Education and Adoption Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

This is another puzzle because the terms of the agreement with Greater Manchester focus on growth in the economy and specifically mention the skills agenda. I have listened to the Government talk about the issue of skills—albeit at the same time as destroying further education, which of course is where most of these skills are taught; but we will leave that aside for the moment—and I am absolutely amazed because the argument they put forward is that while skills are crucially important, the role of schools is to make sure that, when they come out, young people are ready to go into the workplace; that is, those who do not go into higher or further education, if any is left when they reach the age when they move on from school.

Why on earth is education being taken out of this really exciting development? I am enthusiastic about what is happening in Greater Manchester, and potentially it is hugely exciting, but I just do not understand why education is being left out of it. This is but one example of how, when the Department for Education says that it is consistent with the localism agenda, it is, frankly, completely unbelievable.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I was not able to be present in Grand Committee last week, but I have read with interest the Committee report. Two things come to mind in relation to this debate. The first is that I am most grateful to the Minister for organising an extremely helpful meeting with head teachers and regional schools commissioners. At the meeting I raised a question about local accountability which followed from our debate at Second Reading. On the question of regional accountability, I put to a regional schools commissioner the case that while it is important to improve academic outcomes for young people, there may be a reason to override the local interest of parents in their schools. I hope that I am paraphrasing him correctly, but he said that it is really important to bring the local community with one, which seems to support the notion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others that if one is to have a successful school, one needs to bring the local community on board as far as possible.

The second point I want to raise is that, having read the Hansard report of the previous sitting, I am concerned by the Government’s focus on a very narrow assessment of education; that is, on academic attainment. Of course it is extremely important that our children should do well academically so that they leave school being able to read and write and are ready in terms of employment, and that is important to their parents as well, but as was made clear in that debate, children need a rounded education. Some children in particular benefit from an education which perhaps does not emphasise academic attainment so much but allows them to excel in sport and vocational attainment in other areas. My sense is that we need to allow some young people to fail and fail and fail again. Young people in care in particular may do poorly in terms of their academic attainment while they are at school, but many of them will do well in their early 20s or even their late 20s. If one puts great pressure on schools to ensure that all children do well academically, the risk is that those children who do not have so much academic capacity may be excluded, be given less attention, or to some degree will be seen as an inconvenience.

Perhaps that is an argument for giving local authorities and local bodies more influence over and supervision of what goes on in academies and elsewhere. The people in Manchester may think, “Well, in this area we have a particular interest in vocational success and we would like to see our schools equipping our children to enter apprenticeships”. I am probably not expressing myself well. I think that my chief concern arose when I read about the new pressures being put on head teachers to ensure that children do well academically because of the emphasis that the Government are placing on this. I worry about those children who may not have so much academic potential but do have potential in other ways. Perhaps the amendment that has been put forward will allay some of those concerns.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here in the Committee’s session last week. It was for medical reasons—and my experience has not filled me with either enthusiasm or confidence that importing wholesale from the health service will solve all our problems. However, there are some very good individual doctors in the system, which is why it works.

To go to the challenge put to the Minister about maintained schools from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I spent this morning with seven head teachers from maintained primary schools in the most difficult areas of inner London. I have no doubt that they are doing a terrific job. I agree that there are some excellent maintained schools doing an excellent job. Some of them even refer to the good partnerships with local academies which they hope will develop. That is the other side of the picture.

However, I would make two or three quick comments. When I hear the expression “democratic accountability”, the philosopher in me wants to write three articles to try to clarify what that means. The Committee should not worry, for I am not going to try to do that now, but it is a shibboleth at times. At other times it is an important use of language, just as talk of human rights is, but sometimes it covers a multitude of uncertainties and unclarities. I do not deny that it is important but here, for example, we have to distinguish between accountability for financial systems and governance—one kind of accountability that is not necessarily for a public committee; I would rather have a high-powered team from PricewaterhouseCoopers or some such going in to inspect them and report back—and the separate form of accountability which is necessary for educational practice. Parents and teachers no doubt have important things to say but it must never be forgotten that at least half of those, possibly both, are interested parties.

I come to the nub of what I want to say. The problem that the Bill is facing up to is essentially a question of dealing with what has arisen in schools that are currently maintained under the local authority system. If that is so, just recreating it without modification will not do the job. We need more subtlety and sophistication in trying to face that problem, when it is there that the difficulties have arisen. The Committee may have dealt, as I gather it did at some length last week, with the definition of coasting. But if there are coasting schools, a number of them have arisen within a local authority and within the maintained system. So there are good, bad and coasting schools, all of them within the maintained sector. That is why I find it difficult simply to pick up a proposal that all you have to do is to spread the responsibility by having ways of taking on board an additional set of views, without a means of sharpening them.

To go back to my speech at Second Reading, there is a danger that we will simply bring in delaying tactics, which are the curse of the current system. I am still worried about the Bill having delays built into it in a way that I find unacceptable. That is why I am not—

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[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is talking about Ofsted grades; I am talking about exam results.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the Minister responds, perhaps I may say how pleased I am to be reminded of the weight that the Government are placing on professional judgment. I was pleased to read in the Grand Committee proceedings and in the media that they are introducing this new college for school teachers, which will recruit, train and retain the very best teachers to send out to the schools that need them most. That sort of initiative is very welcome. I also welcome the Government’s drive to build trust in head teachers, recognise their expertise and give them as much authority as possible. My concern is that, because of the way in which the Government have set this up, they are putting huge pressures on head teachers to perform in a certain kind of way—which is to have good academic performance so that one will do well as a head teacher if one jumps through certain hoops, which is what head teachers will try to do. That distorts what they might do.

For instance, yesterday the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, organised a meeting with children from pupil referral units and hospital schools. We learned that a key issue for those young people is reintegration into mainstream education after their healthcare is completed, or whatever else it might be. A disincentive on the part of head teachers to accept them is that they are not likely to do so well academically. A young boy or girl coming out of hospital who has been away from school for quite some time is not likely to perform as well academically and there might be some hesitation on the part of the head teacher to take them back. I warn the Minister that I may well table an amendment at the next stage of the Bill to help us deal with the particular issue of children who have been out of school for some time and suggest that their data should be excluded from the performance statistics. A head teacher should not have to worry that she will be seen as failing because of a child who has been out of school and is not achieving academically as well as the others. As I say, I may well bring forward an amendment on that.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

If I may respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, one listens to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, talk about his schools and the transformation that they have wrought, and indeed one listens to the Minister talk about our local school here, and it is clearly a huge and most important change that is very much to be welcomed.

I suppose that I need to be careful not to strain at gnats when we are talking about bigger issues. I recognise that expectations about the educational attainment of young people in care have been too low in the past. We have said that they have had too difficult a time, it is tragic and we cannot push them. However, we need to be careful not to move from one extreme to another. Ultimately, the best thing is what the Government are trying to do: to recruit and retain the best professionals closest to the child who are in the position to make a judgment on just how hard to push that child forward and at the same time how gentle to be with that child—a nuanced, sensitive approach. The children who visited us yesterday—what to say? I agree with these measures and I am sorry that I have not expressed myself more clearly. I certainly agree that we should not let children down by having too low an expectation.

[Baroness Pinnock]

I thank noble Lords for the interesting debate that we have had around accountability. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for the general support that he has given for the idea of trying to establish a greater degree of accountability within the system. I also thank him for reminding us that this is in fact a very nationalising, centralising approach to education, notwithstanding the remarks made by the Minister. In essence, all academies have to report to the Secretary of State, with one layer in between, which is the regional schools commissioner who is appointed by the Secretary of State. If that is not a centralising, nationalising approach to schools, I do not know what is. That is one of my problems with the creation of academies without any local accountability built in to the system.

Moving on to the regional schools commissioners, they are not regional in the accepted, geographic sense of the word. In my part of West Yorkshire, our regional schools commissioner is in—dare I say the word?—Lancashire. I have to tell you that it does not go down particularly well to be described as being part of the Lancashire—and a little bit of West Yorkshire—schools commissioner. I jest, in a sense, to make the point: because of the way that the regional schools commissioners are set up, they do not understand and know the regions. Most of the north-west is made up of very different communities from the old textile and engineering communities that I serve in West Yorkshire. For one man—it is a man—to try to understand and have that soft information, rather than always relying on the hard data, to make decisions about accountability is much to be regretted.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, raised the shibboleth that is democratic accountability. We need to understand both those words. We are in danger, I think, of creating an education service in this country that has no, or very little, democratic input. For a service that is for every child, regardless of background, community or place, to have no democratically elected person to whom they can call on for help and guidance, and for those elected people to have no means by which to address those concerns, is a route down which we should not be going. Where else will those people turn? There is no point saying, as the Minister did, that parents are already writing to the reginal schools commissioners. No doubt they are—but they will not be some of the parents in the communities that I serve, for whom English is a second language and whose own literacy skills are not very good. They will not have those skills, so who does it fall on? Who in this chain will stand up for parents and their children who are not perhaps getting a fair deal locally? That is what I want to know and that is why this amendment was tabled. I have yet to hear the answers.

Those are my concerns about the words “democratic” and “accountability”. It is about having a local voice; someone who knows and who can be trusted and relied on to stand up for local people. I have yet to hear that. That is a huge shame and one that I think we will live to regret unless we create some means of achieving this outcome. Having made those remarks, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

They could certainly become an academy and do that, but they would have to have the same legal structure. I shall come on to that in a second.

Given that 65% of our secondary schools are now academies, it is increasingly sponsors for primary schools that we are seeking to source and develop. In small primary schools the MAT structure is even more critical, again making it necessary for sponsoring schools to be academies themselves that are able to form such a MAT rather than leaving small sponsored primary schools standing alone. We would certainly hope that any maintained school with the expertise, capacity and enthusiasm to support a struggling school would consider converting to academy status in order to do this, in the process unlocking all the benefits and opportunities that I have described.

We also anticipate that as more schools become academies and local authorities have fewer maintained schools left, as many already do, we will see members of local authority teams who are skilled at school improvement spinning out to set up their own MATs, and this development would be most welcome.

In conclusion, I shall quote Maura Regan, CEO of Carmel Education Trust, who attended our sponsor event last week. She said:

“We have to accept that what has happened historically in many local authorities has not worked. We are about revolution—we need to take a break from the past and embrace a new model whereby school leaders are increasingly in charge of their own destinies”.

In light of that, as well as my explanations, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I was interested in what the Minister said about the sponsorship process. I would be interested to learn a bit more about it—how sponsors are selected; how they are inducted; and how they are qualified. I guess there is a certain sensitivity in that one wants people to sponsor, so one does not want to place too much of a burden upon them; but on the other hand, it is important that if they sponsor, it is a success and there is not a clash of cultures but complementary working together. The Minister may like to write to me, or perhaps she will say a few words now about that process and particularly about induction so that we ensure that sponsors perhaps spend time in a school sitting at the back of the class so they have a sense of what it is like at the coalface—the chalkface, I should say.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am very happy to write to the noble Earl on that point.

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At this stage, I would like to address some remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, a man who I have respected for many years and who has a formidable reputation both within Scotland and furth of Scotland. However, I have to disagree with him for mentioning in his earlier remarks his disdain for what I think he characterised as the shibboleths of democratic deficit and human rights. I hope that I do not misquote him. I fear that I am about to disappoint him in this regard because I shall refer on more than one occasion to these important matters today and, indeed, at other stages of the Bill, because I believe that they lie at the heart of the Bill. The noble Lord mentioned a well-known international financial consultancy and said that he would prefer that it was given a role. That is not what I am referring to. To me, the issues of transparency and consultation are key because there is very little of the former and absolutely none of the latter, and that is indefensible.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am thinking of, for example, the need to build a children’s home or to produce more affordable housing in a community. Often in those circumstances, the local community is in practice very resistant to having that children’s home or affordable housing. In principle, one should consult local people about their local environment and act upon their wishes. In practice, it can sometimes be so difficult to build a children’s home in certain areas that they get built in the worst or least popular areas, where the local community is less likely to be vociferous, because that is where it is possible to do so. In the case that the Minister is arguing about it being so important that we do better for the education of our children and that the academy model—I know that we are debating this—has been shown to be quite effective in improving those outcomes much of the time, does he see that there should perhaps be some flexibility on how much weight one gives to local people in this choice?

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I shall speak briefly in support of the amendment. My noble friend said more eloquently than I can all that I have to say, so I shall keep my remarks brief.

I feel conflicted in listening to this debate because the Government have taken such an intransigent line on there being only one solution to improve the performance of schools—that is, to make them academies. Because of that, I feel pushed into a position that is not actually mine. I do not think that local authorities are the be-all and end-all. Like my noble friend, I, too, chaired improvement boards in many local authorities when I was a Minister—including in Manchester, which was not easy what with coming from there. I was quite clear what my responsibilities were: to call the local authority to account. I think many Ministers have done that, too. The dichotomies that are inevitably a result of the position that the Government have taken are very regrettable because they prevent us debating the real issues about how we can best put the ingredients into schools, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, identified them, that will help them all succeed.

I take issue with three points. The reason why I support the amendment is that it is trying to keep options open and to make the process of deciding the way forward, when a school is coasting or underperforming, one that must consider a range of options instead of going down only one route. The first point, as I said, is the Government’s assumption that academisation can be the only solution. My noble friend is quite right: you can sustain that position only if you think that that will in every single circumstance, 100%, improve every school. We know from the evidence, although the Government are reluctant to talk about it in any reasonable way, that that is not the case. Academisation, certainly over a period of time, does not necessarily produce the ingredients that we know are required for excellence in education.

Secondly, we have heard a lot of comments about this Bill handing responsibility and accountability for performance back to professionals, and away from local authorities who have not held schools to account. Let us just be clear that when schools underperform, the first people responsible are the head teacher and the teachers in that school. They are responsible for that. Yes, local authorities have had a duty to call those schools to account but not all professionals are good ones; not all head teachers are good, either. I do not want that point to be lost because so far in this debate it has been.

Thirdly, I feel very strongly that the provisions in the Bill that would completely cut out parents from any say in the process of what happens to an underperforming or coasting school that their child attends is completely wrong and cannot be justified. My children are now well grown up and I am into a generation of grandchildren. However, if I was directly responsible for children in such a school I would be absolutely incensed that I could have no say and would not be called to a meeting. That is wrong in principle. In terms of the outcomes that such a process would achieve, it would be regrettable.

I support the spirit of this amendment for those reasons. We need a much more nuanced debate and to retain the possibility that there are other ways forward for some schools. We certainly should involve parents.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the Minister replies, I want to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, if she might help with a bit of clarification. Before asking her that question, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for his helpful comments earlier. Perhaps I should have said that I have an interest in this area: I am a landowner and I am interested in property development.

I think the noble Baroness also attended the meeting at the beginning of the week with the head teachers and regional schools commissioners. What I found most interesting about that was the impact on governance that academisation seems to have. The noble Baroness will be aware that the Chief Inspector of Schools has been concerned for quite some time about the variability in the quality of governance in schools. There was quite a discussion of governance in that meeting. What struck me listening to that discussion was that perhaps the academy process is a little like Teach First—or, for social work, Step Up—because it suddenly gives the opportunity to bring a whole new pool of talent, drive and expertise into the governing bodies. It seems possible that one justification for the Government’s process is that as a systemic approach it is a way to bring a whole slew of expertise into the governance and leadership of schools that is not so easily available by the normal process. I have not had experience as a school governor. Would the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, care to comment?

[Baroness Pinnock]

I am happy to respond. I am still a school governor and many noble Lords will be aware that the governance of maintained schools has had to change, and rightly so, for the reasons that have been given. By September of this year, school governing bodies had been completely overhauled. Many school governors are now co-opted for their specific expertise or experience. On my governing body we have two people who work in local businesses, an IT expert, someone from the finance sector to help with that side of things, as well as a couple of parent governors, staff governors, and by choice, a local authority governor. School governance has been substantially strengthened by these regulations and, where it is done well, they will inject two important elements. One is expertise and understanding, along with keeping the involvement of staff members and parents, and the other is that it is locally based. At the school where I remain on the governing body, it is local business people who are involved. That would be true across the piece, which is to everyone’s enormous advantage.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Baroness.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 16, 17, 21 and 26 to 29, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Watson, Lord Hunt and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Bakewell. I will try to keep my remarks to the point but, before doing so, I will respond to a couple of accusations made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The first, that we are being dishonest, is quite an accusation and I would take great objection to it if I thought he really meant it. He said that it is dishonest that we should just pass a law turning every school into an academy. Maybe if he feels that is something we should do, he would like to bring an amendment to that effect. I made it clear last week in response to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and again in a letter this morning which I hope he has now received, that the default position for a coasting school is not to become an academy. I suspect that in many cases they may well be able to improve sufficiently on their own or with limited support. I hope I have made that absolutely clear.

Secondly, there was a suggestion that I never mention maintained schools. That is partly because the Bill is about academies and I am trying to keep to the point. Of course there are many successful maintained schools and I pay tribute to them. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, took me on a most enjoyable trip to Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets, which I was particularly impressed with. I was struck by its approach to CPD.

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[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, as one who can speak but not sing, I shall speak very briefly. I thank the noble Baroness for her amendment. It gives me the chance to clarify the position on the earliest entrants to school in their earliest days in school. How long does it take before support becomes available? It has been put to me that some children require this plan to be drawn up, which may take time, before the support, of whatever kind, is available. Anything that can be done to advance that will clearly be to the advantage of the child. The younger you start, the better.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, this amendment prompts a question in my mind, which the Minister might be able to write to me about. Some schools are better at catering for children with special educational needs, so they attract more of them; they get a reputation as being good at it. One would not wish those schools to be penalised because they happen to be good at working with children with special educational needs. In the metric that the Government are developing to judge progress and whether or not a school is coasting, I hope we can be assured that over the three-year period there is not a risk that we penalise a school because it is very good at working with children with special educational needs. The children may not make so much progress academically but they will have been given excellent support in other ways. I hope that makes sense.

I will say one other thing. I can see that the notion I expressed earlier about allowing children to fail, particularly children in care, is a difficult concept, which I should probably correct somewhat. What I was trying to say is: allow children to fail, fail and fail again until they are successful, and each time they fail allow them not to feel so badly about failing that they do not want to try again but allow them to keep on trying until they are successful. Obviously, ideally one wants to help them to be successful the first time round.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I apologise for speaking again here, but perhaps I may add something. I am the special educational needs governor of a primary school, and when the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, was talking about the time it takes to get a statement and so forth, I was thinking about the cost of supporting children with special educational needs. As noble Lords will know, a primary school receives about £4,000 a head, and the average cost of supporting those with special educational needs is about £8,000. It can vary from £4,000 to something like £16,000 or £17,000 if there has to be an extra teaching assistant because the child is disruptive. On average it takes a couple of years to get a statement for those who are at the extreme end and it will cost about £16,000. A small primary school finds it very difficult to cope in terms of resources because budgets are so tight at the moment.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

I suppose what flows from that is that the educational attainment of other children may not progress as fast as it might because the resources are focused on the most disadvantaged children. So, again, a primary school that is good at attracting children with special educational needs may appear to perform less well—indeed, it may actually be performing less well—academically, although it is doing a good job with children with special educational needs, because its resources are being spent on those children rather than on the wider population.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I remind the noble Earl that schools receive extra resources for those young people—especially now, with the pupil premium. However, there is an overlap between the two groups and, although we have to be careful to ensure that the pupil premium resources are not spent exclusively on those with special educational needs, there is a reason to use some of those resources for some of the activities.