Education Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support the Bill thoroughly. I am delighted that we are showing the wisdom to trust teachers, and to believe that they have wisdom and have things to teach us as legislators and not just their pupils. So I suspect that I shall not give my noble friend too much trouble in Committee, though I did find myself listening perhaps rather too closely for his taste to my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lord Lingfield. Are we really saying that removing people’s right to appeal is based on 6,000 cases a year, of which 600 are appealed and 60 are granted? Are we saying that this system is so perfect that a 1 per cent error rate is unlikely and that it is unlikely that 60 pupils deserve readmission to their school? I hope we will hear some serious evidence on that from the Front Bench if we are to proceed with the relevant clause.

Otherwise, this Bill having been likened to a Christmas tree, I intend to try to hang a few baubles on it. The Localism Bill is going through this House at the same time as this Bill; I certainly want some more localism when it comes to the selection of governors. I want us to revisit the question of how teachers who are not up to teaching get moved—we will clearly revisit that when it comes to bad nurses and bad doctors. I am not saying that I have any conclusions, but I certainly want us to discuss it.

We should look at cyberschools. Thirty-eight states in America now have state cyberschools where pupils can study all or some of the time somewhere other than the school. We should make sure that the legislation allows us to consider such developments.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, in her saying that Ofsted did not inspect good schools. An Ofsted report is an essential part of a parent knowing what a school is like. You cannot judge a school on what it says about itself and on a few independent statistics. How will all that bit of what a school does that is not measured by statistics be reported to parents? How will we know whether a once-good school is starting to go off the boil? It happens all the time. Little schools can go off the boil in a matter of a term. I can think of schools that I once thought were great that took only a year or two to die. That is an area where I might give my noble friend some serious trouble in Committee.

Turning to the less serious side of things, I shall try to persuade the Minister that we should exempt schools from the requirements on music licensing and trust them to put on live music without having to refer to local authorities. I shall try to persuade him that we should encourage Ofqual to assign point scores to qualifications commonly used by UK schools, particularly independent schools, so that they can be properly included in the performance tables without any assumption that the qualifications then go on to be available to state schools. I shall try to persuade him that we should disclose to pupils and more generally actual marks in public examinations. My noble friend was complaining about grade boundaries. These are totally artificial creations. In Switzerland, there are no grade boundaries; people get marks out of 100, or whatever it is there. One thing just grades seamlessly into another. Forty-nine is not different from 50 because there is a grade boundary in between; it is just a point’s difference. That would have great advantages in what the Minister is trying to achieve.

We will revisit admissions to faith schools. I was much inspired by what my noble friend Lord Edmiston said in his superb maiden speech on what he has done with his academies. The point of having faith schools in the state system is to let people go to them; it is so that our parents and people like me—I am not a believer myself—can say, “I want a Christian education, or indeed a Muslim education, for my child because I like what is going on in a certain school”. It is not to create little ghettos for people who happen to share the same faith. If they want to do that, they can be independent schools.

I want to make it easier for schools to allow their teachers to hug children, to put plasters on them, to teach them in physical ways when that is required, such as in learning the violin or how to use a saw properly on a piece of wood, and to make sure that those cases do not end up in teachers being suspended while they are investigated.

Much to the pleasure of very few people, I turn to private universities. My right honourable friend David Willetts got into considerable trouble over them. I think I am less vulnerable than him to the tabloids and to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, so we shall visit that subject. We are getting private universities. It is clear that Anthony Grayling will not be the first since others are seeking to do the same thing, albeit in different ways. Why are we going to such lengths to ensure that we disadvantage our own people while we advantage pupils from overseas?

Last of all, perhaps I should confess that a hashtag—#educationbill—is available on this debate, and there certainly will be for Committee. Noble Lords who are equipped with iPads or similar will find, I hope, that people outside this Chamber are interested in and willing to comment on our deliberations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That seems a sensible suggestion. My noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, assiduous as he is, has already written to me, having failed to intervene on me earlier. I shall see what I can do about that. Like all noble Lords, I find that the way that the Bill is drafted makes it difficult to navigate one’s way through it.

At the heart of the Government’s coalition programme are the principles of greater freedom and fairness. These principles underpin the Bill. In many areas it takes forward the reforms of the previous Government in early years, greater school autonomy and powers to improve behaviour and discipline. In others, it strips away top-down legislative controls, which can stifle the professionalism of those working in schools, colleges and local areas. It tries, as my noble friend Lord Eccles argued, to put decisions more in the hands of teachers, parents and pupils, and moves us towards an education system that the international evidence shows characterises the highest-performing education systems in the world.

I welcome the opportunity that the Committee stage will offer us to refine the legislation. In that spirit, I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I very much regret the decision of the usual channels that this Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee. It is an important Bill with many crucial aspects. It has clearly commanded wide support in the House. Fitting 50 people into the Moses Room will be a considerable struggle. As I understand it, that arises from the failure of the Government to give us any major Bills to start with in the Lords so, as usual, they are all piling up at the end. We are therefore expected to leave the Chamber clear for whatever other business the Government have by making this a Grand Committee Bill, for which, to my mind, it is not suitable. I very much hope that this is a matter that we shall return to when we debate the procedures of this House.

Can my noble friend at least give me the assurance that we will not have Committee on this Bill on any day when, in this Chamber, there is Committee on the Localism Bill? Many of us take an interest in both matters, and it would seem to me quite unreasonable to try to run the two in parallel.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that the business planning of the House will try to take into account, as far as we possibly can, that there are no major clashes between Bills and discussions in that way.