Teachers: Academies and Free Schools
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend for raising this subject, which is one we should have a look at every now and again. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, on her maiden speech. As the first person from these Benches to speak after her, I feel sure that we will have much to discuss—and will hopefully even agree occasionally. That is about as much as we can realistically hope for, but occasional agreement is something we should always strive for.
This is an interesting subject on a very interesting day for education. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has had a fairly busy day; not quite as busy as that of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but busy none the less. When we start to talk about what is required of a teacher, it is under the weight of expectation that we do not have qualified teachers or people who are trained to be teachers taking on some of the teaching roles in a number of our schools. The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, said that those who are recruiting these people are not looking to have teachers who are not qualified but are merely trying to get the best person for the job.
The noble Lord, Lord Nash, said you might have somebody with a PhD—but I am afraid that when he said PhD or doctorate, I went back to my own higher education experience. There were some people who wrote brilliantly and published innovative work but whose lectures were an inducement to almost catatonic sleep. So the qualification itself is not always going to be sufficient to allow them into a classroom: a degree of knowledge on how to deliver information is also required. It is that balancing act that we have to deal with here. Certain people have these qualities naturally, but assessing that is incredibly difficult. The capacity for the cock-up school of history to establish itself becomes greater—there are no absolute guarantees, but it is always there.
I move on to a specific interest of mine. I must declare an interest here: I am dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association. The fact is that at the moment special educational needs is underrepresented in any form of training. In certain places, on certain QTS courses, you get two hours. I do not know how many times I have said this, but I once described this to a friend outside as follows. “What does this mean?”, they asked. “Well, it is things like dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, autism et cetera. Those are the hidden ones you will find in very large numbers—maybe 20% of the class will have these to an extent”. They then turned round to me and said: “It would take me two hours to learn how to spell all those”. This is 20%, potentially, of a classroom.
At the moment, this is something which is not taught. You may not have not had any formal teacher training and you may get, say, three severe dyslexics in your class. They may be disruptive: a perfectly natural defensive strategy for somebody who struggles in a classroom is to disrupt that classroom so no teaching takes place and they are not exposed and vulnerable. It is a perfectly natural reaction. The other one is to go to sleep in the middle of a lesson and avoid everything. Whatever happens, the teacher has a legal obligation to teach those people and those around them. If you do not know how to address and engage that group because you do not understand those problems, you are guaranteeing failure, regardless of where you are.
We have talked much about selective education today. If selective education is to work, you must address that, otherwise you are consigning large numbers of groups to automatic failure when selection comes in. Unless you get some form of training for all teachers to be able to recognise these conditions, you are going to guarantee that you write off this group and possibly damage the education of those around them. Dyslexia is only the most common syndrome; there are also dyscalculia, dyspraxia and autism, particularly higher-functioning autism—a person who may not be able to socially interact with the class. If you cannot spot these conditions and, hopefully, engage with the parents, you have a problem.
I hope that we are at the right time to take action. I did some work on this issue, tabling a Private Member’s Bill and finding people who agreed with it. I then discovered that those involved in the Castle report, led by Stephen Munday, largely agreed with me, either because they met me and decided that the work I was leading and helping with in a group was great, or because they were going down the same path anyway and I was simply talking to the same people they were. The reason does not really matter; there was a degree of agreement there.
I hope the Minister will take on board the fact that I am prepared to help and communicate by leading the groups who have been spoken about today to the department to say that we should get this instituted. We should get these groups in and talk to them, and we should make sure that there is an enforcement package. If we do not, those groups that we are dealing with—the 20% who can disrupt the education of others—are not going to be addressed, and they will end up not only failing themselves but damaging the work of others.
This debate will be an opportunity for the Minister to tell me what is going to be done and that the department will engage with this issue. The time is right. We have a legal duty to teach these people. They are a huge part of our system. There are some, such as myself, who struggle through the system, either through good luck or with the help of the occasional brilliant person, but that is not enough. We are wasting too many people, and we are wasting the time of teachers who are putting in effort but doing the wrong thing and, on occasion, actually making the situation worse.
Surely it is time to act. Everyone agrees that this should happen. Two years ago I described this as “the bleeding obvious”. Hopefully, now it is time to enact this. Let us do it now. Whatever else we do, this will make life a little easier.
Schools
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that if you are to get people ready for selection you must have done some groundwork by making sure that they are properly taught? Will he give some assurance, given Stephen Munday’s review and the Carter report, that special educational needs will be properly covered and implemented in all teacher training, particularly if a pupil is going up for a selection process? They will otherwise be guaranteeing that anybody with a hidden special educational need is at a massive disadvantage. This will also run counter to a lot of law. Can we make sure that it happens?
Independent Schools: Teacher Training
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I cannot give an accurate figure because that involvement is very varied, but we have many free schools that have been sponsored by independent schools. We have two London Academies of Excellence—one focusing on high-performing pupils in sixth form in the East End, sponsored by Brighton College, and another opening in Tottenham, sponsored by Highgate. We have Haileybury, which is sponsoring a school in Hertfordshire and we have Eton and Holyport College, of course. There are many other examples of independent schools engaged in the free school programme in one way or another.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that independent schools have a very good record of dealing with such things as special educational needs, probably because of the cost basis of the relationship? Would that be taken on board in any exercise that looks at teacher training generally? If 20% of your pupils have a special educational need, you should be able to teach them.
Lord Nash
I agree with the noble Lord. Indeed, Andrew Carter’s review stated that there was some variability in the quality of course content in relation to SEND training in ITT. Following that review, the Secretary of State for Education commissioned Stephen Munday to take forward an independent expert group tasked with developing a framework of core initial teacher training.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, having listened to much of this debate, I feel it is right to comment on one or two of the previous speeches. One in particular sums it up. The BBC is going to be an incredibly hot topic during the next few months, as is the whole public sector broadcasting system, regardless of the result of the referendum. I hope that we will be able to get some form of cross-party unity on this.
Any further comments from me have been rendered superfluous by the speech of my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter, so I shall restrict myself to the substitutes’ bench and cheering duties thereafter. Having listened to and thought about that speech, I believe that the House and I would be much happier if I take this role.
The rest of my speech will be directed towards education. I must make another small confession. This is something of a continuum from the last Queen’s Speech debate, when I said that, in dealing with education, if you do not know how to teach somebody with specific problems and are then expected to achieve success with people who have those specific problems, you are going to fail or underachieve. I described it as “the bleedin’ obvious”. Whether that is unparliamentary language or not, I have not changed my mind. Since then, I decided to go away and do something positive about it and have spent much of the last year speaking to people about how we change this. I have spoken to people in virtually all the pressure groups and in academia and have looked at government responses on this issue. I looked at about four government responses on special educational needs or aspects of them, which said that we needed people who were better trained to deal with this. A volunteer researcher working for me got through 39 other documents written by learned people which recommended this. At that point I told him to stop. I am still flirting with the idea of holding a publicity event with all the documents piled up on a very sturdy table. I have put a Private Member’s Bill into the mix to suggest that we should take action to ensure that teachers are given at least some awareness training in dealing with those with the most commonly occurring special educational needs.
It is absurd to expect somebody who has a different learning pattern to get the best out of a standardised one. I draw attention to my declared interests, particularly my role as president of the British Dyslexia Association. The difficulty with a “talk and chalk” method of teaching—that is, talk, write something on the blackboard, pupils write it down—is that some pupils may find it incredibly difficult to write things down. Their short-term memory means that they cannot remember things. They look up and down and do not take in what is said because it is difficult for them to do that. However, that is the main method of classroom teaching. In addition, those with dyscalculia interpret maths as being funny symbols and somebody talking in a foreign language. My knowledge of this, of course, is not good. Those with dyspraxia who have problems with vision and writing need to be taught in a different way. Autism may also be added to the mix. Unless teachers are aware that some pupils have different learning patterns and teach them in a different way, those pupils will achieve poorer results or fail. Twenty per cent of the population come into these categories.
There is probably no definitive example of any of the spectrum disorders. For some bizarre reason they all overlap, which makes the situation even more complicated. The classic stereotypes of somebody with Asperger’s and somebody with dyslexia are almost totally contradictory. However, these conditions overlap and can both occur in the same person. People with these needs will always struggle in the classroom. One also needs to counter certain perceptions. Having talked to people in the teaching unions and the professions, I know that a certain perception is declining but nevertheless still exists—namely, that you can be taught to teach anybody if you can be taught to teach well. That is not the case.
Teachers need to understand what conditions exist and how to adapt their teaching style accordingly. They also need to understand that a pupil who struggles in the classroom will also struggle in the playground. All these conditions come together. In addition, some pupils may have speech and language problems. Teachers need a basic awareness of these conditions. However, there is no guarantee that teacher training courses will supply this awareness. Some people receive as little as two hours’ training in this area. I have told this joke before: a friend of mine, in discussing the two-hour timeframe, ran through various conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and a few others. He then said, “I could not learn to spell those words in that time but you are supposed to carry out a classroom intervention to help pupils with those conditions. That is not going to happen”. As I say, 20% of the population come into these categories.
Regardless of what is said about education structures, unless we get this right we are guaranteed to have a higher wastage rate than is necessary if we are talking just about statistics. If we are talking about individuals, they will not fulfil their potential. In terms of personal happiness, wealth—you name it—they will have problems. Making sure that we change this would be a major step forward. I have spoken to people from all parties and bodies and hope that over the next year we can take a major step to ensure that the education system is more responsive to this issue. Somebody may say, “We have taken up phonics now, and that is how you teach dyslexics”. That is right but those with dyslexia still learn more slowly with the aid of phonics than those without dyslexia. If a teacher sets his teaching pace based on the conventional classroom, those who have the conditions I have described will be left behind. This is not about working harder but working smarter and accepting that these disabilities will be with people for life. The response tends to be to provide extra lessons. That is like asking a very small man to carry sacks of coal. He will break down. If you ask a person to do something that they find incredibly difficult to do and overload them, they will break down. Instances of such pupils failing and shutting off from the other children in the classroom have been recorded ad infinitum. We must make teachers more aware of “smarter” working to tackle this situation.
My dream is that in future these conditions will be identified by teachers telling parents, “Your child has condition X”, rather than parents, having endured several years of their child’s failure and unhappiness, telling the teacher, “Don’t you think he might have such and such a condition?”. We should at least seek to achieve that over the next few years.
Regional Schools Commissioners
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Nash
The noble Lord makes a very good point. We will publish the following information on the GOV.UK website this month: a high-level outline of the regional schools decision-making framework; each regional schools commissioner’s regional vision; a description of the national schools commissioner’s role; and the terms of reference for head teacher boards.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that if a political decision is made in a region that affected, say, a third of the primary schools in that region, the only way you can get an answer under the current arrangement would be to go directly to the Minister in charge—the Minister who is answering the question? What preparation has his office made for receiving inquiries from a third of the primary schools in any one of these regions?
Lord Nash
I think that it is unlikely that any particular decision would affect so many schools, but if the noble Lord is referring to small primaries, we are very conscious of the issues facing them and are very keen to support them. We believe that they will be more sustainable as part of groups working together in MATs. As Lucy Powell said in the other place only yesterday, it is acknowledged that schools work better in local regional clusters, and we are keen to see them be able to do that.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Addington
“Regional Schools Commissioners
(1) The Secretary of State must make widely available to the public a coherent document that sets out the powers and responsibilities of the Regional Schools Commissioners which are connected with the provisions of the Education and Adoption Act 2016.(2) The document under subsection (1) must contain—(a) a list of the Acts of Parliament and regulations from which each responsibility and power of the Regional Schools Commissioners is drawn;(b) a user-friendly executive summary.”
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it became obvious during the progress of the Bill that the action proposed by Amendment 2 was needed. Regional schools commissioners are a new subject for us all. I became increasingly aware of just how important they are to the new structure roughly at the same time as the entire House of Commons did; nevertheless, we do what we can. It became clear that we could not find out very easily how this occurred. It needed a little bit of digging, and I thank Thomson Jones—a young lad who has been helping in my office—who did some of it. He is good at reading back on bits of legislation. Several bits had to be referred to, to find exactly what was going on and how it functioned and fitted together. Legally it was there, but you could not find it. Anecdotally, a lot of people are telling me that education authorities have people phoning up and saying, “What do I do about the academy?”. They do not know the new chain of command.
This is merely a sin of omission, but if we can get it right now, we will save a great deal of trouble for ourselves in the future. Even if we do not like the structure that is coming, it is clearly going to be with us for a while, so we must make it function properly. The objective of the amendment—and presumably those which have been tabled as amendments to it—is to make sure there is a clear way of getting to the legal basis for operation. The schools commissioners are soon going to have far more of the problems of the education system put on their doorstep to deal with. I hope the Minister can give positive answers to show exactly how this is going to be done, even if he does not—for some bizarre reason—choose to accept this amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment 3 (to Amendment 2)
Lord Addington
If we may draw back from the amendments we are actually discussing, I thank the noble Lord for his work and the courtesy of his department. There have been a lot of emails going back and forth. There was also an entertaining point when the good old-fashioned steam telephone was not working in my office, so in the end a piece of paper was handed to me by one of the doorkeepers. That meant that I knew the noble Lord was getting back to me, for which I thank him.
If we address what the noble Lord said about this amendment, it is a triumph of the bleeding obvious, if I may put it like that. We should let people know what is changing. What he has done is not quite as much fun as getting an amendment accepted, but half a loaf is better than no bread—and this is a bit more like three-quarters, so I thank him for that.
Given that we seem to be going slightly off-piste, I shall also take the opportunity of thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for giving the assurance at an earlier stage that the KPIs for increasing the number of schools becoming academies were withdrawn. I should have mentioned that at the time, but it got rather swamped by other matters. Having heard that, and having those assurances on the record, I thank the noble Lord for his work on this and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Addington
“Regional Schools Commissioners
(1) The Secretary of State must publish a document which sets out the responsibilities and powers of the Regional Schools Commissioners which are connected with the provisions of the Education and Adoption Act 2015.
(2) The document under subsection (1) shall identify the Acts of Parliament and regulations from which each responsibility and power of the Regional Schools Commissioners is drawn.
(3) The Secretary of State shall ensure that the document under subsection (1) is made widely available to the public.”
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it appears that my name is the lead one on both the first and the last group of amendments today.
We have heard a great deal about regional schools commissioners, about whom I knew virtually nothing at the start of the progress of the Bill. They are vitally important not only to the Bill but to the line of progress which the Government have taken on with regard to the creation of academies. They are the people who will enforce, check and regulate, so they have a huge role.
It is incredibly difficult to find anything about them unless you know how to chase it down in legislation. I know that it can be done, and was fortunate enough to have with me somebody who is quite good at it. A large number of bits of regulation that come back refer to each other and then go through. It really is not good enough that we do not have a better description somewhere of what they do, what their responsibilities are and how they will oversee this new structure which the Government clearly want to see in place. There is now an equally great complication because their function involves having to deal with local authorities. This is something of a cat’s cradle of responsibility and authority. This amendment is merely a chance to get us to a place where we can have at least the nub of their powers and responsibilities in one place, so that somebody can check and refer to it.
There is a website, which I have looked at. It consists of one page, and under “About us” there are seven lines—and not even complete lines—on what the regional schools commissioners do. It just is not good enough. This may be a temporary state of affairs and there may be more coming, but at the moment this very important bit of a new structure within education is very inaccessible. The Government must be transparent. Half of the problems they have had with this are because people do not know where to get the information.
I have never pretended that anyone in any particular party grows horns and starts to chew on babies the minute they get in power and want to change something. I am sure that the Government have good intentions. I may disagree with them, but I am quite sure that they have good intentions. I ask them to please let us know what they are trying to do, in an easy format. This amendment is merely a way to say, “Bring it together in one place”. Third Reading is still ahead of us; I am sure that there is some way to get at least some guide to what should happen. I beg to move.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, concerning the responsibilities and powers of regional schools commissioners. The noble Lord has proposed that the Secretary of State should be required to publish a public document that would describe RSCs’ responsibilities and powers arising from the provisions of the Bill.
As we have previously discussed on various groups of amendments, we have already published a revised draft of the Schools Causing Concern guidance for public consultation, which describes, for the first time, how RSCs will use the intervention powers of the Secretary of State and what their responsibilities are for addressing underperformance in maintained schools, subject to the passage of the Bill.
RSCs already operate in an open and transparent way; my noble friend Lord Nash spoke about this when he answered questions from the Education Select Committee earlier this month on the role of regional schools commissioners. Alongside the Schools Causing Concern guidance, a large amount of information on the work of the RSCs is publicly available on the GOV.UK website. We publish notes of head teacher board meetings, conflicts of interest registers for board members and RSCs, information on the roles and responsibilities of the RSCs, and criteria for all types of decisions made by RSCs.
The key performance indicators used to monitor RSCs’ performance have also recently been published through our written evidence to the Education Select Committee. From this month we are also publishing fuller notes of head teacher board meetings. Now that RSCs have been operating for 15 months, and in the light of the additional responsibilities that the Bill will introduce, we have carried out a review of the key performance indicators for RSCs to ensure that they remain effective and continue to incentivise the right behaviour. As a result, we have decided to remove the indicator on the percentage of the schools in each region that are academies. This is because we recognise that it is important that RSCs use their judgment to determine the best route for improving a school and it is important that their decision-making is not unintentionally affected by other factors.
In the light of the fact that the Schools Causing Concern guidance already describes the responsibilities and powers of regional schools commissioners that would result from provisions in the Bill, and as that document has already been made widely available to the public and is currently the subject of consultation, we do not consider the noble Lord’s amendment necessary. Given the further information and reassurances that we have been able to provide, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Addington
My Lords, that was a very strange answer. It was saying that there is a great deal of information and a great deal going on, and that it does not need to be brought together for this very important group. This is not about the information that is published. There is lots of information but the problem is that it cannot easily be found. That is what this amendment is about. To be perfectly honest, if you cannot find the information, you might as well not have it. I found it but it should not be necessary for people to have to chase it. The amendment is about bringing it together in one place where it can be easily accessed.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I said, the Schools Causing Concern guidance, which is out for consultation, has more information in it, but we are very happy to look at how we can bring it together in one place. As I said, there is information out there but we are very happy to take away the noble Lord’s comments and to have a look at how we can improve the signposting and bring the information together.
Lord Addington
Well, it looks as though we have something to do at Third Reading. I would be prepared to meet anybody to try to get this information together. However, this is not about the amount of information, which can be found; it is about transparency and the information being easily available. A new structure is being introduced here and we need to know what it is. The old structure was not easy to understand either. I am suggesting that, in doing something new, we try to do it better. Perhaps I might have an undertaking that we will have the opportunity to discuss this at Third Reading. A nod will be sufficient; I see that I have it. I think I am right in understanding that we will try to address this issue in some way. Given that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Addington
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the fairly large group that we start with today covers a variety of different matters. The amendments in my name fall into three groups. I shall continue to explain this when the noise level is slightly lower. I do not know what the parliamentary equivalent of “Rhubarb, rhubarb” is, but hope that we can take that as read for a few moments.
Lord Addington
Yes, I hope that it will be reported in Hansard.
Amendments 8A, 8C, 8D, 9, 9A and 10A concern the new definition of a school in trouble—that it is “coasting”. If coasting is a bad thing, I suggest that all types of school should have it available to them. I also note that the Minister has tabled amendments in this group, so I will resist any further comment until after I have heard what he has to say, as I believe that he has made certain steps towards us.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
Before the noble Lord moves on to his other amendments, I would like to elaborate on the point that he just referred to. As he said, I have tabled an amendment on it, and I take this opportunity to assure him that we take academies’ performance very seriously. We fully intend to hold academies to account in the same way as we do maintained schools. My Amendment 24 will ensure that the “coasting” definition always applies to academies and that we will always have power to take action when academies fail or coast. I will talk about that in more detail, but I hope that the noble Lord is reassured that we have addressed the concerns about tackling underperforming academies raised by him and a number of other noble Lords, and will not press his amendments in relation to that.
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister. I was going to thank him in my summing-up speech, but I do it now.
There are two clarification amendments in this group. Amendment 9 relates to the definition of a coasting school as having three consecutive years of failure. That has been suggested and referred to in regulation, but the amendment seeks to have that included in the Bill, or at least get confirmation that that is what must happen before this type of intervention takes place. Further reassurance would help on that.
Amendment 15A states that certain types of schools will never be affected by the definition of coasting. Once again, this is seeking clarification and reassurance. My attention is drawn particularly to special schools in this regard. The integration of special schools into the education system as a support structure is very important. Some local base will always be important. Who knows what will happen in the future, but under the current structure, it would be appropriate to spell that out more clearly.
The more substantive amendment as far as I am concerned is Amendment 15. When drawing up the definition of a coasting school, a school that is in the throes of failing or at least stagnating, what does one look at? It is quite clear that academic results will be a factor and I have included that in a small list. Lists are of course imperfect, but they are a starting point for discussions. But other school activities are also important and I offer three further examples. One would be arts and sports. If there is exceptional activity in that area, but the academic side is not great, are you in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? If schools are doing something that is good, do we endanger it with a change of school status, organisation and ethos? Any time we do that we will presumably throw everything into the melting pot and changes will have to be made to address something. By changing that structure we may get rid of something good.
The same argument could be made about placement in further education and/or school activity after that. If we have established a good pathway, are we in danger, if we change that, of damaging this process? I still regard apprenticeships as something of a work in progress, but they are lauded by all. If a particular school is doing very well at getting people into apprenticeships, surely that deserves to have some special attention paid to it.
I do not think this is a particularly radical thought, but I have not heard conclusively what we will do if we get these very great gains and positives; will we throw them away? I remind all noble Lords that we have heard much about how schools should not just be chasing grades. If the target is getting definite C grades at GCSE, which is one that is often referred to, just chasing B grades at GCSE is not that much better. It is for the person getting the grades, but outside that, are we actually getting rid of something else?
I beg to move Amendment 8A and I look forward to all the Minister’s replies on this group.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)
I advise the House that, if Amendment 8B is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 8C to 9A inclusive, due to pre-emption.
Lord Nash
For a failing academy we would proceed as quickly as we could identify an alternative sponsor. There would be no question of the school closing, unless there was no demand for the school. In all the cases that we have brokeraged, to which my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy referred, we have waited until we identified another sponsor and moved on as quickly as possible. Generally, we are talking about a few months.
There was a question about whether different sets of regulations would apply to maintained schools and academies. There will be just one set of regulations. This is made clear by subsection (6) of new Clause 2B.
In conclusion, I note that noble Lords support our ambition to ensure that all pupils, whatever their background, receive an education that enables them to flourish. I hope that this debate and the amendments that I have laid will reassure the House that our approach will help us to achieve this ambition. I therefore urge the noble Lords not to press their amendments and to support the government amendment that I have laid.
Lord Addington
My Lords, it has been an interesting and very wide-ranging debate. I do not envy the Minister his challenge of bringing all these amendments together in one group. However, I will try to finish where I began. I thank the Minister for Amendment 24 but have one word of caution, although I am probably teaching granny to suck eggs here. Given that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, think that this should be looked at again for technical reasons, I hope that the Minister will encourage his officials to do that. He is nodding his head, and that is very much appreciated. That is what Third Reading is for; if there is a technical problem with this amendment, which is generally welcomed, let us get it right.
Amendment 15 was not a “may” or “shall” but a “must” and “may”—the updated version of that hardy perennial of Parliament. I take some reassurance from what the Minister said. The amendment was based on the exact regulations he looked at. I have had excellent help of late. I am more comfortable about the idea that the whole school be taken more into account. However, I think that we should keep an eye on this because it would be very easy to slip back to asking what the exam results are and saying, “That is it—final”. The whole House agrees that that is not a great model. There must be some flexibility. Once again the Minister nods his head, and so I am reassured.
I thank the Minister for correcting what was basically a flaw in the Bill and for doing that very promptly. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education and Adoption Bill
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, I shall comment, I hope briefly, on the three listed amendments in reverse order, starting with Amendment 25. I made it plain under desperate interrogation at the previous sitting that I am in favour of Ofsted having rights of inspection over academies, and I do not move from that. However, rather than this fairly complex amendment—which I have to say, as presented, has a touch of an amendment by innuendo, which I am not comfortable with—I would hope for provision to be made for Ofsted to make its own judgment on when inspection is required, and to be open to requests from the department and the Secretary of State, as it currently is, to carry out specific tasks. I would think that Ofsted is probably in the best position to take the view on whether detailed inspection, and all that that implies, is necessary. That is Amendment 25.
On Amendment 24, I do not like the very last subsection about “all correspondence held by” the Secretary of State being published. We have a freedom of information system, and I think that that can and should be used as appropriate.
In some ways, the more substantial Amendment 23, on consulting parents, will not necessarily produce total wisdom, as I have made clear on this Bill and elsewhere. I have been a parent myself in these contexts, and sometimes we can get it wrong. On the other hand, I take the point that providing more time for consultation is not in the interests of the pupil. However, I then worry that if a provision is made for consultation of religious authorities, I can only believe that that is being pushed by a fairly powerful lobbying group who say that it is really rather important that, “We are consulted”. If these are the authorities presiding over a school that turns out to be coasting, what have they been doing? I think that there is a case for a rethink on this, or alternatively, having an opportunity for parents to make their views known, I would hope that the local press and MP can be a useful avenue in that.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is a fairly minor point, but I heard the Hewett School in Norwich being mentioned, and I am one of its alumni. Possibly that explains quite a lot.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
It is no longer the Hewett School but the Hewett Academy.
Lord Addington
It is still a school or an academy, and if we remembered that it might help some of the progress on this Bill.
Regarding some of the points raised by the noble Lord, that school sits on sports grounds that have served half the sports clubs in the area. Indeed, the club where I started my career—I should declare—and finished, started on those grounds. These are the sorts of things that need to be worked into the system. We have to try to get them in somewhere along the line. On its use as a community asset, the noble Lord will not know the place but these are acres of prime playing fields in the heart of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. They are wonderful playing fields on flat, open ground that have been used as an asset by everything going on there. How we build on such a utility is something that should be taken into account. What are we doing on the broader picture? That has not been brought in here, and it should. The fact that the community and parents should be given that courtesy is self-evident. That greater asset to the local community is something we seem to have missed so far.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I shall be taking part in the Second Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, so I apologise to your Lordships if I cannot be here for much of this afternoon’s discussion.
Listening to this debate, I think back to the experience of my half-sister, who for many years was a school librarian in Canada. She would complain about fathers coming in and taking books for their three year-olds about the planets and stars, which were completely inappropriate for the age of the children in question. Fathers were expecting children to understand things that they had no possibility of understanding. I think that probably happens a lot in the education system and outside it. People feel very strongly that certain things are important and others are less so.
My concern with sponsors is that they may have a very strong vision; sometimes that is a very positive thing, but sometimes that may not be so helpful. That is why I am interested to hear from the Minister, in a letter in due course, about the selection, training, support and development of sponsors, and why I have some sympathy with the concerns expressed by the Committee about who these sponsors are and who guards the sponsors. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to the new clauses proposed by Amendments 30, 31 and 32. These clauses, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell, Lady Pinnock and Lady Sharp, all relate to reports which Ofsted would be required to provide before a failing or coasting school becomes a sponsored academy. In particular, they seek to require that Ofsted must inspect an academy trust, report on teacher qualifications and report pupil absence levels prior to the Secretary of State entering into an academy arrangement for a failing or coasting school.
First, on Amendment 30, I agree with the intention behind the noble Lord’s amendment to ensure that regional schools commissioners should be fully informed about the performance and capacity of academy trusts in their area. However, this proposed new clause is an unnecessary addition to the Bill because regional schools commissioners already have access to this information, as I outlined in some detail in responding to the previous group of amendments. I hope that the Committee can see that, given the information already available to regional schools commissioners, this clause is unnecessary. I have described that there are already a number of ways in which this full picture of an academy trust is built up, rightly utilising the skills set of Ofsted inspectors on educational performance and the assessments of the Education Funding Agency against the robust financial and governance standards under which academy trusts are held to account.
The clause inserted by Amendment 31 would place a duty on Ofsted to report on the teacher qualifications required by a particular academy trust before a failing or coasting school joins that trust as a sponsored academy. I understand that, in tabling this amendment, noble Lords are concerned about ensuring the highest quality of teaching in academies, and I agree that this is a vital ingredient—probably the most vital ingredient—for securing the excellent education that every child deserves.
Teacher quality is a complex mixture of different attributes, including personal characteristics such as commitment, resilience, perseverance, motivation and, of course, sound subject knowledge. These cannot be guaranteed through a particular qualification. We believe that children should be taught by good teachers who inspire them, regardless of the qualification they hold. The noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson, seem to have some notion of academies hiring unqualified teachers purely because they are enthusiastic. I doubt very much whether any professional head of a school would allow that to happen, and I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, thinks that they would.
One of the most important “qualifications” that teachers need is deep subject knowledge. I am delighted that, over the last five years, the number of postgraduates entering teaching with a 2:1 or better has risen from 61% to 73%. We do not think that we should necessarily require a PhD in physics to go through nine months’ teacher training, over 60% of which is likely to take place in a school. If they have deep subject knowledge and the right personal characteristics, they can make great teachers without any further qualifications, as I have seen myself on many occasions. Neither do we think that a drama teacher from RADA who has a spare afternoon a week to teach in a primary school should have to get QTS.
Lord Addington
What would the noble Lord say about the skills you need other than your primary consideration? If you have a PhD in physics, do you, for instance, know what to do with a child with special educational needs? That is the sort of thing that attracts the attention and the worry. It is not the fact that they are great at their primary function but that a lot of other stuff has to be dealt with to get to the primary function.
Lord Nash
I know that the noble Lord is always concerned about this point. Of course every school has to have a SENCO, and every school, particularly if it has high SEN numbers, will have plenty of teachers focused specifically on this area. However, if a person has high academic qualifications and the right other characteristics, as I have already said, we do not see why they would necessarily have to get a particular other qualification.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Addington Excerpts(9 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Addington
“(4) After subsection (7) insert—
“(8) If, by the relevant accountability measures laid down by government regulation an Academy is “failing” or “coasting”, it is by virtue of this section eligible for intervention if the governing body of the Academy—
(a) have been informed of their Academy’s assessment over a three year period by a Regional Schools Commissioner;(b) have been notified that the Secretary of State considers the Academy to be coasting; and(c) have not subsequently been notified that the Secretary of State no longer considers the Academy to be coasting.””
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this amendment is an attempt to correct something that I see as rather an error in the Bill. We have this new condition of “coasting”, which is bad—I think that that is probably the great driver here—and we have a solution to coasting schools, which is that they become academies. We have heard a great deal in the Committee—and it is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for three seconds—that occasionally, at certain points in the future—let us not argue about frequency—academies will start to coast. It has already been agreed that they can fail. My amendment is an attempt to try to tie academies into the existing structure that could deal with an academy that has gone wrong.
I feel that we will have a great deal more fun arguing about exactly what the correct definition of “coasting” is. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, looked, shall we say, a bit like a dog that had found a nice juicy scent when we talked about the academic definition before. That is something which any Minister should be very wary of. The fact of the matter is that we will have a definition, and no matter how you tweak it, occasionally an academy is going to fall within that definition. If coasting is wrong for one school it must, I hope, be wrong for any school. While, as always, the amendment is probing in nature, it is an attempt to bring such a school in.
Amendment 17 presents a slightly different way of basically removing the fur from this moggie. It would insert a new clause. One thing I like about it is that it goes back to nurse; it goes to Ofsted, a body that can take a look around, which knows the system and which can make a judgment. We should think about that because we know how Ofsted works and how its judgments go, and it is in place. Also, using Ofsted in conjunction with regional schools commissioners is probably quite a sensible idea. We have a body whose judgment we trust and which we have used. We should try to put something into the Bill for academies which are making mistakes and doing something wrong—there could be 1,001 problems. I think that Uplands Junior School in Leicester has lost half its teachers today and is to become an academy. Who knows what is going on there? The Minister is looking at me strangely, but it was reported only today so I understand why he may have missed it. It was brought to my attention very briefly.
Lord Addington
Perhaps we can talk about Uplands school at length on Report.
If we go down this path, we will have situations where things go wrong. We need to have an intervention process for an academy that gets it wrong. If it is the entire chain because there is something that is happening through it, we will probably need to intervene on the whole thing. Amendment 16 is just a way of putting in the Bill a provision that says, “Let us try to use what is already in place and so get some sort of solution to this”. It is basically about starting again. I hope that there is no fundamental objection to the amendment and that we will hear how the thinking is developing on something which is an inevitability, no matter how infrequent it is. I beg to move.
Lord Nash
I will try and make it clear again. Our approach to failing and inadequate schools, category 4 schools, is that they must become a sponsored academy. That is not our approach to coasting schools, as I hope I have made absolutely clear.
The amendment seeks to address noble Lords’ concerns on a number of points. First, that academies as well as maintained schools should become eligible for intervention when they fail or meet the coasting definition. Secondly, that the Bill proposes to remove consultation on academy conversion when a maintained school is judged inadequate. Thirdly, that a duty is placed on the governing body and local authority to progress academy conversion in such circumstances, and finally that, if necessary, the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to revoke an academy order. I shall deal with these points in turn.
First, on failing and coasting academies, I agree entirely with noble Lords that failure and wider underperformance must be tackled wherever it occurs, whether in a maintained school or in an academy. As I set out when we debated the coasting definition last week, academies are governed by a different legal regime from maintained schools. They are run by charitable companies known as academy trusts which enter into a contractual relationship with the Secretary of State through the signing of a funding agreement. It is this agreement that governs how an academy will operate and how the Secretary of State will hold it to account for its performance.
The vast majority of the more than 5,300 open academies and free schools are performing well. In the small number of cases where we have concerns, I can assure the House that regional schools commissioners are already taking swift and effective action to drive improvements and, subject to the passage of this Bill, RSCs will hold all academies to account against the coasting definition just as rigorously as they will maintained schools. To demonstrate our commitment to continually reviewing our approach and ensuring that poorly performing academies are robustly challenged, we have already added a new coasting clause to the model funding agreement showing explicitly that we intend to tackle all schools which are coasting. This gives the Secretary of State formal powers to terminate a funding agreement where an academy is coasting. Even where academies do not have this specific clause in their agreement, I can assure noble Lords that RSCs will still hold them to account against the coasting definition.
Lord Addington
Could the Minister just repeat where that is? That is the real essence of my amendment. Could he repeat where the intervention on coasting academies is?
Lord Nash
RSCs have already shown they can act quickly to bring about improvements. Since September 2014 when RSCs first took up post, they have issued 58 pre-warning and warning notices to academy and free school trusts. In the same period they have also moved 83 academies and free schools to new trusts or sponsors, compared with 13 in the previous academic year. For example, Ipswich Academy in Suffolk was judged to require special measures in January 2015. The RSC acted swiftly to identify a new sponsor for the school and Paradigm Trust has taken on the school from September 2015. Ofsted undertook a monitoring visit in late September and judged that leaders and managers were taking effective action towards the removal of special measures.
In addition, Thetford Academy in Norfolk was judged to require special measures by Ofsted in February 2013. We brought in Inspiration Trust as a new sponsor in September 2013 to run the school. That was seven months later, as compared with the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred, where 22 months later Uplands School has yet to become an academy—I will give some more detail on that in a minute. Provisional 2015 results indicate that even under our tougher accountability standards, 47% of pupils achieved five good GCSEs compared to 28% in 2011. Ofsted inspected the academy in December 2014 and judged it to be good with outstanding leadership, describing it as, “transformed beyond recognition”.
These are just two examples of the robust, decisive action that RSCs are taking to tackle underperformance, and of the positive impact they are already having on the school system. Therefore the proposal—that where an academy is judged inadequate or meets the coasting definition it should be eligible for intervention—does not need to be introduced in this Bill as RSCs are already taking action to secure improvements where necessary.
I turn now to the issue of removing consultation. Our manifesto committed to turning every failing maintained school into a sponsored academy, and Clause 7 makes provision for that. As I said in my opening remarks last week, we place children first in our school system and the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that children do not spend any longer than possible in a failing school. A day lost in a child’s education is a day lost forever, and I beg to disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on this point. We believe that there needs to be a clear course of action when a school is judged inadequate and that there cannot be any question or debate about what the right solution for that school might be. We must be completely clear, as our manifesto was, that becoming an academy with the support of a sponsor will always be the solution where a school has failed. Every minute spent on consultation is a minute that could be spent on turning the school around. Clause 8 therefore removes the requirement for the governing body to consult on whether the school should become an academy in such circumstances. It is clear that it would be nonsensical to carry out a consultation when our manifesto was so clear that the sponsored academy solution would be the outcome in this scenario. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Watson, say in Committee last week, “Yes, the Government have the right to implement their manifesto”.
It is crucial to remember that consultation would be removed only in the most serious cases of underperformance. Where a school voluntarily seeks academy status, I agree completely that the school community should contribute its views. In that instance, the governing body is choosing to enter into new arrangements. However, where a school has failed or is otherwise causing concern, there is no choice. Parents will want to see swift and decisive action to bring about urgent transformation.
I want to re-emphasise that this is not about removing democracy or excluding parents, as some have claimed both in the House and in the other place. It is about ensuring that there is a clear course of action in place to improve the very worst schools in our country. We demand immediate action in other instances of failure, such as when an NHS trust is placed in special measures, so why should we expect any less for our schools? It takes on average a year from the time a school is judged inadequate to open as a sponsored academy.
Lord Addington
The important thing about Uplands is that it has lost half its teachers. Half the teachers at the school have resigned. That is what has caused the headlines; nothing else.
Lord Addington
My Lords, on the definition of “coasting”, I wonder how much the Treasury Bench wishes it had got that in place before we started. We have gone round that before and will probably go round it again.
Lord Addington
I know, but that is an administrative thing. We should have something in the Bill. Much of this discussion is about why we cannot have things in the Bill. That seems to be quite a good answer but I did not find that regulation.
My amendment is about what happens when an academy is coasting. If there were a reference to it, or if we knew that it would be published, this amendment would not have gone down. I did not table the amendment because I could not think of anything else to do; there are novels I could read and other activities I could do. But I had a look at this and it seemed that academies were excluded from the state of something being wrong, such as “coasting” or underachieving. Everyone else who looked at it said, “Yes, that seems to be correct”.
I hope that on Report we will get a little more definition and guidance on when these things will come through. At the moment, we are still groping around. Some things have been published—indeed, some unfinished things have been published—so we are constantly looking. I will read the document, of which I was not aware, and I may find that it addresses the point. At the moment, though, we have the idea that some schools are bad but that does not seem to apply to half or more of the schools in the country. That is totally inequitable and removes a way of intervening to help pupils. Surely a little more time needs to be given to ensuring that we can find where the information is. We are still going through consultations and the argument on the definition of “coasting” is far from over, so we need a bit more time and effort on that.
The noble Lords on my physical right presented an interesting amendment, and I am sure that we will have a discussion about that and see what we can do about it at another stage. At the moment, though, as we are in Grand Committee, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I am very pleased indeed that the noble Baroness has tabled this probing amendment. I have for some time been very closely involved with a charity called I CAN, which works with children with severe communication difficulties. Working with the charity, I have been made aware of how extremely specialised this treatment is. Many of these children are speechless, not because they have any physical disability but because of severe emotional difficulties, and getting them to the point where they can engage in any kind of intelligible conversation is a hugely long and difficult path.
One of the most moving experiences was when the people who work with these children in specialist units demonstrated that these children can sometimes sing when they cannot speak. About eight or nine of these children came in front of us and sang, and you could hear how rusty and unused their voices were because that is the only time they use them. I am therefore very conscious of how important it is that specialist help is available. Of course, good teachers will work hard and some of them will succeed in getting these children to speak, but the idea of making sure that through collaboration they are able to have really specialist help is very important, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Addington
My Lords, it is always something of a relief when somebody from our Bench beats me to the punch on special educational needs. The idea that you need to enter into collaborative arrangements to get specialist help, especially if it is a low-frequency, high-need problem that has not got into the realms of having the label of a plan around it, is a long-term problem. It is not about just this one group. It is very good practice to bring in help and support from other schools. How this could be addressed and helped in any way is something that we should have a look at. It is a very sensible use of resources and is a good way forward. If you have a way forward, even for those at the less severe end of the scale, you should spread it around outside your own school. It is obvious that you should be doing this. I take on board what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has said and say to the Government: how are you going to do this? This really is very sensible. It is not doctrinaire; it is just sense.
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.