Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

I had better address my amendment in this group, since it is the exact opposite of two of the amendments just spoken to by my noble friend. My noble friend Lady Walmsley and I will be in perfect time at eight o’clock tomorrow morning as we practise for the Lords versus Commons rowing race, but there seems to be some dissonance at the moment.

It has long been said that the only people capable of organising school transport effectively are local authorities. I have never seen any evidence produced for that. It seems to go with the assertion that local authorities organise everything best. If that is true, there is no danger in giving academies the right to organise school transport because they will always turn to the local authority, as it does it best. However, I suspect from the practices of local authorities that I have experienced that that will not be the case. Many local authorities, particularly in rural areas, will not offer transport outside the catchment area of the school, even if there are others a mile or so beyond it who might conveniently be reached by the bus going an extra mile.

Many local authorities are not responsive to the requirements of schools and parents in other ways. They just want to organise things efficiently for the network as a whole. The idea that what is efficient for the network as a whole is in some way best for schools and parents and is cheapest is extremely arguable and the best way to test it is to give academies freedom to organise school transport for themselves. When it is more efficient for them to do so, they will do so; when it is not, they will use local authorities. That way we will get the best of all worlds.

[Lord Northbourne]

Amendment 69 is a permissive amendment along the same lines as that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. We are trying to be overprescriptive in this. There may be circumstances under which it would be appropriate for charges to be made, possibly because the child’s parents were well off or because a charity had agreed to pay for the extra facilities being talked about. I do not see why we should screw the whole thing down in the way that it is screwed down in the Bill. My amendment loosens it up and allows a decision to be made on the basis of the facts and the best interests of the child.

[Lord Adonis]

There is in fact no sector of education that has more experience of academy-type schools than special education because of the existence of a large number of non-maintained special schools that are sponsored and managed by outstanding charities such as Barnardo’s and a number of other charities whose presidents are in the Chamber this evening. They are entirely independently managed but take their pupils largely or wholly by way of referrals from local authorities.

The improvement of special educational needs provision was of great concern when my party was in office and I know that it will be of great concern to the Minister. During my time in the department, I looked at this in detail and, so far as I could tell, there is no difference in inspection grades, quality or responsiveness to the needs of the special education community between maintained and non-maintained schools. There are sectors where schools that are maintained or non-maintained perform better and sectors where they perform less well. EBD is a classic case where special schools, whether maintained or non-maintained, perform less well.

Indeed, this is an area that needs a significant injection of new dynamic energy of the kind that academies could well breathe into the special schools sector. However, I saw no evidence that a school being managed in the maintained system or in the non-maintained system, which actually gives it greater independence in management than academies have, made a difference either to its responsiveness to the needs of pupils with particular special educational needs or to its maintained collaboration with local authorities, because the whole pupil referral base of these schools depends on the local authorities being willing to place their pupils in them. I therefore do not share concerns about the principle of academies in the special schools sector.

On the contrary, in crucial areas of special educational needs, particularly EBD, the dynamic innovation and attention to the needs of particular sectors that academies can bring could lead to significant improvements in provision and could enable existing special schools to expand their provision and to adapt to improve the way in which they meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs in ways that enhance the overall quality of the state education system.

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Moved by

[Lord Northbourne]

19: Clause 1, page 1, line 20, after “pupils” insert “or prospective pupils”

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 20, 42, 44, 62 and 71. They are probing amendments, designed to ascertain what the Government are really planning or, if they are not planning anything, to try to encourage them to do so.

The amendments relate to special educational needs in the context of emotional and behavioural disadvantage, because the needs of EBD children are in some ways very different from those of many other SEN children. I shall change the mood, I hope, of the debate by asking whether academies could not be a positive force for good in the provision of help for these disadvantaged children.

Let us not delude ourselves: local authorities are in charge at the moment and it is not going wonderfully well. As we sit here today, there are nearly 1 million young people in this country who are not in education, employment or training—the so-called NEETs. That is about 10 per cent of the total population of 16 to 18 year-olds. I see this group of young people as a challenge and possibly a great opportunity for the new academies. But if the academies are to tackle this challenge, they must have the freedom and the power to address it effectively. I will quote from three recent reports that confirm the nature and the urgency of this problem.

Action for Children’s report earlier this year referred to the overriding importance of intervening as early as we can to support our most vulnerable children and their families. It states:

“The deprivation these families experience is deeper and more complex than poverty alone, and the belief at the heart of this work is therefore that fiscal help alone will not stop their problems from being passed on through the generations”.

The report goes on:

“Where there are multiple risk factors, the evidence is that deprivation is passed down from one generation to the next … This is often seen in the way relationships develop: children are defiant, blamed by parents and disliked by siblings. They are unpopular at school and get into fights or suffer bullying. Low self-esteem is exacerbated. They do badly at school, become involved in crime and drugs, and by the time they are 17 are on their way to becoming a career criminal. This may seem dramatic, but it is a recognised journey that too many of our children have travelled”.

In the Times last week, Kathryn Ecclestone, Professor of Education and Social Inclusion at the University of Birmingham said:

“There is broad agreement that Britain faces a crisis of mental ill health and poor emotional wellbeing, especially among children … Growing numbers of policymakers and teachers believe that emotional wellbeing is more important than reading, writing and numeracy. The Government’s social and emotional aspects of learning strategy asserts that we cannot leave the “skills” of emotional literacy and wellbeing to “dysfunctional” families”.

I have one final quote. The Centre for Social Justice Green Paper dated 10 January 2010 states:

“Stable … families are at the heart of strong societies … The absence of a stable, nurturing family environment has a profoundly damaging impact on the individual, often leading to behaviour which is profoundly damaging to society. Family breakdown is particularly acute in our most deprived communities. In these areas the concept of society is, for many, alien; whole communities are socially excluded from the mainstream. It is in these areas that we witness the highest levels of worklessness … and offending. If we are to create a fairer, more socially mobile society then we must invest in strengthening families”.

These reports all focus on the needs of children from severely disadvantaged, hard-to-reach, chaotic, inadequate families. Such children present a specific educational problem. If we could get this Bill right, it could bring new hope for many of those children and those families who, through no fault of their own, cannot provide their children with the long-term security, love, hope and boundaries that they need.

President Roosevelt said in the 1930s that it was a wicked thing to destroy a man’s hope, but it is a wicked thing to allow children to grow up without hope. Many of these children end up being statemented as having emotional and behavioural difficulties and often drop out of education altogether. They tend to be lacking in self-confidence, insecure, aggressive, quick to anger and deeply unhappy. It is with this group of children that I have had the privilege of working as a governor of an EBD school and for 16 years in the context of youth programmes at Toynbee Hall in Tower Hamlets. These children, whose families have failed them, comprise a socially and emotionally damaged underclass of which our society should be ashamed. My amendments intend to probe the Government's intentions in relation to the freedom of these academies to innovate in the best interests of their pupils.

I have just one or two questions for the Minister. Giving power to parents to choose may well be a way in which to improve the standard of schools, but what happens to those children whose parents are neither able nor willing to support their children, or who are not concerned, or who do not know how to do so? Who will fight for them? Secondly, with the children in this group the damage has usually been caused in the family long before the child reaches school—even primary school. Will the new academies have the power and resources to reach out and support parents of pupils in school as well as supporting, in the child’s early years, the parents of children who may later become pupils at the school? The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked that question earlier this evening. I assure the Committee that it is possible to help such parents. I know of two charities already doing excellent work in this area. Family Links, based in Oxford, last year helped some 80,000 parents. School Home Support, based in London, supported about 19,000 families and children last year. Will the proposed academies be able to undertake such work, whether through an associated primary school, a children’s centre or whatever?

Thirdly, will the new academies be able to deliver an innovative curriculum based on their pupils’ needs, which are pre-eminently to develop self-confidence and emotional intelligence as well as age-appropriate interpersonal skills. Could the academies do that, even if it involved omitting many of the academic subjects in the national curriculum? For this category of children, it is essential that they should have some opportunity for hope and success. If they are put neck and neck against children of much greater intellectual ability, it is very destructive.

The Government propose to allow a selection of pupils for special schools that become academies, if such a selection is in the best interests of the pupil. The question that I am going to ask now is controversial. Why do they not allow selection in other academies if it can be shown that such selection would be in the best interests of the pupil?

Finally, who will be in charge under this academy system for the well-being of each child? Will it be the social services, the academy or some combination of the two? I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his amendments. His questions have ranged very widely and well beyond the question of academies. Sure Start, nursery education and the pupil premium are all part of a strategy to deal with the problems that he raises. As we all know, the problems that he raises take us way beyond what the education sector in itself can deal with. We have been discussing those with special educational needs across a range of amendments already and have stressed that academies will serve local children of differing abilities, as now. The only exception will be outstanding converting grammar schools, which will be expected to partner weaker local schools. There will be no increase in the number of schools selecting by academic ability, including free schools and converting independent schools. We are offering additional freedoms to academies in a number of areas, including the curriculum, but those freedoms are underscored by a requirement that ensures parity with maintained schools in relation to admissions, exclusions and SEN. That means that Amendment 19 is, I suggest, unnecessary. The requirement to make provision for pupils with SEN effectively includes a requirement to make provision for prospective pupils with SEN.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are indeed talking about something that goes wider than academies themselves. I visited a secondary school in Bradford some months ago and found that all these issues were raised in the local community. People were concerned that, in pursuing league tables, schools in the area did not do their best to push the difficult pupils off on one another, so as to up their game in the league tables. We are all conscious that this is a long-term problem and one that we shall have to continue to grasp as we move towards establishing more academies.

As regards the curriculum, children’s statements will specify the provision required to meet each child’s needs. This will include the curriculum requirement and whatever else is needed to meet emotional and behavioural needs. Academies will have greater flexibility in relation to the curriculum. That is part of what is intended. Academies will be encouraged to work with other local services, both public and third sector, to cope with these sorts of problems. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, remarked, this issue has been with us for several generations and it will not go away very quickly. We must do our utmost to ensure that the schools we are trying to develop pick up these children and give them the help that they need. The greater curriculum flexibility that the academies can provide may help in this respect.

[Lord Northbourne]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I shall, of course, read what he has said in more detail. However, I wish to make one or two small points. I think that he referred to what I was saying as not being part of education. Education is the fundamental development of the child.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I said that it goes wider than education.

[Lord Northbourne]

I accept that. I do not know whether the noble Lord has ever tried to get a statement, but I have friends who have had to get statements for disabled children who they have adopted. It is unbelievably difficult to get a statement out of the local authority. You have to be prepared to fight and fight. I support the Government. Let us look at this as an opportunity because, quite honestly, some local authorities are not doing terribly well. Some are doing well, but quite a lot are not, so let us recruit the academy movement into trying to solve some of these problems. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 19 withdrawn.