Education Bill

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I want to add my voice to the concern about Clause 39 and particularly to support Amendment 114A. I have a rather more positive view of Ofsted than most noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. It seems to me that on the vast majority of occasions the Ofsted inspection is extremely valuable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said earlier. While there are undoubtedly some exceptions to that, an effective and good inspection system is in operation.

I was particularly moved to intervene by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that this might be used as a way of, in some way, exempting faith schools from the inspection process. I want to make it quite clear that I at any rate would not want faith schools to be exempted from the inspection process in any way. I hope the Minister will confirm that there is no intention of doing that. The vast majority of faith schools are maintained schools and wish to remain so. Where some of them wish to become academies it is not in any way to avoid being part of an inspection system. Certainly I have never heard in the debates over academies of any school indicating, either overtly or covertly, that one of things it wanted to do was to evade the inspection system.

I believe the inspection system to be extremely important, not simply for local authorities—though certainly for them—but also for diocesan boards of education, both Roman Catholic and Anglican. They too work with schools through the Ofsted process and through that inspection and it is of considerable value in discussing, helping and encouraging the schools. I hope the Minister can assure me that there is no intention of exempting faith schools here and that he will say where academies stand in all of this discussion.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I would just like briefly to say that I have some sympathy with this set of amendments and in particular to draw attention to the fact that Clause 41 applies these provisions to colleges as Clause 39 applies them to schools. We are all very well aware of how important school leaders are and that a head and a college principal can make all the difference. When they move on to take another job or to retire, a school or a college can go downhill extremely quickly. One needs to have some form of trigger for an inspection in these circumstances; something equivalent to Amendment 114 put forward by my noble friend Lady Perry might be appropriate for colleges as well as for schools. Alternatively, if we move on to Clause 42—I think it is that clause, but it may be further on—local authorities are given the responsibility for taking action when schools are causing concern. They might well have the responsibility for triggering an inspection.

We all probably welcome the slightly more light-handed form of inspection outlined in Clause 40, but at the same time there are dangers with total exemption of the outstanding ones. We are aware that what is outstanding one year can fall very quickly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My noble friend Lady Coussins, who is attending her daughter’s graduation today, asked me to say a couple of words on Amendment 121, to which I wish to add my support. The late, lamented Lord Dearing picked up very strongly in his languages review that we are not monitoring the catastrophe that has happened to the learning of modern foreign languages in the wake of what many of us regard as the largest single piece of inadvertent educational vandalism in the past decade—the removal of the GCSE language requirement. Since then in state comprehensive schools the proportion of pupils still studying a language between the ages of 14 and 16 has halved from 80 to 40 per cent. As ever, it is the children in the less ambitious schools who are being deprived in every possible way, including being deprived of certain future employment opportunities. I hope we could at least start monitoring it.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I associate myself, too, with Amendment 116 and the excellent contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. I come from Leeds, where we now have a city board for safer and stronger communities. It is interesting that the chief inspector has to report on safety but not on stronger communities as the legislation stands. The way in which schools contribute community cohesion over the whole of a city such as Leeds seems to me to be crucial to the way in which the city develops. I, too, hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, will bring back this matter on Report.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I hope that your Lordships agree with me that it is vital to give full recognition to those teachers and head teachers who put a huge effort into taking children forward. Where there is a challenging intake, perhaps with high levels of special educational needs or numbers of children with pupil premium, it is important to recognise in achievement the distance pupils have travelled and not just their performance against all other pupils across the country. I would be grateful perhaps for a note from the Minister on how Ofsted inspections will look at achievement and fully recognise it in terms of the distance travelled by children.