Education Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Brompton Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I have not the faintest idea—I never do—as to how long I am going to speak; I just go on speaking until I get bored with the sound of my own voice. I congratulate my noble friend both on her amendment and on her speech introducing it to us. She supplies what I think the Americans call “the vision thing”, and we are sorely in need of that.

My noble friend Lady Massey said that we have to bear in mind, as central to our vision in education, that all pupils matter and that all pupils matter equally. I take that to be central to what my noble friend is emphasising to us.

We fail too many of our young people, who are convinced that no one in education cares about them and is on their side. Their experience of education precisely gives that to them. There should be someone around locally who cares about them demonstrably and, more to the point, who is absolutely on their side. Therefore, as my noble friend pointed out, how we implement the amendment is not the point at issue; the issue is the vision contained within it.

I hark back to the Education Act 1944, which was based on selection at 11-plus and categorised most pupils on day one of their secondary education. The overwhelming majority were told to regard themselves as failures. The words “failed the 11-plus” were actually used. What a way to go—to have an Act of Parliament that categorises so many people as failures. I regret to say that this Government have not committed themselves to ending that. As my noble friend reminded us, they are, according to the Daily Telegraph, trying to create a set of circumstances in which selection will increase. Certainly, one needs to be told categorically that selection will in no circumstances increase under this Government. No one should be able to increase how many people they select.

I might add, since we are not discussing religion today, that Catholic schools were very much at the forefront of introducing comprehensive education, precisely because they did not want to discriminate between fellow members of their religion. I should have pointed out when we were discussing religious matters the other day that, often, those with religion are at the forefront of doing the right thing. However, we did the right thing and we moved to comprehensive education. I hate to say it, but my interpretation of what this Government are doing is that they are trying to abandon comprehensive education, which is why I strongly support my noble friend in bringing this matter to our attention today. It is the vision of education that matters. We can discuss the details when we report back to their Lordships at another stage.

[Baroness Ritchie of Brompton]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak to the amendment, but I should like to express sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said. There appears to be some duplication in the amendment, not only of the role of directors of children’s services but possibly of the role and responsibilities of lead members—here, I have to declare an interest as a lead member and my involvement with the Local Government Association. Another layer of bureaucracy could be introduced, so I would not support the amendment.

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

My Lords, we have already discussed in Committee the principles that underline the Government’s education reforms: increasing school autonomy, improving the quality—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 108, 109, 110, 111 and 112 in this group. I also support the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, have pulled out an important thread in this debate about assumptions that individualism in schools will automatically be a good thing. Of course, I am all for excellence in schools, whatever their names, and excellence not just in academic subjects but throughout the school delivery.

However, the Education Bill, as we have heard, amends the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to require local authorities that think that a new school needs to be established to seek proposals for the establishment of an academy. In effect, this introduces a presumption that when local authorities set up new schools they will be academies or free schools. I am not going to go into all that again—I will express a particular concern. This new requirement to prefer academies and free schools is likely to aid the proliferation of state-funded religious academies and free schools, among others. Academies and free schools are particularly attractive, not only to mainstream religious groups but to minority groups. This is because they are largely unregulated and there is nothing to stop groups with extreme agendas from applying to run these state-funded schools. Are we really not concerned about this?

Academies and free schools with a religious character can discriminate against students and parents in their missions and against staff on the grounds of religion or belief. We shall come on to that later. They can also opt out of the national curriculum and choose not to provide even the most basic sex education biology or to teach creationism. I am not trying to dismantle the whole faith-school system—I hope no one is going to accuse me of that. I am simply trying to promote a balance of provision at a local level. I am concerned that this new requirement on local authorities to prefer academies and free schools when creating new schools will lead to a proliferation in largely unregulated and unaccountable state-funded religious schools. These amendments remove the assumption that new schools will be academies and allow greater consideration of local opinion about what types of schools are created. It is all very well to champion parents, but what about championing children and their right to a full education?

[Baroness Ritchie of Brompton]

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment in this group, Amendment 108A. As has been said, the passage of the Academies Act last year allowed us considerable debate on the merits of the academy system introduced by the previous Government and accelerated by the current one. Academies have become an established part of the education system and I do not want to revisit that debate. Through this probing amendment I wish to raise local government concerns over the ability of the education system to react to local circumstances. Here, I must yet again declare an interest as the chair of the LGA children and young people’s board.

Amendment 108A would alter Schedule 11 to allow it to continue to recognise the Government’s ambition of seeing schools transferred to academy status, but would retain the necessary local flexibility in the school system to allow for local needs to be taken into account and avoid the creation of a potentially burdensome process for establishing new schools.

Schedule 11 creates a requirement for a local authority seeking to establish a new school first to look at setting up an academy. Councils do not object to that first part of the schedule. However, its subsequent provisions establish a process by which the local authority must report to the DfE on the process of establishing that new academy. Further provisions place restrictions on the establishment of new schools, requiring a council to seek permission from the DfE before considering alternative models of provision and giving powers to the department to order a council to withdraw a notice issued to invite proposals for establishing a new school.

The DfE has projected that while overall pupil numbers in state-funded schools have been in decline, they will increase from this year onwards. Indeed, by 2014, pupil numbers in maintained primary schools will be more than 8 per cent higher than in 2010. Despite the current contraction in demand for secondary school places, the increase in demand for primary school places over the next three to four years is likely to create a sudden boom in the demand for pupil places such that the education system has not had to react to since demand began to decline in 2004.

The primary concern of a council and its community when managing this demand and seeking to establish a new school should be the needs of local parents, and of course of children. Furthermore, councils must be able to balance place provision to ensure that the needs of the entire local area are met. We need to ensure that the Bill does not reduce the ability of local parents, education providers and councils to respond quickly and effectively to new demand and that local choice and diversity of provision are maintained.

Unfortunately, the later provisions in Schedule 11 could restrict the ability of local communities to decide what type of school is established, not only by the creation of burdensome and bureaucratic reporting requirements but ultimately by placing decision-making in the hands of departmental officials in Whitehall rather than locally elected representatives in town halls. Councils understand their residents and local areas well. If local parents do not want schools to be established as academies, there needs to be an option to reflect local parental demand and to establish other types of schools. Councils should not be required to get permission from Whitehall before responding to and implementing the wishes of local residents.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I hope to speak to briefly on this question in view of my earlier remarks. This is a crucial clause, which has to do with the direction of government policy and a struggle that might develop between national policy and local authorities. The Academies Bill has gone through. I supported that, and I support the direction of travel in this Bill, not least because it clarifies very considerably what the Academies Bill amounted to. There are two or three points of difficulty that I want to mention, to which I hope the Minister might respond.

First, if every school becomes an academy, which is a possibility, then, as we have consistently pointed out, there may be cracks in the system. There has to be some oversight should these cracks appear. This is not regulating schools; it is trying to find a coherent policy that serves the needs of the whole community, should every school become independent of local authority control. As I said, the direction of travel is right, not least because we have had many decades of local authority supervision of schools and we do not have a system that any of us is content with. That is the reality, and it is one good reason why we should support the Bill, another being the excellence of the academy policy of the previous Government and the way in which many schools want to sign up to it. We have to give this a fair wind.

I have read the Explanatory Notes very carefully, and paragraph 180 contains a series of bullet points on which it is possible for local authorities to take a view on founding a further school. The most significant of these is a loophole. It is the last bullet point in paragraph 180, and it reads:

“Local authority proposals for a new community or foundation school”,

are possible,

“where following publication of a section 7 notice no proposals are approved by the local authority, no Academy arrangements are entered into, or no proposals are received”.

There is therefore, as I read this, room for the local authority to take steps to make provision for what otherwise might be absent.

I have two further points. First, the proposals for a series of schools becoming in effect independent over the years lack a proper sense of scrutiny of what might happen over the next five, 10 or 15 years in some of these schools. I shall speak to this point when we come on to exemptions from inspection and I shall not expand on it now. Secondly, 20 years ago a Secretary of State came up with a great new whizz and said to me, “Stewart, I plan to make all schools directly answerable to the Secretary of State. What do you think?”. I gulped and pointed out to him that this might mean that in Parliament he would be answering questions about the state of the lavatories at Walford primary school because there would be no other place to go to raise the questions. I hope any sensible Government would want to avoid that kind of situation.