Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I support a great deal of what has been said today. I shall go back rather further. In the early years of the previous Government, there was an attempt to introduce citizenship. My noble friend Lord Northbourne and I hoped valiantly that young children would be taught not just about their relationships with their parents, but about how they would bring up their children and what sort of a parent they should be. Sadly, the whole citizenship exercise disappeared into a vacuum of being taught all around the curriculum, so it was never followed through.

Following on from the Ofsted report, I wish to comment on the success that the schools mentioned had on things such as bullying. In some schools, from the moment a child enters, he or she has a mentor. It is another child’s duty to settle the new child into the school. It would be a huge help if that could be taken seriously and become part of the way in which all schools integrate the next generation.

It may not be totally fair to blame the Government—certainly not all members of it—for the way in which the previous Bill disappeared into the sand, but now that they have this opportunity to look at the situation again, I hope that they will come forward with sensible proposals.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey of Darwen and Lady Gould, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley, have long been advocates and apostles of PSHE. Their difficulty has been that for a long time PSHE has been regarded as a “trendy left” view which has been dismissed on largely political grounds. Therefore, I want primarily to address my Conservative Party partners in the coalition. Three aspects of PSHE should give them pause.

The first was eloquently stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. It is that huge threats to children, such as drugs and alcohol, need to be discussed seriously within schools at a very early age—the middle of primary school—and onwards if people are to realise their immense and devastating consequences on children. They have to counter great pressure from, on one side, teenage magazines and what one might call youth culture, and, on the other, the supermarket culture. That is not easy to do.

The second issue, which supersedes any political views and which I again ask my partners in the coalition to consider very seriously, is parenthood. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has been famous for the way in which he has consistently argued in this House that we have neglected at our peril the parenthood of the human species, which is long in growing up. Long ago, when I was Secretary of State, I remember proposing that parenthood should be a fundamental part of sex education. In other words, the emphasis should be at least as much on the responsibilities of bringing up a child—families will devote a huge part of their energies to that process—as on sex education itself. You cannot divorce the two and in some ways we have done great harm to ourselves by doing that. We now look at what one can describe in some quarters only as an abdication of parenthood. I do not refer just to people who are economically deprived but to the many who wrongly think that money substitutes for time in the bringing up of children. There are huge lesions to be mended in our relationships with children. I strongly thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and commend him on the consistency of his arguments in this field, which desperately need to be listened to.

Finally, on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others who said that there are insufficient qualified teachers, conceivably the coalition might think of something rather unique and announce that it is its intention to introduce compulsory PSHE—with the emphasis as I have described—in three years’ time. That would immediately attract many young people to thinking about teaching in that field. We try to do everything instantaneously. Education, like growing a tree, is a slow process, and we need to think in terms of how one can obtain responses further down the line. In this case, many young people and many others who are coming into the profession would seriously think about a responsible approach to PSHE as part of the curriculum, although it may be unwise to introduce it immediately.

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

My Lords, I begin by commenting on both amendments; I recognise the importance of giving children and young people access to appropriate and high-quality PSHE, for which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others made such a compelling and eloquent case. However, I wish mainly to speak to Amendment 70 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, in welcoming the emphasis placed in that amendment on parenting and the need to make young people aware of the parenting responsibilities that come with bringing a child into the world and, again, I salute the work of the noble Lord in this area, especially in helping young men to come to terms with what it means to be a father.

However, I have a couple of concerns with the amendment. First, it is not clear how the resulting curriculum would be determined. Research suggests that aspects of PSHE that have to do with sex and relationships are most effective if parents are involved to the greatest possible extent. That is why the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, about engaging parents, were so well made. While the Church of England has not had a problem with statutory provision, not least with the impact that it has on teacher training provision, I am aware of those, particularly in other churches and faith communities, who feel that the engagement of parents would be more greatly advanced if it was stated explicitly that the curriculum would ultimately be determined, on an academy-by-academy basis, by governors in consultation with parents, so that this important subject is taught in a manner that is consistent with the ethos of the academy and parental wishes.

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[Lord Lucas]

I should declare an interest, in that I run the Good Schools Guide and therefore spend an inordinate amount of my time inspecting schools, or rather causing schools to be inspected, and thus have a keen interest in the topic. Inspection is a crucial aspect of the Bill. We are considering schools that will be innovative, free schools. They will be newly founded, often with untried and untested combinations of people involved, with no established sponsors or with sponsors who are relatively new to the job. That will be at a time when there is considerable pressure on the central and local systems of support provided to schools.

The lesson that we have from the United States, as I am sure Rachel Wolf has told the Minister, is that charter schools succeed when they are properly regulated and inspected. If you think about it, it is obvious. If a school starts to go wrong, you can see it. If you can catch it reasonably early on, it is not too much work to put it right. If you let it go for a year or three, you will be in serious trouble.

We are also at a time when inspection itself is up for inspection. It is clear that this Government are reviewing the inspection regime in some detail and are prepared to make big changes—not surprisingly, if they want to cut the overall budget by 25 per cent. This is a good time to look at Ofsted and to ask: does it do what it is supposed to do; could we do better; could we do it for less?

Parents want, first, a regular report from Ofsted. The idea that you wait for four, five or six years between inspections is ridiculous. You want to know what is happening this year. You want to know that the school that you are about to commit your child to is still in good condition. Secondly, if Ofsted produces an adverse report, you want support. You want to feel that, whatever the problems at the school, they are now going to be gathered together and looked after. In both those aspects, Ofsted fails miserably. Most Ofsted reports are out of date. When Ofsted puts a school into special measures—this is my experience of the process, which has always been from the outside—parents spend a month or so in ignorance and, even then, when people start to react and be supportive, Ofsted just stands on the outside throwing rocks at the school, keeping on criticising, rather than being part of the support network.

Ofsted is also clearly not what schools want. Schools want support, advice and help in steering in the right direction. They want a constructive relationship with the people involved in inspecting the school. The most recent example of that that I can think of is the old FEFC inspections under our previous Government. They had that relationship with colleges. They would inspect regularly. Subject inspectors would be in and out of the college once or twice a year. Support and advice would be coming through the college. You worried about whether you might be ticked off for something, but the general relationship was supportive. You expected that the inspectors’ visit would, on the whole, be a constructive experience.

What the Government want out of Ofsted is value for the money that they are putting in. We are a long way short of that. After a fashion, we have an effective system of calling schools to account. Spreading good practice, knowing what is going on in schools and making sure that, say, PSHE is being properly taught, even though it is not being examined, are functions of the inspectorate. By and large, I do not have criticisms on that, except that it costs far too much to get there and does far too much damage to schools.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s argument, but why does the word “interim” appear in this amendment? Should this not be consistently carried on, rather than being purely interim?

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I apologise if the wording of my amendment is not exact. It is merely there to bring up the subject of inspections and to make it clear that I want them to be regular, not just every five years or so.

There is a good model of how this could be done. Every year, we are retiring a few thousand headmasters and deputy headmasters who have immense experience and the ability to judge a school pretty rapidly—the good ones. They know how to read a school, how a school works and what to look for. They have the ability to be immensely supportive and they are not that expensive because they have pensions. They have a commitment to the job and all they want is a reasonable return for the effort that they are putting in. If we were to pay £300 a day, that might be a figure with some echoes—we do it for that. It should not surprise us that heads and others with a real vocation and dedication to helping other people are prepared to work and put in similar effort for a similar amount of money. You are not looking at a lot of money. You are looking at people whom parents and heads naturally trust. You are starting off on a pretty good basis if you are staffing your inspectorate with that sort of person.

These people could go once a year into every school—and I do say “every school”. What is the point of an inspectorate not visiting outstanding schools? How are inspectors ever going to learn what best practice is if they never go into the best schools? Part of the point of an inspectorate ought to be spreading good practice. They should be there to say, “This is what I saw the other day”, or, “Why don’t you talk to him or her about that because they seem to be getting it right?”. If all you are doing is going round the schools that are not performing well, all you can do is spread bad practice. To be an effective inspector, you need to be in touch with good practice and with what is going on in the world of good schools. A simple report to parents—a paragraph or so, to say that since the last inspection report things are progressing, this is particularly good, there is still a bit of trouble on that but, overall, we are happy—is what parents need to know that they can take a baseline from the previous Ofsted report, read through it, know that things have improved or are much as they were and take a reasonable decision. Most schools with a head who is open to ideas will benefit enormously from having someone such as that around.

Once schools have come to trust the system, you would find that they were asking for extra days. When I was a governor of a college under the old FEFC system, we were looking to have these people in more often. We would say, “We’re not doing what we should do in biology. Let’s get the biology man around to give us an extra bit of help there”. Schools, particularly primary schools, are little, isolated, lonely places. They want support and they want to have contact with people who can provide that support and good ideas. At the moment, all we have is the school improvement partner system, which is too low-level and local. We would do much better if we moved to making that part of the inspection system. I think that we could run that bit of the inspection system for about £10 million a year and have a report on every school, every year. Over and above that, you obviously need a full inspection system. Every now and again, you need to go in and do the whole works. Even if you are quite generous on the budget and say that you will spend 10 man-days on average every five years, that will cost you only £20 million or so. Then you have the central system over that.

There is an enormous obsession with data in the current central system. Collecting the data imposes immense burdens on schools. Teachers worry about measuring every aspect of every child’s performance because the school improvement partner or the inspector may pick them up on this or that, which is not constructive. You do not need to look at data on that level. Any mathematician will tell you that, apart from in pure mathematics, figures are always wrong. Figures do not provide value on their own; they provide value only in relation to what is happening on the ground. Inspections should be about the human aspect of schools: the quality of the teaching; the quality of the atmosphere; the staff; and the relationships in the school. They are things that numbers never throw any light on, although numbers can be useful in confirming what is happening.

If we were to budget £50 million a year for Ofsted as a whole, that would be enough. We could then perhaps devote another £50 million to the same organisation, perhaps, if it was running well and was focused on supporting schools that were having a hard time, bringing them round and making them straight—if it was picking up schools that had scored four and setting them right—which needs a lot of concentrated help and advice very fast. That would still be half the current budget, but it would provide about 10 times the value. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and, unusually, disagree with my noble friend Lady Perry. The points that she makes about partnerships are precisely correct; indeed, a number of academies are part of these behaviour partnerships, which are working extremely well. In exactly the same way, many school confederations are working well. Many of us are now saying, “What a good thing confederations are”, although initially some of us were a little hesitant about the Government forcing schools into confederations. Where there have been confederations, many members of staff have found them very useful.

I particularly endorse Amendment 73 on the need for academies to participate in the behaviour partnerships in exactly the same way as other locally maintained state schools should. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, getting on the telephone and talking to other heads is precisely what it is all about. The partnership does not need to be heavy-handed or forced; it can be very light touch.

I also agree very much with the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The low-incidence special needs can be overlooked and it is extremely important that they are not disregarded.

We are all concerned about these exclusions because we do not want these young people to fall by the wayside into the category that we call NEETs—not in employment, education or training. They are drop-outs from society, so it is important that we meet their needs. Many pupils with low-incidence special educational needs get disregarded. They are not a great nuisance. They sit at the back of the classroom, playing games and talking among themselves, but they do not get educated as they should because nobody has looked at what their needs are. We have got much better at this over the past few years, but it is vital that academies, too, pay attention to these young people. The Minister has promised to come back with another look at the process surrounding special educational needs and I hope that he will incorporate the issue in the review that he is undertaking.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, as another former Secretary of State, perhaps I may say how strongly I agree with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, as well as by my noble friend Lady Sharp. I will be brief. First, like other noble Lords, I have first-hand knowledge of the fact that, in some cases, schools have decided not to accept a child with special educational needs—for example, one who is dyslexic, dyspraxic, deaf or blind—when they believe that that would lower their standing in the league tables. The league tables have been devastating in that way, by making it difficult often for an ambitious and able head teacher who values their position in the league tables to take such children. There is a danger, as my noble friend Lady Sharp said, that if you begin to regard the position of children with special educational needs, or children who are difficult, as somehow excluding them from being part of the academy, that academy will become still further removed from the problems of the whole of society. I feel strongly about this.

Perhaps I may refer to the interesting comments of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about Denmark. It is interesting also that the incidence of permanent exclusion in Scotland is proportionately a long way below that in England, because Scotland has chosen to go for short-term, temporary exclusions rather than for permanent exclusions that far too often condemn the child for the rest of their life to being outside society and often lead them straight on to being young offenders and things of that kind. I have a great deal of sympathy with what was said by both noble Lords. I hope that the Government will seriously consider a different kind of approach to children who are excluded.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, whom I congratulate on her open-mindedness on the issue, has indicated that partnerships play a large part in this. My noble friend Lady Sharp has seconded the view that they are crucial and significant. However, beyond that we must look at the whole situation of excluded children: why they are excluded, whether earlier intervention would save them from being excluded and whether temporary exclusions should be more common than permanent exclusions, with their devastating effect of taking the child almost altogether out of society.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I agree in many ways with what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has just said. We face a long-running problem of how to deal with kids who get themselves into a position where they need to be excluded from school. She said that the Scottish example is that schools retain ownership of these pupils. You cannot throw them away because they are still part of you. Even if they are not on the premises, the school has a commitment to help with their education.

That is one approach. Another might be through the use of the pupil premium, when we get that going. The kids will suddenly become much more valuable because they have been excluded. The resources to help them and deal with them will travel with them. Certainly, there is scope for free schools to innovate in this area. Many of the children’s homes that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about are privately run. The troublesome end of education has become increasingly well looked after by the private sector. There is a real opportunity. I do not expect to hear it today, but I hope for a commitment from my noble friend to deal with this. We have a chance, if we are sharp and inventive enough, to make real progress.

The problem raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, is rather more intractable. Imagine that I said to your Lordships, “Right, there are 800 of us or thereabouts. I will take £500 from one of you, but don’t worry, I will give each of you £1”. That is all very nice, as 799 of us will go and spend the pound and feel a bit better off, but someone will feel very upset when they get a bill for £500 and only have £1 to pay it with. That is the situation that we risk landing ourselves in with schools with low-incidence problems of any kind. If we do not operate this on a pool basis so that the school with the problem can find the funds, all the other schools that do not have the problem will have spent the money and we will be in trouble. Again, I am interested in how we will solve this in a world where not 200 but 2,000 schools are academies and the problem becomes much more obvious.