Education Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I shall speak also to our Amendment 25. As has already been identified, under the previous legislation school staff already have the power to search for and seize from pupils prohibited items, including weapons, alcohol, drugs and stolen goods, and we are very conscious of the sensitivities in extending those powers.

Therefore Amendment 25 places on the Secretary of State a requirement to give more explicit guidance as to what should be included in the school rules, and on the items for which searches can be made. This amendment would very much enable some of the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to be followed through. I also echo her point that if guidance were to be produced, it would be helpful if it were in the form of draft guidance on which we could all comment.

In addition, there is currently a statutory definition of school rules in maintained schools, but there is no statutory definition of school rules in independent schools, which will, in due course, include academies and free schools. Therefore, this underlines again the case for the Government to consider and advise very carefully on what can and cannot be banned under school rules for all state-provided schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has mentioned, this was picked up in the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which said:

“There is a risk of the new provision falling foul of that requirement”—

to protect pupils—

“unless the new power to search is circumscribed in some way by reference to the purpose for which such a search may be made”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, quoted some useful paragraphs from the report, but that one is also helpful.

When we debated this on the first day in Committee, a case was well made on the issue of mobile phones. For one person a mobile phone is some sort of weapon or something that can be used in a derogatory way; for others it is a teaching aid. We need to be clear about pupils’ reasons for carrying mobile phones in school. In some cases it is a link to important caring responsibilities and so on. Therefore, we must be very careful about proscribing some of these things and the wording that is used.

We have seen the 15th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which was handed out as we came in. It draws the attention of the House to the fact that the department’s own memorandum on its delegated powers,

“does not explain why it is thought appropriate that the list of articles in section 550ZA(3) that may be searched for … should in future be capable of being supplemented by the school in question, apparently to include any kind of article whatever”.

Again, the Delegated Powers Committee questions the extra powers that the Government are trying to give themselves without being explicit about what the articles should be and what it is appropriate to take into a school. Therefore, I hope our Amendment 25, which makes it necessary for guidance to be produced by the Secretary of State on what is and is not to be prohibited by school rules, is a common-sense measure. I hope the Minister will agree and that he and noble Lords will feel able to support the amendment.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 14 in this group, which addresses two angles of concern. The first is about definition. My noble friend Lady Walmsley said that it is not clear what is meant by school rules. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, also said that they needed definition. That is the purpose of my amendment, which requires a definition to be made by the Secretary of State. I say this trailing my coat, since there may well be a definition of school rules buried somewhere in law. The waving of the corn on my left suggests that that is the case. However, it is not only a matter of what is in the school rules, but of whose authority those rules have. School rules can be made by head teachers on their own in solitary majesty, or by the head teacher with the heads of department, and with or without the endorsement of the school governors. Each would have an effect on what is in the rules.

My second concern is that rules, if they are to succeed, should have the broad understanding, sympathy and support of the school’s pupils. Should some guidance be laid down as to how that is to be achieved? Should it be through school councils, for instance? In small primary schools with small children, the rules could be talked through at the beginning of every term and agreed to by the children. The courts will want to know what the school rules are. I regret to say that we are on very litigious ground. It is essential that the courts should have a definition before them or a great deal of money and time will be wasted by the courts in arriving at a definition of their own. That time and money should be spent by us on deciding now, or by giving the Minister the power and responsibility to define what a school rule is.

With it, I would give him the duty to get advice from somewhere on what should be in school rules in general terms, and on how school rules should be introduced in a way that means they will have the support of the school’s pupils. This is not in the amendment, although I think it will emerge on Report. Children will then think that the rules are part of the way they live. Therefore, when some rebel child starts scrawling obscenities on the walls or doing other unsociable things, it will not be just him versus the staff with an interested group of children listening, watching and occasionally egging on the baddy; it will be the school community as a whole saying, “This is not the way this place runs. This is our home. Please look after it”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I would be very grateful if my noble friend would include me in that correspondence. I do not yet understand why, under any circumstances, a teacher should be able to delete something from a mobile phone. Surely, the point of finding something is that it then becomes evidence that can be used. In fact, it may be important to show it to the child's parents so that the parents become aware of what is going on. I do not understand the need to delete.

I am also concerned that while one might want and need under some circumstances to explore what is happening on a child's mobile phone, any teacher doing so will discover a lot of stuff that is personal and irrelevant. There is a problem over how that is dealt with. Perhaps it should be done by somebody not involved in teaching the child who can therefore keep separate any knowledge gained from looking at the mobile phone. I agree that there has to be this power in the Bill, but it has to be carefully used.

[Lord Elton]

We need to consider not only the privacy of the child, but the privacy of the person at the other end of the call who may be a parent. The exposure of the inside workings of a family could be quite damaging to the family if it were discovered or discussed. You cannot have a Chinese wall inside a telephone so far as I know, so I agree with my noble friend and I should like to be included on the round-robin list.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ritchie of Brompton]

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to make comments on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I declare an interest as the chair of the Children and Young People Board of the Local Government Association. The Local Government Group very much supports the Government’s attempts to reduce bureaucracy that schools face. Our report, Local Freedom or Central Control, was launched last year. For that report we commissioned research that showed that in the past 10 years more than 1,000 pieces of legislation have been passed affecting schools. That means that there is a new piece of primary or secondary legislation every school day over that period. However, we do not necessarily see as excessive the burden on schools of co-operating with the local authority through children’s trusts. We do not believe that you can necessarily legislate for good partnership working, but many councils have found that the requirement on schools to co-operate with the children’s trusts is a helpful way in which to encourage them to participate.

In many cases, the removal of a statutory duty will not immediately lead schools to refuse to work in partnership with local councils. Good schools will want to continue with good partnerships with councils. However, we worry, when all the messages coming out of the department seem to encourage schools to become academies free from local authority control and become more autonomous, that the removal of this duty will provide the wrong signal about the importance of local partnership working to achieve the very best outcomes for local children, young people and their families.

I believe that safeguarding is a particular issue here. We think it is important that schools should continue to be given a very strong message that they must co-operate in local safeguarding arrangements, including the local safeguarding children boards.

[Lord Elton]

Two subjects have been raised in this debate that tempt me to my feet. The first is children excluded from school when the provider of education is not the local authority and the child does not actually receive education because the provision is not there or is not working or the child has escaped from the system. The child is not merely at risk but is predisposed to suffer, because the child who is likely to get into trouble is the child who is likely to get excluded.

When I was working to try and keep children out of crime, rather more effectively than I am now, it was clear that one way of intervening at an earlier stage than normal was to go round to schools and say, “Tell us confidentially who do you expect next to be on the list, on skid row, and into permanent exclusion? Let us provide an adult mentor”. Usually one found that the child had no male role models, as would be normal. The difficulty was actually finding them. That was effective intervention, but that also bears out my feeling that a lot of children are at risk, without anyone realising it, who need not be.