Education Bill

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I am afraid that I missed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Edmiston, which was obviously a big loss for me. On the other hand, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, albeit with a form of fire and brimstone which is likely to be rather more anaemic.

While the previous Government tended to measure the success of their education policy by reference to inputs, the present Government prefer to focus attention on outcomes. Thus they make great play of the fact that the UK is declining by reference to international comparisons of performance, but the Government's use of the OECD's so-called PISA rankings has been criticised. The number of countries included in that survey doubled between 2000 and 2009, with an obvious impact on rankings. You can get the UK up as high as 8th or as low as 36th if you try, depending on how you manipulate the statistics. While the emphasis on outcomes and international comparisons in relation to schools’ participation in surveys and Ofqual’s objectives is welcome, we will need to watch the Government's presentation of them like a hawk if we are to have a true accounting of the success of their education policies.

This Bill does not contain any big idea but rather seeks to put the coalition's stamp on our education system. That can perhaps be seen most prominently in the extension of the academies and free schools programme and the provisions on discipline and professional autonomy, with their emphasis on decentralisation and cutting bureaucracy. However, the latter possibly sit rather uncomfortably alongside the abolition of five arm’s-length bodies, with over 50 new powers being acquired by the Secretary of State, so we are told, including that to determine the curriculum by order—French Minister of Education-style.

Great concern has been expressed, by a wide range of organisations representing children's interests, on the proposed extension of powers to search children in schools without their consent that are contained in Clauses 2 and 3—at their breadth, at the relaxation of safeguards and at their possible conflict with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Act. That is despite the lack of evidence to show that the measures are necessary and proportionate and in the absence of any review of the use of existing powers, which were extended only as recently as 2009. I hope that we will hear more from the Minister on this point when he responds to the debate and as we go through the Bill in Committee. On the other hand, the decision to maintain the previous Government’s policy of seeking to combat the inequality of opportunity, which we know takes root almost from birth, by extending free early-years provision to children from disadvantaged backgrounds aged two is welcome.

In the remainder of my time, I want to flag up a few concerns which have been expressed about the potentially adverse impact of some of the Bill’s provisions on provision for children with special educational needs. We will want to explore these more fully in Committee, but I know that the Minister will be concerned to take these issues on board from the positive way in which he responded to the concerns of those representing the interests of children with special educational needs when we discussed the Academies Bill in this House last year.

Perhaps most surprising are the provisions in Clauses 30 and 31, which remove the duty on schools to co-operate with children’s trust arrangements, the requirement on local authorities to promote schools’ involvement in local co-ordination of services, and the requirement for schools forums and the governing bodies of maintained schools to have regard to the children and young people’s plan prepared by their local children’s trust board.

The duty to co-operate has its origin in the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié carried out by my noble friend Lord Laming when he was chief inspector of social services. It found that there had been a complete breakdown in multi-agency child protection arrangements and that vulnerable children needed local services to work together to meet their needs and to communicate and co-operate in doing so. He had wanted to be here tonight to express his misgivings about the proposal to remove these duties, but unfortunately he is not able to be present. However, he asked me to place his reservations on the record and he will no doubt wish to expand on them when we get to Committee.

A key priority for the Government’s SEN and disability Green Paper is the improvement of partnership working. It proposes the development of a single assessment process and an integrated education, health and care plan. This is clearly right, but the removal of the co-operation and allied duties by Clauses 30 and 31 would seem to run completely counter to this whole policy thrust. The organisation Sense, which speaks on behalf of deafblind people, argues that the duty provides an important framework for agencies to work together in the interests of vulnerable children, particularly children with conditions that require the involvement of health, social care and specialist education services. It is particularly concerned that the removal of the duty on schools will undermine efforts proposed elsewhere, in the Health and Social Care Bill—I think that we still have a Health and Social Care Bill—to bring agencies together in an integrated planning process.

The Secretary of State, when he addressed Cross-Bench Peers last week, deployed a subtle and sinuous argument to justify removal of the duty; namely, that agencies could co-operate if they wished but that being prescriptive would not make them if they did not want to. However, I am inclined to think—and this is the lesson of the inquiry of the noble Lord, Lord Laming—that partnership in the interests of the single assessment and integrated planning will require the duty to co-operate if it is to be optimally effective.

There are also concerns that changes in the procedure for excluding pupils will impact disproportionately on children with special educational needs and disability. The Government have expressed their intention of addressing this in guidance, but I am inclined to think that some modification of the Bill would inspire greater confidence in parents, as would provisions to guarantee the independence of SEN experts appointed to advise review panels.

Finally, there are concerns about the ability of parents and carers to hold schools to account if local authorities no longer have to establish admissions forums; about removal of the power of the Local Government Ombudsman to hear complaints, only just introduced, leaving parents to the much less robust remedy of complaining to the Secretary of State; and about changes to the provision of careers guidance. So there will be plenty for us to get our teeth into in Committee.