Education Bill

Lord Peston Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising the subject today, as on many other days previously in my years here. He is indefatigable in his determination to remind us of the importance of young children and of the family in providing the relevant context.

I was going to say that we are all parents but looking at the grey hair around this House, I am obviously talking overwhelmingly to grandparents rather than parents. However, thinking back to when we were young parents, there would be no disagreement that our duty was overwhelmingly to our children. I am not opposed to parental education; quite the contrary—the more the better. I certainly did not have any but my wife and I had no doubt whatever that when we got married we would have children and that, of course, the children were our responsibility. We devoted our lives to them. They are now very grown up but occasionally the phone rings and one will ask, “Is mum there?”, meaning that he has a problem of the sort that he used to have when he was three years old.

There is nothing between us on what we are focusing on. The question is: what contribution we can make in the context of this Bill, which will become an Act of Parliament? I am not too happy at the negativism I have heard from one or two noble Lords on this.

I say to myself, “Why should we not put our aspirations in the Bill?”. Would it not be useful for your Lordships—people of experience and distinction—to send out the message that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, wishes us to send? I believe very strongly that the answer to that question is yes. I see nothing in our unwritten constitution that says aspirations must never be placed in an Act of Parliament. Indeed, I would go further: I feel those of us in this House would be failing in our duties if we did not insist that proper recognition was made of our aspirations. I am therefore in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that this should be in the Bill.

I also think that, in terms of making policy, there is a genuine problem sometimes in not having all the relevant information we might need. This is not the last Bill that will ever be presented to your Lordships’ House on education, nor the last to be presented that will deal with the subject of children. It would be jolly good if we were able to speak with a full factual basis behind us. That is why I would particularly hope that the Minister would look at Amendment 3—also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—with the intention of giving us a database for future policy-making in due course.

I conclude as I began: it would be a very valuable thing for this House of older men and women to send out a message to the world that we really do think this is of central importance, and we aspire to do something about it.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Northbourne for his absolutely indefatigable championing of early years provision, which is the context of the amendment. I also agree with my noble friend Lady Howe about the importance of assessment, and echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Eden, about communication. While I am commending, I also commend the Minister for the way that he has communicated with us all throughout this Bill, by writing to us, informing us and keeping us in the picture. That is very much appreciated.

I have to say to the Minister that, in saying what I am going to say, I end up with a question, which is a question born out of disappointment, from over a number of years, in failing to achieve what I know many noble Lords in this House want. In coming to this particular description, I was interested in the report and summary of evidence released in July by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education. I would like to quote certain passages from the all-party group’s reports, which I think are important, especially in connection with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.

First, the all-party group states that all respondents to the inquiry,

“were of the opinion that early intervention is essential and that recommendations or statutory guidance should be provided to health authorities to prompt earlier intervention”.

I say that because I will conclude with health. Of all the different interventions, I have always felt that one of the most important is that of speech and language therapists, who enable children to communicate with their teachers when they start school. Without that, the pupils cannot engage. When we are talking about education, we are also discussing why people cannot engage. This point has been made over and over again, without success.

As has been said many times,

“It is vital that assessments and interventions are tailored to the specific needs of pupils”.

The point about such interventions is that they should identify specific needs, including difficulties and disabilities such as problems with hearing, sight and so on. This interests me because I have tried to get this introduced before, after I carried out an experiment in young offender institutions with children aged 15 and upwards. That experiment proved that, had those children had that intervention earlier, they might not have arrived at the institution—by and large, their journey until then had been one of failure, not least failure in education. I saw this represented and repeated by children on intensive supervision orders in Leeds, which proved exactly the same thing. The report by Mr John Bercow, as he then was, into the whole question of learning difficulties and how they were not being tackled, highlighted the same problem.

However, when I put up the suggestion that there should be speech and language therapists in every young offender institution to establish what was preventing people making progress, the whole issue ended up with money. The Ministry of Justice was unable to fund speech and language therapists because they came from the Department of Health. Similarly, when I put up exactly the same proposal in earlier education Bills, the same answer has come: it is the Department of Health's responsibility to provide these people.

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[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, I would like to pick up the subject of searching, as I would like to talk about the need for guidance to be provided by the Secretary of State regarding the erasure of data from electronic devices taken from pupils during a search incident. The erasure of data from electronic devices is a concern that was brought to my attention by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, and I declare an interest as a vice-president of the charity.

Barnardo’s understands the concerns around the use of mobile phones for viewing and displaying offensive material, and that teachers may wish to remove offensive material to prevent it being viewed or shared. However, there are concerns that teachers may use this power to erase data which could otherwise be used as legal evidence in court that a child is being sexually exploited or groomed for sexual exploitation.

It is well established that mobile phones are used as command and control devices in child sexual exploitation. Through the cases Barnardo’s has dealt with, the charity has found that one of the “tell-tale signs” of child sexual exploitation is the secretive use of mobile phones and the internet away from parents’ eyes. Children as young as seven are carrying mobile phones and they are increasingly accessing the internet via mobile phones from a variety of locations. The national guidance to local safeguarding children boards recognises that mobile phones are themselves often given as gifts to children who are being exploited and that they can be used to lure young people into being exploited or exploited further.

This is also recognised by police forces across the country; they acknowledge that gathering evidence for child sexual exploitation can be difficult. To deal with this problem, West Yorkshire Police has drawn up a list to help agencies, carers and young people provide the police with the intelligence they need to make convictions through phone-based intelligence. Intelligence is gathered and used in situations where there may be no evidence available or the victim is unable or unwilling to provide a police statement. This occurs in the vast majority of cases of sexual exploitation. Therefore, the opportunity to provide information as intelligence means that the police can build a comprehensive picture over a period of time and act upon it. This could interrupt and disrupt criminal activity in which young people are being exploited.

Child sexual exploitation intelligence includes details on suspects such as their names and nicknames, details of phone numbers and mobile phones used by suspects and details of any text messages or phone calls made by them or to them. It also includes details of locations where offences have taken place or which the suspects or victims visited, and dates and times that incidents of child sexual exploitation occurred—in fact, any links between suspects, their cars or locations and young people identified as being at risk of child sexual exploitation.

There are examples of prosecutions of men using Facebook to groom children for exploitation, but the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre—CEOP—also warns of the use of smartphones and 3G technology. CEOP warns that online child sex offenders are using more intimidating tactics to engage with, exploit and abuse children and young people. Reports of this are increasing. Text messaging is used as grooming behaviour, and this is also increasing.

This is not just an issue of the loss of child sexual exploitation evidence, but there are also similar concerns around deleting messages or data which may have been used for bullying or harassment. It is important that victims of cyberbullying are believed and get the support they need, and that the bullies are dealt with appropriately. Therefore bullying messages received on mobile phones should not be deleted in case they can be used to support victims of such harassment.

Conviction rates for child sexual exploitation remain disappointingly low. In 2009 Barnardo’s was aware of 2,893 victims—perhaps just the tip of the iceberg—yet there were only 89 convictions. Organisations such as CEOP and Barnardo’s are committed to making everyone at every level become aware of how we can all identify child sexual exploitation. They believe that texts and e-mails will be one way of showing behaviour over time.

The power in the Bill to erase data will be new to teachers. Therefore, the Secretary of State's guidance should be explicit about what data can be erased and should advise caution. I ask the Minister and Secretary of State to consider giving the guidance that teachers must record the nature of any material erased and the reason for its erasure. This should be done with a witness present.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I support these amendments, but I am bound to say it is with a heavy heart. I will explain why. I have been involved with education, educational philosophy and research into education for more than 50 years. When I think about what I believed when I started out, I realise that I must have been hopelessly naive. If I had been asked what the nature of a school was, I would have said that it was a place where people went to learn and teach, where values were developed and where one’s life was enhanced. Central to that were the teachers themselves. All of us know the difference that they have made to our lives. When I consider this group of amendments, I am forced to ask myself what has happened to our society. This section of the Bill, headed “Discipline”, could have been written for a prison or a concentration camp—but it is written for a school. It is also simply a repair job: at best, an Elastoplast. It does not solve any fundamental problems whatever.

I believe strongly that my noble friend's amendments do improve matters. They certainly make the Bill much more sensible and deal at least to some degree with the role of the teacher and the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. However, the fact remains that what is stated totally changes what some of us feel the teacher/pupil relationship should be. I do not believe for one minute that the Minister will accept the amendments, but it would be right to do so. It would certainly be right to test the opinion of the House on these matters. Some day, despite Governments of all parties kicking and screaming about these things, we will have to face up to the problem of social improvement and ask what has happened to our way of life and whether there is anything we can do about it.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments—in particular Amendment 10 —and to say how much I welcomed the words of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. In a strange way, I do not think that there is a difference of purpose across the House about what we want to achieve. We understand the importance of good discipline in schools and we want to equip teachers to be able to secure that discipline in their classrooms, and for head teachers to lead in that. There is no difference of opinion here. We are talking about the necessary safeguards that need to go alongside it in an area as crucial as physical contact and search.

I remind Members of the House how we have already come unstuck on this in a different context, 10 or 15 years ago. There is confusion among teachers in schools about touching children at all—even about putting their arm around a child's shoulder to comfort them, patting them on the head to say well done, or acting in a human way towards children, however small they are and whatever their needs. We politicians know that what teachers think is the case is not the case in law and has never been the intention of Governments of any party. I remarked in Committee on the Bill that the Minister was sending out further guidance on the circumstances in which teachers could appropriately touch a child. It sounded just like the guidance that I sent out 10 years ago—and it will probably be just as ineffective. The lesson we learn from this is that once practice is embedded in a school and a set of things is believed by teachers, it is very difficult to shift it. What you cannot do in an area such as this is to set it in motion and then try to back-track at a future date. The guidance, the intention, the parameters and all those things have to go out clearly with the initial message, otherwise teachers get fearful and do not know what is expected of them and the law becomes confused. That is why when I look again at Amendment 10 in the light of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, I see it as letting the Government stick to their wish to empower teachers to keep discipline. It has regard to the necessary safeguards for children, but does not make the mistake we made by not adding the clarity that we need at this early stage when we are giving teachers new powers. The Minister may reflect on that in his response.