indeed to see that teachers are to have more freedom not only in discipline but in the content of what they teach—that is, in the curriculum. These provisions go some way to reducing the burden of regulation, but we will have to hope for a real change both of heart and of the prevailing culture among the staff to be transferred from the QCDA, as well as Ofsted and Ofqual, if real professional freedom is to be achieved.

That brings me to the subject of inspection. I warmly welcome the new slimmed-down list of what the chief inspector's report should cover, including the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of children, which should give comfort to the right reverend Prelate, who is not in his place. However, early reports of what is happening in this regard give me cause for concern. I hope above all else to see a professional and dignified process of school and college inspection that works to improve schools, not condemn them, and that looks for good work and green shoots of improvement, not faults. Such inspection could bear down on standards and give Ministers the accurate and comprehensive understanding of what is happening in the system that sound policy-making requires.

I am pleased to see four more quangos disappearing. Few will mourn the end of the YPLA, which in its short life has become unbelievably bloated in both numbers of staff and cost. I regret that the GTC never succeeded in meeting the aspirations that many of us had for it. I pay warm tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, for the excellent work he did in its early days. When the functions of the GTC and the TDA are transferred, it will be important to ensure that the training offered to teachers as their careers develop is appropriate to their needs, to the needs of the school in which they are teaching, and to the needs of the education service as a whole. I ask my noble friend what devices are in place to ensure that those three levels of need are appropriately assessed and good quality provision for their fulfilment is assured.

I also ask my noble friend what arrangements are in place to ensure that during the induction year there will be some outside judgment to provide an independent addition to the school's assessment? Can we not consider the induction year as a necessary step before being granted a licence to practise?