Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Grand Committee

I am not sure what consultation is needed to define a coasting school. We have enough academic and practical evidence about what a good school should provide for our children and what helps them to be rounded and grounded. I fear for children and teachers if the Government seriously think that coasting applies only to academic results. It is a terrible way to look at life. Will the Government please put a better definition in the Bill?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments concern the idea of what is coasting. Somewhat late in the day, the Government have given a not bad example of what they consider to be academic coasting. But I would say to my noble colleagues that I like the one about special educational needs—and shall we take my declaration of interests in that department as read? But unless you get that identified and the support and structure going through, you cannot get a good measure, even on the academic level. You just cannot because it takes different learning patterns and strategies. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I have—let us say—interacted quite considerably on this subject over the past couple of years, so we can take that as something that we will develop during the passage of the Bill.

However, as has already been pointed out, what about the rest of the activities that take place within a school? I also wanted to put into this the final outcomes of a school—“What are you doing to send people on?”. This brings me back once again to apprenticeships, in that how you access what comes next is surely the best definition of success—far better than any test or exam result. I would like to know how that is going to be brought into the equation because school is part of a process. We tend to talk about things as if they are entities unto themselves and you never leave: or you drop off the world and emerge somewhere else.

Then we come to my favourite part: why on earth, when we spend so much time talking about competitive sport and team games, do we not pay some attention to them? It is not just about the number of people you have or the number of trophies your school wins, it is how you get people to play sport after school. That is the primary function. A very successful school sports programme is something that fills out the second and third teams of various sports for a long time—much more so than the odd star you will get by luck or accident every now and again. The same could be said of the arts.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I offer my apologies for not speaking independently but I will be on my feet in a matter of minutes in the Chamber speaking about the Olympics’ sports legacy and regeneration. But I wanted to be present when the noble Lord, Lord Addington, introduced his amendment because I am strongly supportive of broadening the definition of coasting—looking at the arts and, in particular, sport. Physical education, sport and physical literacy in schools are exceptionally important. I have always believed that the Secretary of State should report annually to both Houses on the state of those three aspects in all schools, and the Bill gives us the opportunity for that report to be made on coasting schools. I support the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I very much hope that when I have the opportunity at a later stage to read the response from the Minister, they will be well received.

[Lord Addington]

I thank the noble Lord for his support and appreciate that even he cannot be in two places at once—although he does a very good impersonation of it at times.

Unless you broaden, much of the hyperbole we have been getting and that all political parties indulge in about making it a broader experience is going to be missed. The academic model is great but it is always quantifiable; there are always changes and caveats. If you miss those, effectively you are labelling somebody who has done the best they can as failing, coasting, not achieving—call it what you like. Unless you give us an idea about how you are going to take the rest of this out, you are ignoring the real function; that is, the socialising function. Sport, arts and further adult life, basically—what is your foundation for expanding on here? If we do not get some definition, and it would be much better to have something in the Bill or something that at least directly tells you where to find it—big letters, nice and clear; we are bears of very little brain, show us where and show us the process by which you are going to change this—you are actually going to cause more trouble than anything else.

I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Nash, replies, he will have something that really goes to the heart of this. If he does not, I have this vision of lengthy litigation and squabbling as we try to readjust and go forward. We have to know what we are talking about.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)]

I also give my apologies, as I have to go to a charity reception at 3.40 pm and will not be able to stay later. It seems to me that we are in danger of making this rather too complicated, and I take issue with some of the amendments this afternoon. There has been an awful lot of noise about the definition, which has come rather late and has been a problem. The Minister’s letter is very helpful, but it would have been more helpful to have had it earlier. Nevertheless, it has made things much clearer.

All noble Lords who have dealt in one way or another with schools in various parts of the country know what coasting schools are: they are schools that kind of float along below the radar, and we have all had experience of them over the years. The interesting and the challenging thing is that this potentially will include a lot of schools around the country, which is something I will ask a question about later. They are the sort of schools that, superficially, often have very good exam and SAT results, but which, underneath that, are pretty unimpressive. We have never really put any focus on those schools.

Other schools of course may be doing brilliantly in terms of the entry levels of the pupils that they work with. Handled properly, this will allow us to praise the schools that are doing brilliantly with pupils and making extremely good progress. I speak with a very strong personal interest in this in a variety of ways, but particularly in terms of the work I am doing currently with Ark, which works with extremely disadvantaged communities. I would not want the sort of schools I work with to be let off the hook on pupil progress. The danger of including an awful lot of other stuff in the definition is that it would let schools off the hook again when it comes to making sure that we drive up standards for the most disadvantaged children around the country. I would be very concerned about that.

For schools to get good academic progress from their pupils, all of the things we have just talked about have to be included. I have been around an awful lot of schools in the last five years and have not seen many that deliver great progress without doing the arts and the range of other things that we are talking about. That is integral to a good school, and therefore I am a bit sceptical that we need to lay that all out again. The system now has a lot more data than it used to have, and there are a lot more data out there than used to be available. The encouraging thing is that we have the headline data, which all of us, in different ways, have had concerns about at times because it does not necessarily take account of progress. The key thing that has changed is that we now have good progress data for pupils, which we used not to have. In addition, we have Ofsted reports, although there is a problem with focusing too much on Ofsted reports, as I know from personal experience, in that sometimes they lag quite far behind; a school may not have been delivering in the period since the last Ofsted report. That can happen in particular with schools that have been outstanding for a long time and therefore have not been visited by inspectors for a considerable length of time.

I am very concerned about the idea of setting up another, completely separate set of quite complicated accountabilities. Although I understand the idea behind it from my colleagues here, there is a danger that if we start to take account of the curriculum, gender, sports, arts and so on, that creates extra pressure for a lot of head teachers and makes life more complicated and more stressful for them. I know from bitter experience that they are anxious enough about Ofsted inspections, so we have to be careful about adding to the complication.

If we were looking at only one year’s data, I would be really worried, because we all know you can have bad years or a cohort that does not perform. If we were only looking at progress for one year, I would be worried. But the combination of several years’ performance and, crucially, several years’ progress data is important and is a step forward.

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[Lord Nash]

I think—although I will write to the noble Lord—that it will not be calculated; they will not be in the stats, because they will not be there at the beginning.

The Bill provides that the Secretary of State will notify a school when it is coasting, and this makes the school eligible for intervention. As set out in the draft Schools Causing Concern guidance, which is currently out for consultation, regional schools commissioners will then consider whether the school has the capacity to secure sufficient improvement without formal intervention. In some cases, a school which falls within the coasting definition may have a new head teacher, governors or leadership team who can demonstrate that they have an effective plan to raise standards sufficiently. In other cases, they may be able to buddy up on a short-term basis with a nearby school and, in others, external support may be necessary from an NLE.

Where appropriate, regional schools commissioners will use their formal powers to ensure a coasting school receives the support and challenge that it needs, which may include becoming an academy. In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, it is by no means certain that coasting means becoming an academy; there may be many different ways in which schools can improve. As he knows from his excellent work on the London Challenge, that could be school-to-school support. We see one of the advantages of academisation as the clear structure of school-to-school support that it can bring, but that may necessarily be on a temporary basis for a coasting school.

Amendments 1 and 2, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and Amendment 5 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, propose alternative approaches to identifying and addressing schools in which pupils do not fulfil their potential. Amendment 2 gives Ofsted and the local authority responsibility for determining which schools are coasting. Amendment 5 seeks to broaden the definition to include achievement in sports and the arts and access to training, further education and the world of work. My concern with such approaches is that they remove certainty and transparency for schools; it would be unclear for any school whether it would be identified as coasting and, as such, could become eligible for intervention.

Being a teacher or a head teacher is a tough job. It is also in my view one of the most important jobs, if not the most important job, in our country at this time, given how highly geared these roles are to the future success of our country. We want to make the environment in which our teachers and head teachers operate easier, not more difficult, and more certain, not more uncertain. Our schools are inspected by Ofsted; that is right, and there is no doubt that our schools take great notice of this. But there is already enough uncertainty in the minds of our teachers and head teachers as to how their school will be rated by Ofsted without adding to that uncertainty and, yes, anxiety, by adding a vague coasting definition by which they are measured. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for her observations on this issue.

We have chosen to base our proposed coasting definition on published performance data precisely so that schools can easily understand whether their performance will equate to them being identified as coasting. Under our proposed approach, many schools can already be reassured that their 2014 and 2015 performance means that they will not be deemed to be coasting when—looking at three years of data, as we propose—we identify coasting schools for the first time in 2016. Such a certain, data-driven approach has been welcomed by many school leaders and organisations representing them. For example, the chief executive of Outward Grange Academies Trust has said that he welcomes the definition,

“in particular the fact that it is based on performance data not Ofsted and the fact that it is measurable every year and compares performance at similar schools over time”.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, if the primary definition here is based on academic achievement, where does it place other objectives that come through schools? I have spent a lot of time on the school sport strategy. It consults; it goes through; it gives duties; it relates to other bits of government. If you remove a certain aspect of a school’s activity from any reference, why do we bother making any references at all?

[Lord Nash]

The reason why it is so important in primary—and it is again based on pupils making the right levels of progress—is the sad statistic that if you get better than level 4 at key stage 2 at primary, you have a more-than-90% chance of getting five good GCSEs; but if you get worse than level 4 at key stage 2 at primary, you have a 6% chance. We all get fixated on GCSE results, but the real work has to start in primary.

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[Lord Addington]

My Lords, we are at the point of clarification and probing here, and sport is just an example. This is about the whole-school approach. What we are getting at is that academic achievement is the driver here. If the academic overrides everything, we are in danger of changing the character of an achieving school that is very successful in a different area. How does that get taken into account? It does not seem to be something that is taken into account when looking at academic progress, which is dominating this. Some more guidance there would help.

[Lord Nash]

We should discuss this and I am very happy to do that. It is taken into account by Ofsted and will be taken into account by the regional schools commissioners. All good schools have a broad approach because they know how it pays back in academic results. However, in terms of having a metric which is clear and assessable, we believe that our approach is the correct one.

As my noble friend Lady Perry said, the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, was based on practical common sense. As a former chairman of Ofsted, chairman of the Future Leaders Trust and adviser to Ark, she is of course hugely experienced. Her practical experience—instead of theoretical analysis—was extremely helpful. I am grateful for her thoughts and her point that the definitions proposed in the amendments are just too complicated. She also made the point that good schools tend to provide a broad and balanced curriculum anyway. She is right that our new progress data are so much more robust, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said. I am also grateful for the noble Baroness’s comments about RSCs. We will be resourcing them up substantially over the next year, and I will be able to say more about this once the spending review has finished. I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s comments. As she said, Ofsted of course takes a lot of these issues into account.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, commented on the importance of leadership. Ofsted focuses on this heavily, which is the reason why we reduced the Ofsted categories down to four, one of which is leadership. We focus on that substantially. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, also talked about the importance of leadership. I could not agree more. This is the most important issue facing us in schools, and we have an active programme of leadership in our schools. We are currently looking at all our leadership programmes to see whether they are fit for purpose, and have recently introduced a new leadership programme, the Future Leaders Trust MAT CEO course, for chief executives of MATs. We are very focused on making sure that our leadership training is adequate. We have had a lot of sessions with different regional schools commissioners, bringing in the top-performing MATs to explain to the newer MATs how they operate their organisations. There has been a huge amount of sharing of good practice.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, made a number of comments. When he mentioned his involvement with TES, I was reminded that I had my first interview with TES last week. I am rather naive on the political front, as you know, and I made the mistake of saying that if we are to have enough schools in future, we would have to get away from the concept that they all had to be on one or two floors. That resulted in a headline—not in the noble Lord’s paper, but in another one—that I was advocating skyscraper schools. That shows how naive I am on these matters; I should stay away from journalists as much as possible.

We will be setting up a competition, called the Knight competition, for renaming RSCs, so that the noble Lord does not get confused with the Royal Shakespeare Company in future. It will apply to grammars, I assure him of that. This definition is very focused on schools that appear to be doing well but are in fact coasting. In fact, some of the original thinking behind this was aimed very much at those apparently high-performing schools. From 2016 onwards, the secondary coasting definition will be based on the new headline accountability measure. Over three years, it will be the only measure that we look at. It is very robust, and will measure the progress of all pupils in the school. That will include a grammar school with a high attaining cohort making less good progress than such pupils should be making.

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The second point is whether these regulations should be affirmative or negative. Having heard the debate, I am absolutely clear that they should be affirmative. Taking the comments made by noble Lords, there will have to be a great deal of discussion around the Government’s final determination on the regulations. From time to time, the Government will want to change them, which is absolutely right, but they should come to the attention of Parliament and we should be clear that there will be debates in both Houses. The Delegated Powers Committee has made clear that it thinks it should be by affirmative resolution. My advice to the Minister is to accept it because he would lose a vote in the Chamber. It is very rare for a Government not to accept the recommendations of the DPC. These regulations are so important, and I hope that he might even accept the proposals today. I beg to move.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, primarily because, having looked at the end of my Amendment 5 and the end of Amendment 8, we have the same last 13 words. Basically, there is not much between us on this. A lot of the debate has been on the fact that we just do not quite know what we are getting into. If this is going to change and the Secretary of State or a Minister is going to change their mind, we have to know, or we are not doing our jobs. We are utterly irrelevant if we do not insist on knowing. I hope that the Minister will be able to accept this amendment, or something like it, in the course of the day. There is no reason not to do it. There is a great deal of confusion, which I know he is doing his best to sort out; there is also disagreement. There should be a way in which we can input into this system as it changes and develops because, undoubtedly, it will as it goes on.

To echo others—indeed, they echoed what I said at Second Reading about not going to an all-academy status or something like it—we will always have discussions about this while we have this death of a thousand cuts or piecemeal change, call it what you like. We have got to know what we are dealing with. These amendments would be one way to make sure that we do.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 3 and 8 tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. As I promised earlier, I will also cover the similar element of Amendment 5 relating to the coasting regulations from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. Amendment 3 seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out the definition of coasting. This goes beyond the current power in Clause 1, which provides that the Secretary of State may by regulations define what coasting means in relation to a school.

We have been very clear that we intend to make such regulations. In June, we provided an indicative set of regulations to Parliament for scrutiny. Last month we launched a public consultation on our overall approach to coasting and the detail of the definition set out in the draft regulations. I can reassure the House that our intention has always been that regulations will be made but I appreciate that, with this amendment being laid in this House as well as in the other place, there continues to be concern that regulations will not always be made. I have reiterated the Government’s commitment to making regulations today but will also reflect before Report on whether the primary legislation should be more explicit on this point.

Amendments 5 and 8 seek to ensure that the regulations defining coasting are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure each time the regulations are changed. As I have said, we published comprehensive draft regulations in June so that Parliament could understand and scrutinise our proposed approach. From these draft regulations, the House will be aware that the proposed approach relies heavily on references to the department’s performance tables which capture schools’ performance data, as well as defining the specific coasting bar which applies in each year.

Results for primary and secondary schools are published at two different points each year, which might necessitate changes to the regulations as national performance standards change. The performance tables are also technical in nature and so, if minor changes are made to their layout or content, this may also necessitate minor, consequential amendments to regulations. A change as small as a revision to a column heading in the performance tables would require a change to the regulations. Similarly, if the department were to change or merely update the published guidance regarding the calculation of Progress 8, for example, the regulations would again need to be updated. Requiring the consent of both Houses each time such changes were needed would seem an excessive use of Parliament’s time. We already publicly consult, however, when significant changes are made to accountability systems—for instance, as we did on the new measures coming in in 2016. I reassure noble Lords that, if major changes to the accountability system underpinning the coasting definition were proposed, such public consultation would therefore happen again.

I hope that, having seen the detailed illustrative regulations, as well as hearing my explanations today, Peers will understand why it would be very difficult to subject the regulations to the affirmative procedure each time a change is needed. I do, however, appreciate the concern of noble Lords who have tabled these amendments, as well as the concern of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that due process should be followed. I will therefore reflect if there are any further reassurances that I can make on this point at Report. I hope that I have been able to assure noble Lords that we take their concerns very seriously, and I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Addington]

My Lords, my Amendment 16 addresses this later on. We might even be able to kill two birds with one stone.

[Lord Nash]

We may bring this up again in Amendment 16, but I cannot really say more than I have already. I was about to give an example of a very successful academy. I shall move on but will address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about Ofsted results for academies and local authority maintained schools. As I tried to explain at Second Reading in relation to Ofsted ratings, over the last five years—or less than that—we have taken more than 1,300 failing schools off local authorities and turned them into academies. That is clearly why there are many more schools rated as failing among the more limited number of academies than there are among local authority schools, because we have dealt with the matter in that way. I am sure we will return to this, but I reiterate our belief that regional schools commissioners are driving up standards and issuing warning notices much more stringently than many local authorities. Following this discussion, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Addington]

11: After Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
“Regional Schools Commissioners
All Regional Schools Commissioners must apply uniform performance standards and criteria in fulfilling the duties laid upon them under sections 1 to 12 of this Act.”

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[Lord Addington]

My Lords, this is an attempt to try to gain a little more clarity about the role of the regional schools commissioners. The aim of this amendment is to provide them with uniform criteria. I could expand at considerable length but this issue has been raised in the Commons Select Committee. We just want to know what criteria these individuals will follow. They undoubtedly have extreme merit and are doing a tremendously good job. I am afraid that I was not able to meet them on Monday. What criteria will they follow? Will the same standards apply across the country? It would be absurd if commissioners worked to different standards literally just across a line. So could we have some idea about what they are doing and can we hear that now? It will go into Hansard and we will have a little more guidance. If there is no way of applying uniform criteria, we have a real problem. I am assuming that the Government know how this is to be achieved—because, if not, there will be a big hole. I hope that there is no big hole. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, my Amendment 12 is in this group. The point the noble Lord has raised is highly appropriate. We want assurances about a consistency of approach throughout the country.

My own amendment is probing and I would like to have it confirmed that the function of the RSC can be carried out by a combined authority, as defined in Clause 8 of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill as it left your Lordships’ House a few months ago. If my reading of the Bill is right, can the Minister say whether it is intended in any circumstances that the RSC function would indeed be given to a combined authority? If not, perhaps he could say why not.

The Minister will be aware that the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill gives a combined authority extremely wide powers; for example, the function of the police and crime commissioner and the entire commissioning and provision of health and social care can be devolved to the combined authority. Indeed, any function of a public authority in the area of the combined authority can be devolved to the combined authority. The definition of a public authority is very wide and includes a Minister of the Crown or government department. My reading therefore is that the functions of the RSC could very easily be given to the combined authority.

I find it interesting that in Greater Manchester—which, with Cornwall, is a pioneer of the combined authority concept—it has already been established in a memorandum of understanding between the Government and the combined authorities that health and social care will be devolved in their entirety to the combined authority. Obviously, I know more about health than education but there are great similarities. They are two essentially national services, locally delivered. Ministers are accountable to Parliament for their overall performance. Money is voted by Parliament for their funding.

If you look at the Explanatory Notes of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill as it left your Lordships’ House, it is interesting that clearly the core purpose of a combined authority is to boost growth and the local economy. If health and social care are considered to be part of that, why on earth is education not, given the Government’s own concerns that young people are leaving our schools system without sufficient skills to go into employment? I cannot think of a more closely related service than education to the economic prospects of a locality. The Explanatory Notes mention skills but are silent on education. I am assuming that the Department for Education has opted out of this. I would be fascinated to know why.

I would have thought that in some circumstances the combined authority or the mayor could easily perform the role of the RSC. As we have such a democratic deficit in education now, it would be one way of taking that—and I have listened to what noble Lords have said about the quality of RSCs and the work that they do—but putting it back into some form of local accountability. In the end this accountability issue will have to be addressed. But overall, in trying to ensure consistency of approach and linking RSCs back into some kind of democratic process at local level, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I are at one on this.

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[Lord Nash]

As I said, we believe that this is not just devolution but devo max, if you like, to the front line.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, enjoyable as that little bit of hack and thrust was, to go back to my amendment, it was basically tabled to seek information and clarification. There is a framework and I wanted to look at it.

I was interested to hear that there is a degree of judgment to be used. I was wondering whether we could work into that judgment whether a school has a decent sports policy, arts policy or something like that. It might be an interesting place to include whether the Government’s sports policy is being implemented properly. I am sure that we will discuss the arts later. Once again, one is trying to get all bits of government singing at least the same tune, if not the same words; that would be a step forward. However, I think I have enough information to be going on with and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.