Education Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Walmsley]

33: Clause 5, page 10, line 16, after “Wales” insert “or a pupil at a school in England whose parent has not confirmed the receipt by any effective method of a notice from the head teacher of the school that the pupil will be detained after the school session on the day that the notice is issued”

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, this amendment seeks to ensure that if a school wishes to keep a child in detention after school, it must ensure that it has successfully contacted the child’s parent or carer. When we discussed this matter in Grand Committee, I asked that the school should get the agreement of the parent. I believed that I was offering a compromise when I moved towards simply asking that the school should inform the parent, but I understand that the Minister does not think so.

Clause 13 has the potential to put a child in danger and I hope that I will be given a strong reassurance by the Minister that this will not be so. While I trust the vast majority of teachers, surely the Minister must accept that it takes a while for a young teacher to develop the sort of good judgment and common sense that we believe would prevent them from putting a child in danger on the way home. That is why we need to make it abundantly clear in guidance that no teacher may detain a child after school without informing the parent if it in any way compromises the safety of the child.

My noble friend the Minister made the point in Grand Committee that schools already have a duty of care to their pupils under other legislation. That may well be so, but noble Lords know the difficulty of cross-referencing other Acts when we are considering a current Bill that makes changes to earlier legislation. That is why I am asking the Minister to ensure that in the guidance that accompanies this new power, the school is made aware, on the same page, that it must not use this power if it in any way puts the child in danger. In order to check on this, the school will have to find out what the child’s transport arrangements are and ensure that either the detention is so short that it avoids the child missing a bus or that other safe travel arrangements have been made. The school may also need to check on whether the child is a carer, where detaining that child after school may cause another vulnerable person in distress. Schools should already know which children are carers, but they need to be sure in this case. I also think the guidance should make it clear that it is good practice to inform the parents anyway by phone. I can envisage the distress of a parent, waiting at home for a child to step off the school bus, only to find that he does not. The parent will worry herself sick; I know I would have done.

I think that this provision is entirely contrary to the respect with which this Government treat parents otherwise. Only this week, we have received a letter about changes to the way complaints about school admissions arrangements are handled, which said:

“We believe that parents should be given the opportunity to be part of the system that holds schools to account, properly supported and championed by the local authority, the Secretary of State and independent adjudicators”.

At the same time, the Government seek to write parents out of their discipline arrangements by letting schools avoid telling them that their child is in detention. As I understand it, this idea has come from one of the head teachers’ unions, but not the other one. I can tell the Minister what parents want: they do not want this. They want to be respected and informed.

Points were strongly made in Committee that rural schools, if they adhere to their safeguarding duty, will not be able to use this sanction at all. Yet I can reassure my noble friend that children in rural schools will not run amok because of it. There are many sanctions already in the armoury to ensure good behaviour and most schools use them effectively. Most have maintained good discipline to date without this power. I question the competence of any school that feels it needs this power to maintain good order and discipline. Yet, in order to give them this power, the Government may risk the safety of children unless the guidance is clear, unequivocal and powerful. We want only one more case like that of poor Milly Dowler and the Government’s good judgment will be called into question, rightly or wrongly.

This is entirely unnecessary if the Government get the guidance right. Will the Minister assure me that our comments about the guidance, and the strength and clarity that it needs, are taken on board by Ministers and officials? Without that assurance, we will remain with the concerns that I have expressed. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, our Amendment 34 is similar to the one so ably outlined by the noble Baroness. It is a requirement that schools should always give reasonable notice to parents or carers of any detentions and that before going ahead with a detention, they have received from the parent or carer confirmation that they are aware of the detention. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has described, we thought that we were eminently conciliatory in our amendment, that it was common sense and would be warmly welcomed by the Minister. Perhaps it still will be.

We return to this issue after a detailed debate in Grand Committee in which we felt there was consensus that this was a common sense position between, on the one hand, an instant response to bad behaviour, while on the other, ensuring that pupil safety is protected. As it stands, the Bill removes a requirement to give 24 hours notice of detention and as a result schools would not be required to give parents or carers any notice at all. We have had a letter from the Minister today setting out new proposals, but those ask teachers only to judge,

“whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.

Frankly, we do not think that that is good enough. We recognise that it is usually the case that the nearer the punishment is to the original incident, the more effective it is. However, as a number of noble Lords in Grand Committee recognised, this would potentially create a number of safeguarding issues, which the Minister’s letter attempted to address. It would also potentially damage the relationship between parents and schools and could have a knock-on effect on the success of the school’s broader behavioural policy.

A number of objections remain to no-notice detentions, specifically because of the damage to the school’s relationship with parents. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has outlined some of those, such as it being impracticable for parents to rearrange children’s transport at short notice when they might have other commitments —other childcare commitments, and so on. There could be unnecessary worry for parents in rural areas especially on dark evenings, when they are anxious about their child’s travel home. There could also be concern if parents think their child is travelling home alone, separately, because they are travelling later, rather than earlier with a group, when they are all leaving school together. There is also the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised about caring responsibilities, of which children might not always have made the school aware. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in this catalogue, there is the basic discourtesy to parents which this Bill would represent and which would do little to help schools forge strong partnerships with parents.

When we discussed this in Committee, the Minister expressed some sympathy with the arguments we had put forward, but went on to argue that head teachers already had to produce behaviour policies which were publicised to parents. She also argued that there were existing legal safeguards that protect children's welfare if they are given detention. However, we do not feel that these points adequately address our concerns and they put the onus on parents to object to the school’s actions after the event through the complaints procedure or through legal action. Surely this is making heavy weather over what should be a common-sense policy. To be frank, we have not yet heard any valid arguments against what we are proposing.

The simplest way through is to support our amendment —or, indeed, the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—which make it clear that schools can organise no-notice detention provided the parent has confirmed that they aware that it is happening. This will provide adequate safeguards for children and ensure that parents are kept in the loop and treated with respect. I hope noble Lords and the Minister will feel able to support this amendment.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

These are draft guidance documents at the moment. We hear the strength of feeling that has been expressed around the House and would certainly welcome consultation to see if we can find a form of words that reassures noble Lords. We feel that all the measures are in place, but obviously some noble Lords feel that they are not strong enough, so we will be looking at the draft guidance to make quite sure the wording is appropriate.

[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.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Perhaps I may complete my remarks. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. As I have said, rural schools will not be able to use this measure but some urban schools will. However, as my noble friend Lord Storey said, not all urban schools will be able to use it because there may well be safeguarding issues in urban schools as well. However, as I said, I am comforted by what my noble friend the Minister has said. I look forward to further discussions with officials on how we can produce guidance that really helps teachers to do what they need to do but at the same time not compromise the safeguarding of children. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 33 withdrawn.

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

My Lords, as always, I listened to the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, with a great deal of care. I thought that with his customary honesty he made the point clearly about some of the shortcomings of the GTC which are linked directly to the decision that the Government took to bring about its abolition. The point he raised powerfully about the disinclination of the profession to pay for its membership and the fact that it is largely taxpayer-funded is important and one on which we should all reflect. I would not disagree with a word that he or my noble friend Lady Sharp said about professionalism and the need to have a profession and raising the status, esteem and standing of teachers as professionals.

Earlier today, we spoke about the importance of trust. Before I talk about the specific amendments, where we disagree on the fundamental principle is on whether the GTC as constituted is an embodiment of professional status. We contend that it is not, although I agree with the noble Lord that it is perfectly possible, indeed likely, that in future years something will well up that captures and speaks for the professionalism that he advocates and that I know he feels strongly about, but it probably will not be the GTCE.

When we discussed this in Committee, I set out some of the things that the Government are trying to do to raise the status of the profession and the quality of entrants to it and to help existing teachers to develop and improve. As we discussed on the last group, one of the overall themes that we are trying to develop is to give teachers and head teachers greater responsibility for improving teacher quality. I think that is a very good symbol of greater professionalism. I am as keen as other noble Lords to support schools and head teachers to recruit high-quality teachers and to ensure that they are able to access the information that they need to do so. At present, the GTC has a register that contains detailed information from every teacher and employer in the country. This ranges from personal data and qualifications through to information on the types of posts held in previous employments. Schools and teachers are required to update this information at least three times a year. I am told that that costs around £500,000 a year, and that is before one counts the cost of the time spent on it in schools. I do not believe that maintaining that amount of information at a national level is desirable or necessary.

However, we have been persuaded by concerns raised in this House and elsewhere that there is a genuine need for the Government to help schools to know who has qualified teacher status and who has passed induction. The profession proposed an alternative to the GTCE register that I think achieves this objective, and the two leading head teacher unions wrote to the Secretary of State to express their strong belief in the need for an online database of all qualified teachers that is accessible by schools to replace the GTCE register.

We talked about this in Grand Committee but I can confirm that, having considered this, the Secretary of State has agreed that the teaching agency will establish and maintain a database that will record which teachers have attained qualified teacher status and which have passed their statutory induction period. That database will be available online to all employers from April 2012 and will be in addition to the prohibited list database, which will also be available to employers online. Together, the QTS database and the prohibited list will give employers an important resource in assessing qualifications as well as establishing who should not be employed as a teacher.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Perhaps I may ask my noble friend a question. Will these two databases be linked? I can imagine a head taking on a teacher might look at the original database to see if that person has been qualified and done the induction but they will not necessarily look at the other database to see if that person has been struck off since. Will there be a suggestion for somebody using the first database that they really ought to check the prohibited one as well?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That sounds a very sensible suggestion. I will need to check where we have got to on developing the two databases but that sounds eminently sensible because clearly one would want to make sure that there was read-across.

I hope in light of the reassurance about providing the information, which I accept there has been widespread agreement that we need, including from the party opposite, and about maintaining such a register, that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, may feel able to withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I apologise to the House for overrunning the conventional time. I suppose it is because I take such a profoundly serious view of these curtailments of free speech that I have overrun the 15 minutes. However, I will wrap up my remarks quickly. Not one of the statistics to which I referred relates to the subject matter of Clause 13, which is pre-charge publicity—not allegations but pre-charge publicity. As regards allegations, 28 per cent led to disciplinary proceedings, more than 50 per cent had some substance and 18 per cent involved suspensions.

I am grateful to my noble friend for the concessions he has made. He may have had to battle for some of the concessions that he has wrung out of his colleagues. However, he does not accept my Amendment 48, which deals with the raising of the cap on freedom of speech in the case of a teacher who resigns or is dismissed, or Amendment 51, which allows a parent whose child has come home complaining of an assault to at least e-mail the other parents in the class to ask them whether they have had any experience of Mr Jones doing what he ought not to do, or e-mailing the staff, for example. To prohibit that seems to me utterly wrong. I speak to these two amendments in that spirit.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have some amendments in this group. Like my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, I welcome the Government’s amendments. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Phillips on his success in persuading the Government to improve this clause as far as they have. However, I join him in urging the Minister to consider whether he could go a little further. There is devastating logic in what my noble friend says. I am also aware of cases where the abusing teacher has been asked to go away quietly so that no more will be said about the matter. Speaking of logic, I have two amendments in this group which seek to follow government policy and prevent an unintended consequence of this section of the Bill.

Noble Lords may remember that in Committee, speaking to Clause 42 stand part, my noble friend Lady Brinton said on behalf of both of us:

“I would also like to ensure that, where there has been abuse, the subsequent inspection overtly inspects what action has been taken, and openly reports whether the failures that allowed the abuse to occur have been put right. … Parents expect it, and children deserve it”.—[Official Report, 12/9/11; col. GC 117.]

I hope that the Minister will agree with that because it was the 22nd recommendation of the report of Sir Roger Singleton of June 2009, which was agreed to by the then DCSF under the previous Government. Significantly, the DfE under this Government also confirmed adherence to that positive response given in June 2009. Indeed, I know that our honourable friend Mr Tim Loughton has been considering how he can implement this and other recommendations of the Singleton report. There was some news of that only this morning.

Of course, I am aware that Clause 13 only prevents a publication identifying a teacher who is the subject of an allegation. However, the difficulty sometimes arises where writing anything at all about an event might lead to readers having a very good idea of who it might have been. For example, if something occurred on a field trip and there had only been one field trip that year, then it would be possible to identify the alleged perpetrator. So my amendments seek to ensure that we do not fetter the ability of a regulator or a responsible Ofsted inspector to do their jobs properly and to write in their reports about what happened and how the school has, or has not, put measures in place to prevent a repetition. This is what Sir Roger Singleton recommended should happen and that wish has since been endorsed by the previous Government and the current one.

So I hope that the Minister will now see that, in tabling Amendments 50A and 50B, I am trying to avoid that unintended consequence. I believe that Clause 13 as currently written could prevent a regulator or inspector from producing an adequate school inspection report following a case of abuse; a report which stated what action the school has taken. Has my noble friend had time to consider these small, but, I hope, helpful amendments, since they seek to implement what I believe to be the intentions of the Government as well as of the previous Government; intentions which were so well set out by Sir Roger Singleton’s recommendations?

I support what my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, have said about the research that has been circulated to us from York Consulting. I looked at that myself, quite independently of my noble friend and the noble Baroness, and it occurred to me too that there was not a single fact in there that supports the need for this legislation; not one fact that talked about hyped-up, unwarranted publication of the name of a teacher prior to charge. There were lots of statistics about the increase in the number of allegations, lots of statistics about how many of those were eventually found to be unwarranted, but not a thing about publicity. So I still have great reservations about this legislation, despite the fact that in Amendments 50A and 50B I am trying to improve it, because I just do not feel that the Government have yet disclosed to us the pressing need for it, despite what the teaching unions would perhaps like to see. I really would say to the teaching unions—and I have said to the teaching unions—give me the evidence. Where is the evidence about these large amounts of terrible publicity that have brought the Government to decide that they need this legislation? I simply have not seen it yet.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, despite the late hour I think that this debate should not be curtailed, because it is so important. I have to express my great disappointment in the Government for not listening to the arguments that were made so cogently in Committee and again by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I want to ask the Minister whether some of my experiences would not now be possible. For 13 years I was chief executive of Childline, the helpline for children in trouble and in danger, and this month that helpline is 25 years old. During the time it has been operating, it has cracked a large number of rings and groups and situations where teachers have been abusing children. Children have been able to telephone the helpline and describe what has been happening to them.

Let me tell your Lordships about two cases because they are crucial. We had a series of boys ringing independently from a particular school, all telling us about the same teacher and similar abuse. We were able to get those boys to talk to their parents, to get the parents to come together, and together to take that issue forward, which ended up in a very serious prosecution of that teacher who went to prison. The other situation was that of Crookham Court, a very famous case, where a group of teachers were preying, just as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, described, on a group of children. We intervened in that situation by getting the proprietor out of the school and getting my chair, who happened to be Esther Rantzen, into the school to bring the whole situation into the open. That was again a very famous case when a series of people went to prison for a long time for serial abuse of children in a school.

I believe that those two cases could not happen under these arrangements. We would be prevented from encouraging people to share information that brings serial abusers to court. I do not think that the Government intend that to happen. I do not wish to believe that the Minister and his colleagues would wish that to happen. I do not like speaking at length as it is late and I, too, would like to go home, but the only other point I want to make is that if the Minister had worked for years, as I have, with young people who have to come to court and describe their abuse—the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, made this point—he would know that it is extraordinarily difficult for children and young people to make allegations because they know they have to say it again. Would noble Lords like to have to stand up and tell me about their recent sexual experience? We ask children to talk about extraordinarily painful sexual abuse in court, which they find extremely difficult. That is why I spent nine years of my life working towards children, as witnesses, not having to face the court but being able to give their evidence behind a screen. I am proud of that achievement.

If the Government take it through, we will condemn a large number of children and their parents to terrific pain. I ask the Minister to take it back to his masters and convey the message in the strongest possible terms, otherwise I predict there will be cause to rue the day.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will look at the figures again in the light of what my noble friend said. I would not want to go down a fallacious track. I recognise the difficulties that the issue poses. I know how strongly my noble friend feels about it. I have been able to discuss it with him on a number of occasions in recent months. He made a very powerful speech tonight and I know that underlying all of this is his passionate commitment to the principle of freedom of expression. I know that that drives him and that it is an important principle.

I know as well that his amendments are designed to improve a clause that he and my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood would rather see removed altogether from the Bill. I thank him for his approach in trying to come up with ways of improving what clearly he thinks is a deficient measure. Two government amendments in this group are improvements that he has prompted to the clause. I am grateful to him for that and for the remarks that my noble friend Lord Black made about those improvements and the reassurance that they provided for him.

The fundamental concern of my noble friend Lord Phillips is that the clause interferes with the principle of freedom of expression. I understand that. That is part of the reason that the Government have sought to draw the clause in a narrow way, limiting it to pre-charge reporting of allegations against teachers by current pupils, despite calls that we faced at the beginning of proceedings on the Bill from various quarters—including a number from this House—for us to go much further in extending these measures. We resisted that pressure and I think that the feeling of the House at this point is that it was right to do that. I understand the principle of which my noble friend is a passionate champion, but I contend that it needs to be balanced with the need to protect teachers against the damage that can be done by false allegations and by press reporting of them. We seek to strike a balance and this debate is about whether we have got it right.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Perhaps I may ask my noble friend a question. I apologise and will make it very quick. Can he tell us how many allegations where the teacher has been identified have been reported prior to charge in the past two or three years? My noble friend suggests that there have been six. Another noble Lord said five. Do the Government think that the correct number is a multiple of that? We simply have not been told.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, getting an accurate picture of the extent of the problem is difficult. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Phillips that, through the research that the department has carried out by going online and looking at local press reporting as best it can, so far the number of cases that it has come up with is a multiple of five, but not many multiples of five. I think that the number circulated after the recent survey carried out for the department was 15. I accept that that is not a large number. However, the principle and the concern that underlie it are what we seek to address.

I will now address the amendments that my noble friend tabled rather than the general principle. The first area where he thinks that the clause gets the balance wrong is in relation to communication within the school community. His Amendment 51 seeks to ensure that pupils or parents will not breach reporting restrictions by communicating with other parents and other members of school staff. An example of where this might happen is if the parent wishes to communicate with other parents about an allegation that their child has made against a teacher. I should clarify that parents would not breach reporting restrictions by holding private conversations whether in person or online. The reporting restrictions would apply only to communication to the public at large or any section of the public.

My noble friend argued that a parent might wish to communicate with a section of the public in this way in order to seek corroboration of an allegation against a teacher before raising it with the school. We think that the effect of his amendment would be wider than that and would exempt from reporting restrictions communications by any pupil or any person acting on behalf of the pupil to any section of the school community and so reduce the protection the clause gives teachers against malicious or unfounded gossip. For example, it would allow pupils or parents to use a forum on the school network to publish an allegation against a teacher widely within the school community. I agree with my noble friend that parents should be free to follow up allegations made by their children, but I do think—I know he was dismissive of this point—that they should do that through appropriate channels by raising the issue with the school or the relevant authorities rather than by launching their own inquiries or campaigns. He knows, because I have discussed it with him before, that I am aware of a number of cases where e-mail campaigns against teachers are led by parents to whip up a campaign against them. We would not want that to be allowed to happen.