Education Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, could speak to his amendment in this group.

[Lord Lexden]

Thank you very much indeed, my Lords. Spare a kindly thought, if you will, for your comparatively new colleague who is speaking to his first amendment to legislation since he had the honour of joining your Lordships' House. This would have been my second amendment, if the nervous novice had not incompetently passed up the chance to move Amendment 65 at the end of proceedings on Monday, when we were caught up in a fascinating session on the GTC. Perhaps I may just mention that Amendment 65 was designed to tighten further the procedures for reporting serious misconduct and I hope that my noble friend will, in his usual benign fashion, be able to write to me about it.

I will turn, still as the nervous novice, to Amendment 73. The aim here is to explore the possibility of adding to the Bill a reference to partnership between maintained schools and independent schools. As before, I speak as a former general secretary of the Independent Schools Council. For generations, the best independent schools have reached out to maintained schools and their wider communities. The Independent Schools Council conducts detailed audits of these partnership activities. Nine out of every 10 ISC schools are involved in them. Sport, music and drama are the most widespread partnership activities.

Since the Second World War, the state has taken different approaches to the issue of partnership and the wider involvement of the independent sector in our education system. The Fleming scheme and then the assisted places scheme enabled talented children from less well-off families to attend independent schools. These are long gone and will not be repeated, but ambitious new schemes of partnership are in prospect. They include the participation of independent schools in the most important educational reform of our time—the academy movement, which features in a later amendment and in the new system of teaching schools.

Many independent schools have already applied for permission to become teaching schools. If they are successful, an increased percentage of the teaching workforce will get an opportunity to train in the independent sector. If this becomes the case, it is even more important that the sector should be able to take advantage of the opportunities that partnerships can bring and should not be unfairly excluded from the opportunities afforded to teachers in maintained schools. One thinks particularly of continual professional development, to which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made reference.

Whatever may happen in these exciting new areas, great effort should continue to be directed at ensuring the success of the independent/state school partnerships scheme, which was introduced by the previous Labour Government shortly after they took office in 1997 and made permanent by my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley when she was Secretary of State. Relatively small amounts of public money have brought teachers and pupils together in enthusiastic partnership projects throughout the country. Since its creation, the ISSP programme has funded no fewer than 346 projects and allocated just short of £15 million—not a large sum but one that produces considerable benefits. The average value of a grant has been around £43,000. The largest single grant, of just over £500,000, was to a consortium of 18 London schools to enable them to offer gifted and talented provision in mathematics, science and modern languages over a number of years. I will not go into further detail; the Government produce full reports on the outcomes of partnership schemes. The current round includes 24 excellent projects.

It is against this successful background that I bring forward the amendment. Much has been achieved and it may be appropriate, in order to safeguard the partnership in future, to put it on a statutory basis.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I will not detain the Committee. I just wanted, in principle, to support the spirit behind these amendments. We have all talked about the quality of teaching being paramount and about ensuring that this goes beyond initial teacher training and involves continued access to good-quality continual professional development.

I particularly wanted to ask the Minister if he could refer in his reply to Amendment 66(1)(b), which makes reference to minimum qualifications in child development and behaviour. I declare an interest because I used to teach such subjects to postgraduate social work and probation students many years ago. More recently my son did a postgraduate certificate in education and is now, I am very pleased to say, a primary school teacher. I was shocked at the very small amount of time spent on child development and behaviour in his training. I know that it is a question of fitting a lot into a relatively small space of time—a year—but the lack of focus on cognitive development and language development in particular was astonishing. Has the Minister any plans to look at initial teacher training and at the focus, or lack of it, on child development? Will each higher education establishment decide that for itself in terms of the national curriculum, or will there be national guidelines to determine that at least a minimum amount of time should be spent on this important subject?

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Moved by

[Lord Lexden]

68: Clause 9, page 15, line 13, at end insert “including any duly accredited school overseas”

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, Amendment 68 would extend the possibility of carrying out a statutory induction year to duly accredited schools abroad. The most important matter arising here is the manner in which such an assurance and accreditation would be carried out.

As some noble Lords may know, there is a Council of British International Schools—I have the honour of being its vice-president—which provides recognised accreditation for schools that conform to the statutory standards required of independent schools in England— namely, the independent schools standards regulations. Recently, the Secretary of State approved the Independent Schools Inspectorate, which works on terms agreed and authorised by the Government as an inspection body for British schools overseas. This has the happy result of creating circumstances in which many international schools can now meet the necessary requirements to offer induction to newly qualified teachers working in British schools abroad if the Government agree to such a development.

Extending the opportunity for teachers to complete their induction year overseas would have at least two direct benefits. First, it would encourage more schools abroad to seek accreditation through COBIS or by some other means on the clear basis that they meet the same standards as British schools in the United Kingdom. Secondly, it would allow teachers who choose to work abroad to return to the United Kingdom with full eligibility to teach in our schools. Under current arrangements, a teacher trained in a European Union country such as Romania can come to teach in England without needing to go through a probationary period, while a teacher who trained in England but left to teach abroad would not be able to teach in England when he or she returned, even after many years of service.

Now that British schools abroad can voluntarily request an inspection by the ISI and demonstrate that they are meeting the same standards as British schools in the United Kingdom, their inability to offer induction is a purely geographical problem. In some other cases, specifically those of Her Majesty’s forces schools in Cyprus and Germany, geography is deemed not to matter, presumably because there is a sufficient level of quality assurance from the United Kingdom. Now that kind of quality assurance can be guaranteed at accredited schools. I know that discussions on this matter between COBIS and the Department for Education are proceeding positively, along with parallel discussions with groups such as British Schools in the Middle East and the Federation of British International Schools in South East Asia. It would be good for Britain, and for British teachers and pupils at British schools abroad, if the recognised induction process could be offered in such schools.

Amendment 69 again draws on the experience of the independent sector, and in particular of the ISC's teacher induction panel, established and recognised by the Government in 2002, which last year acted as the appropriate body for more than 1,250 NQTs serving induction in 800 accredited independent schools. It is the largest appropriate body in the country. The panel believes very strongly that newly qualified teachers should be able to serve only one induction period, not least because such a small number fail—16 last year out of more than 29,000 teachers taking induction. That leads the panel to the clear conclusion that, after the established statutory induction period, the outcome is that only a tiny number are not suitable to teach.

The Government are gaining tremendous credit for increasing the rigour of the selection process for state-funded teacher training places, bringing the system closely into line with the very successful Teach First initiative. A revised and significantly reduced set of teaching standards that will underpin both the training and probationary years is in the pipeline.

Given that the new set of teacher standards will cover both years, teachers will be in the satisfactory position of having twice as much time to become familiar with, and proficient in, fewer standards. Thus, it would seem to make even less sense if new teachers who could not make the grade were allowed to retake induction. One year should be enough for experienced professionals to make a judgment on whether new teachers are able to cope with the demands of day-to-day school life. Just as we would expect new teachers who show insufficient knowledge and understanding to fail their initial teacher training, surely we should similarly expect those who are unable to maintain order in a way that meets the required induction standards to fail the statutory induction process without being able to extend that beyond the statutory period.

Finally, and briefly, Amendment 72 relates to a specific, but not unimportant, issue arising from the establishment of teaching schools, which are a very welcome development that will begin in September. The new networks of teaching schools will undoubtedly be successful in training their own staff, whether at initial teacher training level or over the statutory induction year but—and this is the issue—would it be altogether wise to allow these schools to become their own appropriate bodies responsible for validating the induction year and for the oversight of the quality assurance of the process? That is the issue that has led to my tabling Amendment 72.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, this amendment intrigues me, and it raises a question that I hope the Minister can answer. I hope that the proposal would not in any way affect the positive cross-border flow of teachers between Wales and England and between Scotland and England. There are benefits to both sides at the moment.

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[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.

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, my three amendments have precipitated a discussion on induction that has ranged rather more widely than I anticipated. I thank all those who have contributed to this wide-ranging discussion, including my noble friend Lord Lucas who rebuked me for my mean-mindedness. I will work on it and seek to correct it. I also thank the noble Baroness who spoke on behalf of the Government for the many reassurances that she gave, particularly for her comments about the expanded arrangements now in contemplation so that induction can be undertaken in British schools abroad. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 68 withdrawn.