Schools: Gardening

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Monday 24th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord’s comment about the therapeutic effect—both the British Medical Council and Natural England commented on this—particularly for children with disadvantages of some kind. I have seen this for myself in alternative provision schools and special schools. I will certainly pass on his comments about allotments.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

Given the educational value of these gardens, now that the Minister has had a windfall of time landing in his diary over the next few weeks, will he find time to dig through the weeds of the school funding formula to see whether head teachers will have enough resources for school gardens? Then perhaps the seeds of doubt will sprout about whether the line he is about to give us about the school funding formula is wearing a little thin.

[Lord Nash]

I am most impressed with the noble Lord’s ability to weave into this Question something which might appear to be so off-piste, but he will know, from his experience of having done my job, that when all the MPs disappear to try to get re-elected it is the Lords Minister who does all the work. However, I will attempt to come back to him with a more fulsome answer to his question.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this amendment. I want to remind your Lordships and the Minister that FE colleges come in a number of different guises and there are some specialist FE colleges for which this is particularly important. I am particularly a fan of the Ada Lovelace College—the newest college, I think, to be given FE status by the department—which is the National College for Digital Skills, based in Haringey. We have an acute shortage of digital skills throughout this country, including here in London, and there is a massive demand for them. If we can allow more international students to come and take advantage of studying at that college, we would do our economy and some of those young people an enormous service. I urge the Minister to listen carefully, as is his wont, and to be sympathetic to this amendment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the Committee will be aware that this issue is already being considered as part of the Higher Education and Research Bill. As a Government, we will want to consider our position across the board, and I can assure noble Lords that we are doing this. This topic is best discussed in the context of the Higher Education and Research Bill, where there will be ample opportunity to consider the issue during the forthcoming Report stage. However, I will briefly address the more specific points of the amendment.

While there are some further education colleges that have centres of expertise or offer higher level study that attract a significant number of international students, such as the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, as a whole the number of international students in FE is much smaller than for the higher education sector. Courses are on average shorter, and delivery is more locally focused and reflects local economic priorities. Where colleges take significant numbers of international students, the issues will parallel those that have been considered through proposed amendments to the Higher Education and Research Bill.

I do not propose to repeat the arguments that my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie made during that debate. I do wish to emphasise that we have and will continue to set no limit on the number of genuine international students who can come here. The controls in place are there to prevent abuse of the system and ensure that the reputation of the UK educational sector continues to be internationally renowned. The immigration statistics are controlled independently by the Office for National Statistics. It is not up to the Government to create the statistical definitions. Our responsibility is to set the policy, which in this case places no limit on numbers of students.

As I have said, there will be an opportunity to debate these issues further as part of the Higher Education and Research Bill, which is the more appropriate forum. In those circumstances, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

Education: Newly Qualified Teachers

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests relating to my work at TES. Last Monday, the head of education for the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, was in London, at a meeting of more than 80 Education Ministers. He reminded them that this country is the world capital of rote learning—as opposed to the leading jurisdictions, such as Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong, which have far less rote learning because they focus on deeper thinking through mastery. Is not the retention problem in this country that bored teachers are having to fill bored pupils with too much shallow-level content and not enough deep thinking?

[Lord Nash]

I do not agree with the noble Lord, although I have lot of respect for his experience in this area. One thing we have done is improve the knowledge in the curriculum because cognitive science is absolutely clear that to develop skills such as critical thinking, you need knowledge to apply. We are also clear that some of our best groups are now developing much better teaching resources for teachers so that they do not have to spend time devising lesson plans and can spend much more time developing the kind of techniques that the noble Lord refers to.

Grammar Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord raises an extremely good question. We are surrounded in Pimlico by a lot of schools that, in one way or the other, partly because they are independent, are selective. But through our reforms, we are determined to see the selective sector—all selective schools, including existing ones—engage much more widely with the system, focusing particularly on lower-income households, so that we can help drive a school system that works for everyone.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

Parents in this country are spending an estimated £4 billion to £7 billion a year on private tuition for their children. I declare my interest in respect of my employment at TES. What is the Minister’s estimate of how much that private tuition bill will go up for those anxious parents and of how many teachers will be displaced from the classroom in order to pursue that lucrative business opportunity?

[Lord Nash]

I am fully aware that tutoring is a thriving business, and I know that many of these tutoring firms provide tutors pro bono to comprehensive schools—in fact, we have such a programme in my own schools. We are working with the Grammar School Heads Association to devise tests which are much more difficult to tutor for. As for the last question, I am not going to predict the answer to that.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Thursday 5th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

How will the progress measure account for churn in schools that have a big churn in population because of migration or Gypsy Travellers or because they are in a mobile community?

[Lord Nash]

I think—although I will write to the noble Lord—that it will not be calculated; they will not be in the stats, because they will not be there at the beginning.

The Bill provides that the Secretary of State will notify a school when it is coasting, and this makes the school eligible for intervention. As set out in the draft Schools Causing Concern guidance, which is currently out for consultation, regional schools commissioners will then consider whether the school has the capacity to secure sufficient improvement without formal intervention. In some cases, a school which falls within the coasting definition may have a new head teacher, governors or leadership team who can demonstrate that they have an effective plan to raise standards sufficiently. In other cases, they may be able to buddy up on a short-term basis with a nearby school and, in others, external support may be necessary from an NLE.

Where appropriate, regional schools commissioners will use their formal powers to ensure a coasting school receives the support and challenge that it needs, which may include becoming an academy. In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, it is by no means certain that coasting means becoming an academy; there may be many different ways in which schools can improve. As he knows from his excellent work on the London Challenge, that could be school-to-school support. We see one of the advantages of academisation as the clear structure of school-to-school support that it can bring, but that may necessarily be on a temporary basis for a coasting school.

Amendments 1 and 2, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and Amendment 5 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, propose alternative approaches to identifying and addressing schools in which pupils do not fulfil their potential. Amendment 2 gives Ofsted and the local authority responsibility for determining which schools are coasting. Amendment 5 seeks to broaden the definition to include achievement in sports and the arts and access to training, further education and the world of work. My concern with such approaches is that they remove certainty and transparency for schools; it would be unclear for any school whether it would be identified as coasting and, as such, could become eligible for intervention.

Being a teacher or a head teacher is a tough job. It is also in my view one of the most important jobs, if not the most important job, in our country at this time, given how highly geared these roles are to the future success of our country. We want to make the environment in which our teachers and head teachers operate easier, not more difficult, and more certain, not more uncertain. Our schools are inspected by Ofsted; that is right, and there is no doubt that our schools take great notice of this. But there is already enough uncertainty in the minds of our teachers and head teachers as to how their school will be rated by Ofsted without adding to that uncertainty and, yes, anxiety, by adding a vague coasting definition by which they are measured. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for her observations on this issue.

We have chosen to base our proposed coasting definition on published performance data precisely so that schools can easily understand whether their performance will equate to them being identified as coasting. Under our proposed approach, many schools can already be reassured that their 2014 and 2015 performance means that they will not be deemed to be coasting when—looking at three years of data, as we propose—we identify coasting schools for the first time in 2016. Such a certain, data-driven approach has been welcomed by many school leaders and organisations representing them. For example, the chief executive of Outward Grange Academies Trust has said that he welcomes the definition,

“in particular the fact that it is based on performance data not Ofsted and the fact that it is measurable every year and compares performance at similar schools over time”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

It applies only to 2014 and 2015—and if it is not clear, we will make it clear in the future.

Amendment 5 requires draft regulations to be laid before and approved by each House before they can be made or updated. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, will allow me to discuss this important element of the amendment when we reach Amendment 8, which proposes exactly the same approach.

Amendments 2 and 9 propose that academies, alongside maintained schools, would become eligible for intervention, and, in the case of Amendment 2, subject to the statutory intervention powers in the Education and Inspections Act 2006, when notified by Ofsted that they are schools where pupils do not fulfil their potential.

I agree that coasting schools must be tackled—whether it is a maintained school or an academy. But academies are not governed by the statutory framework that this Bill seeks to amend. They are run by charitable companies—academy trusts—which operate in accordance with the terms of individual funding agreements between the academy trust and the Secretary of State. We have already published a new coasting clause for the model funding agreement, as I have said. But I want to reassure the House again that, even where academies do not have this specific clause in their existing funding agreement, regional schools commissioners will assess all academies against the coasting definition. Where academies are identified as coasting, RSCs will assess their capacity to improve sufficiently in just the same way as maintained schools, supporting and challenging them to improve and taking action under their funding agreements where necessary.

RSCs have already shown that they take effective action when academies underperform. Since 1 September 2014, when RSCs came into post, they have issued 58 prewarning and warning notices to academy and free school trusts. In the same period, they have moved 83 academies and free schools to new trusts or sponsors, compared to 13 in the previous academic year.

Amendment 2 would remove the Secretary of State’s power to issue an academy order for a school that has been notified that it is a school in which pupils do not fulfil their potential. While some coasting schools may choose to become academies in order to benefit from the strong governance and support of a multi-academy trust, we have been clear, as I said, that enforced academisation will not be the default solution for all coasting schools. RSCs will want to consider whether a coasting school has demonstrated that it has the capacity to improve sufficiently on its own, and in some cases this capacity will be evident, or it may need advice and support, for example from an NLE, and that may be sufficient to bring about the required improvements.

It is important that RSCs have the discretion to make an academy order where it is clear that a school’s leadership does not have the capacity to improve sufficiently and where the school needs the support of an experienced sponsor in order to fulfil the potential of the pupils. We know that sponsors can bring new life to schools. For example, the City Academy Whitehawk in Brighton and Hove opened in September 2013. The year prior to its becoming an academy, only 39% of pupils achieved level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths at the end of key stage 2. By 2015, the provisional figure has increased to 75%. It would not be right to deny coasting schools this support where it is appropriate.

Amendment 7 would provide the governing body of a maintained school with a right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal when it considers that the data used to define a school as coasting could have been interpreted in a different way. This amendment is unnecessary. Our clear and transparent data-based definition will not be open to interpretation. Schools will be certain, based on the data, whether they have fallen below the coasting bar or not, but regional schools commissioners are already required by virtue of public law to act reasonably in exercising the Secretary of State’s powers. As I said, they will work with schools to consider all the relevant factors when deciding what action to take.

The draft Schools Causing Concern guidance already includes a number of examples of the type of factors they should consider. As I said, we have been clear that intervention in coasting schools will not be automatic. Nick Capstick, the CEO of the White Horse Federation outlined this clearly when he said:

“It is right that the coasting definition is based on transparent performance measures. It is then clear-cut for schools whether they fall within the coasting definition or not. The majority of schools will therefore be able to carry on free from fear that they suddenly and unexpectedly be judged as coasting”.

I know that noble Lords support our ambition to ensure that all pupils, whatever their background, receive an education that enables them to fulfil their potential. I hope that, following this debate and having seen the detail behind our coasting policy—alongside the proposed coasting definition set out in our recent consultation—noble Lords will be reassured that our approach is the right one.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

Will the department record the interventions made as they are made on coasting schools against the different categories the noble Lord described earlier, so that there is a dataset that we can then interrogate to understand in practice as it rolls out how that balance plays out?

[Lord Nash]

When we formally intervene, we already publish that information, so it will be in the public domain. In view of what I have said, I hope that noble Lords are reassured that our approach is the right one, and I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.