Education Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, one disadvantage of the Grand Committee system is that, if one has an interest in the Chamber, it requires one to be in two places at the same time. I apologise for missing the introduction to the amendment as I needed to be in the Chamber.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, has brought me to my feet. I was very struck by what she said about the shortage of training in behaviour management. In the 1980s, I chaired an inquiry into discipline in schools. One day, when I taught in an education college, I discovered I had lost the attention of my otherwise normally engaged adult trainee teachers, so I inquired why that was. They said that it was because they were having their first teaching practice the following week and that was all they could think about. I said, “It is not too difficult; you know three times as much as the best child about your subject and all you have to do is keep reasonable order and carry on”. They said, “Yes, but—”. I said, “Haven’t you been told anything about keeping reasonable order?”. “No”, they said, “not a word”.

I carried that with me into the inquiry and we inquired of all the training colleges in the country whether they taught behaviour management. They all said yes—and, after a comma, added, “as a cross-disciplinary subject”. I thought, “I know what that means”. We wrote to all the students who had been to the colleges in recent years and we had more than 1,000 replies. We discovered that only one college had actually successfully tackled the subject on its own and none of the others had taught it at all. It is very important because you can have someone with everything that the children need to know in his head but no means of getting it to them because he cannot get them to sit down and stop talking. It is as simple as that. It takes training, time and confidence. I could go on at great length about the different elements. Perhaps there is a means of instilling in the department and the Minister the necessity of not recognising training until it includes training in the management of behaviour in the classroom, because otherwise it will be inadequate.

Another matter I will raise concerns the second leg of the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I see the impracticalities of it; the idea of having four consecutive hours is well beyond the reach of most places. Apart from anything else, who has a lesson for four hours? Children disperse and go to different lessons. The timetabling would be terrible.

I will address another question. Having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, I wonder whether my experience of 20 years ago is not still in date. We were very much aware of a phenomenon called “classroom isolation”. Teachers went in, shut the door and taught. They were alone with their problems, which they did not like to share because their colleagues would think that they were not succeeding. This provision would open the classroom door regularly. That may have changed, in which case I give three large cheers—but if it has not, something along the lines of the noble Lord’s amendment would be welcome.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, this might be a good opportunity to follow my noble friend, whom I think I first met 60 years ago. We are discussing best practice and experience, and it seems to me that the three amendments represent a lot of experience and best practice. However, I would be very doubtful as to whether any of the matters in the three amendments should be statutory or matters for the Secretary of State. If these matters cannot be dealt with within the education system itself, I do not think that they ever will be.

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very encouraged by what my noble friend said in response to the amendments. Perhaps I may pick him up on a couple of points. He said some good things about the integration of the independent and state school sectors. Will he confirm that there is no longer any consideration of the idea of excluding teachers in independent schools from the main state teachers’ pension fund, which would make migration between the two sectors extremely difficult?

Secondly, there has been a history of initiatives, of which teaching schools is the latest, intended to develop and spread good practice. In my view such initiatives have always foundered on the lack of information flow between good schools and schools that need good advice. I will not detain the Committee with ideas on how that might be improved, but when the Minister is no longer under so much pressure, perhaps I might try to persuade him that the Government have a role in helping to set up structures to enable information to flow better than it does.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds to that—

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I was not planning to.

[Lord Elton]

Very well. I would be grateful if my noble friend would turn his mind again to the question of the integration of the independent and state sectors, and co-operation between the two. I take it that there would be no philosophical objection to the private sector buying into the provision of these facilities, which he rightly says should not be given away free.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister warmly for his encouraging response, and I thank noble Lords for expressing sympathy at least for the principles behind the amendments—I am very grateful for that. I need to think more about costs, particularly for developing classroom observation. A number of noble Lords pointed out the cost of having teachers away from the class and of having teachers observing other teachers. I want to make sure that that is kept in mind.

Perhaps I might also briefly apologise for something that I said earlier in Committee about the early years workforce. I made some comments that I regret. It is widely recognised that capacity in that area is fairly low and I might have dwelt more on the very positive experience that I have had of meeting people who have a strong vocation in that area of work. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, since the noble Baroness is in writing mood, will she enlarge slightly on the questions that I asked in regard to the second amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden? If we are focusing hard on trying to get high-quality teachers, we need to be careful to ensure that we have not built into the system disincentives to getting rid of teachers who are not up to the grade. It was always the problem with hanging someone for stealing a sheep that juries would never convict. It seems to me that we have a similar situation here, as the penalty for failing an induction year is so harsh—the person may never teach in a maintained school again. Most people strain to get these individuals through their induction year and to pass them just because the penalty is so harsh rather than because they have done well enough to be passed into the teaching profession with all flags flying. Therefore, I would like to understand the logic behind the Government’s decision to keep it as “once only” rather than allowing a second chance.

[Lord Elton]

Another class of people who deserve a second chance is those who fall over their shoelaces in the first term and lose the respect of children. They are never going to get that back in that school and will never get a fair trial. They need to go to another school and start again, where you may get a very good teacher out of the experience.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am sorry to trouble the Committee further, but I am still a little worried by the Minister’s response. I was grateful for what she said but I can see a situation where excellent head teachers working extremely hard in very challenging areas producing outstanding results do not get the credit due to them for doing that. It is far easier to get high academic results in a school in a leafy suburb than in an inner-city school. We risk denying our future teachers an experience of learning from an inspirational head in an inner city if these plans are not carefully balanced to ensure that there is a broad base of experience in these teaching schools and they are not situated predominantly in areas where it is easier to get high educational attainment. However, we need to aim always to get the highest educational attainment for all our children.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I am really sorry, but can I gently express my incredulity that we can say that teachers are in a different position from, say, care staff? Those care staff find themselves in a parental role with all the discipline and, often, the actual physical contact which that involves from all the aggro that you get when you are dealing with adolescents in the parental role—adolescents who have often failed to be contained in their own family. Are they in a less vulnerable position than teachers? I do not particularly want to extend this but I cannot see the logic at all of saying that this is a special position for teachers, because they are responsible for discipline in schools, when you have care staff in residential establishments— some of them very large residential schools—who in fact find themselves with even greater contact. I would like the Minister to look at that. I still do not understand how a teacher who may be in a residential institution and a care member of staff might both be accused of the same offence, yet one can be protected and the other cannot. I do not necessarily want the Minister to answer at this moment but I would really like him to take this away because it will make his legislation unworkable.

[Lord Elton]

Without going into the broader field just raised, would my noble friend perhaps look within the school confines, which is what he is addressing here? It seems to me that classroom support staff, who may spend two days at a time in sole charge of a class, are in a position so analogous to that of teachers that they could perhaps be separated from the remainder of the staff for the purposes of this legislation. I realise that, as they more rarely have sole responsibility for the children, they are less at risk but it seems that the risk, although less, is just as real and the damage could be just as great.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, the more I listen, the more I am sad that we did not have the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, because that would have put things into a much clearer perspective. I have the gravest doubt the more I listen, frankly, and I agree more and more with my noble friend Lady Howarth.