Education Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the main purpose of the Bill is to give legislative effect to proposals set out in our White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, published last November. To that extent, it has been well trailed and contains few surprises. In a number of respects, it builds on reforms introduced by the previous Government. In all respects, I hope that it will enable us to strengthen the autonomy of schools and colleges, to back heads and teachers as they go about their jobs, to move away from top-down prescription, to strengthen the ways in which we hold schools and Ministers to account, and to build on our efforts to tackle disadvantage and extend opportunity more widely. While I am sure that there will be proposals on which we will hold different views, I hope and expect that there will be broad agreement to the principles on which the Bill is built.

Why are we so keen to strengthen autonomy and accountability and to put our trust in schools and colleges? It is because the evidence from the best-performing educational systems around the world suggests that this combination is most effective at driving improvement. Greater autonomy, backing teachers and increased accountability are the threads that run through the Bill. I will say a little more about each.

“Autonomy” is a rather lifeless word to describe something that I believe that we are all keen to encourage: a situation where inspiring heads and outstanding teachers are free to use their judgment and experience for the good of children. There can sometimes be a temptation for legislators to prescribe everything that we think is desirable in order to guard against things going wrong. The difficulty with that impulse, which I understand, is that the effect over time can be to silt up the system and make professionals feel constrained in exercising their judgment on the ground.

In 2009, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee produced a report on the cumulative impact of statutory instruments on schools. It recommended that the former Department for Children, Schools and Families should shift its primary focus from the regulation of processes through statutory instruments towards establishing accountability for the delivery of the most important outcomes. In line with that, the Bill removes some unnecessary legislative duties from schools, such as: to produce a school profile; to co-operate through children’s trusts; to have regard to the area’s children and young people’s plan; and to take part in a behaviour and attendance partnership. We want schools to be able to co-operate in ways that are right for them, not to be asked to conform to a one-size-fits-all approach determined in Whitehall.

We are fortunate to have a strong and vibrant sixth-form college and further education sector. Again, we feel we should be able to trust that sector’s leadership and staff to meet the needs of young people and employers in their local community, yet they tell us that they too often feel weighed down by a complex statutory framework that holds them back from doing what they do best. That is why we are removing those duties and stripping away some of the powers that legislate for best practice or inhibit the sector’s ability to enhance the choice and experience of learners and employers.

The Association of Colleges has said that:

“AoC is pleased that Ministers have placed on a statutory footing the clear commitment they have already shown to freeing Further Education and Sixth Form Colleges from many regulatory burdens … Colleges don’t need a statutory duty to tell them they should take account of the views of students and local employers on the courses they offer or that they should have regard to promoting the well-being of the local economy and community”.

We know that governors play a critical role in the strategic leadership of schools. Current regulations prescribe proportions and categories of governors in minute detail. Therefore, we are keen that governing bodies should have more freedom, if they want it, to recruit governors primarily on the basis of skills and experience. During the passage of the Bill through the other place, there were strong representations, particularly from Liberal Democrat colleagues, that, in addition to the head teacher and parent governors, it is important for maintained school governing bodies to have a governor appointed by the local authority who has the skills required by the governing body, and a governor elected by staff. We listened to those views and will bring forward amendments to the Bill in Committee to reflect that position. There will also be amendments to correct defects in and omissions from legislation.

As noble Lords know, a key part of our drive to increase school autonomy is the academies and free school programme. The academies programme, pioneered by the party opposite, has been shown to raise standards for all children and for the disadvantaged most of all. Building on that, there are now over 700 academies open, and a third of secondary schools are already academies or are in the process of converting to academy status. The traditional emphasis on underperforming schools continues and is, indeed, accelerating. This Bill extends that programme further with new categories of academies for 16 to 19 year-olds and to provide alternative provision for the most vulnerable.

We also want local authorities to have a critical role in the education system as local champions of social justice. As the challenges and circumstances in each area are different, we want to avoid statutory duties which require a one-size-fits-all approach from authorities, such as: requiring every pupil to be able to access every diploma; requiring every school to be provided with a school improvement partner; and requiring the same type of admissions forum. It is our belief that it should be for local areas to determine these matters, reflecting what works best in their community, and the Bill provides this freedom to local authorities.

In talking about concepts such as autonomy and the structural reform needed to help deliver it, we must not lose sight of the need to attract and retain the best graduates into teaching. Outside the Bill, we will shortly be announcing further proposals on teacher training, but I would like to mention two measures in the Bill which relate directly to teacher retention and which reflect concerns put directly to us by head teachers and teachers: behaviour and discipline, and anonymity from false allegations. We know that poor behaviour, or fear of it, puts many of our best graduates off teaching. A 2009 survey showed that in primary schools an average of 30 minutes of available teaching time per teacher per day was lost due to pupil indiscipline. In secondary schools, the figure for lost teaching time increased to 50 minutes per teacher per day.

This House is rightly concerned about children’s rights. But I believe that it will also accept the need to balance the right of individual children against the rights of all children to learn in an orderly environment. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were more than 360,000 fixed-term exclusions—almost 18,000 for physical violence against an adult and almost 80,000 for threatening or verbally abusing an adult.

To get more talented people into the classroom and give disadvantaged children the inspiration that they need to succeed, I believe that we have to support teachers and head teachers in maintaining high standards of behaviour in schools. That is why the Bill builds on the powers introduced in the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act on searching pupils and students. Teachers need the authority to search for items that have been brought into school with the intention of causing an offence, harm or injury. We also propose to give teachers the power to search for and to confiscate items banned under the school rules.

We also know, through evidence from children, that cyberbullying is a real problem, with nearly one in five 12 to 17 year-olds saying that they have been victims of it. Schools should be able to prevent mobile phones being brought into schools for cyberbullying and the Bill provides teachers with the power to confiscate them and, where there is good reason to do so, delete inappropriate material before they hand them back. I recognise that concerns have been expressed about the use of some of these powers, including the power in exceptional circumstances for opposite-sex searches where an item may cause serious harm if the search is not carried out urgently. These are permissive powers and we believe that there are sufficient safeguards in the legislation, as well as these powers only being available to staff whom the head teacher has specifically designated to conduct searches. The Bill also provides schools with the power to issue same-day detentions to children who misbehave.

Overall, these changes have been welcomed by the main head-teacher unions. The Association of School and College Leaders says that the discipline measures in the Bill are necessary and proportionate, and that head teachers and teachers can and should be trusted to use these permissive powers sensibly and in the interests of all pupils and staff in their schools. We also want to give schools the final say on whether a pupil is excluded in order to avoid those cases, which I acknowledge are rare, where a school is directed to reinstate a pupil who it believes, after proper consideration, should not be.

Finally, we want to give teachers better protection from false allegations made by pupils, which could be used to undermine their authority and have a devastating affect on their lives. The Bill therefore provides for reporting restrictions where a pupil, or someone on their behalf, alleges a teacher has committed an offence. These restrictions would be lifted once the teacher is charged. Alongside the work that the department is doing to strengthen guidance on dealing with allegations so that unnecessary delays are removed and that suspending staff is not seen as the default option, these measures will, we hope, provide better support teachers.

Hand in hand with increased freedoms for schools, we want stronger accountability directly to pupils and parents. The Bill therefore makes it easier for parents to see how well their school is doing by reducing the criteria for Ofsted inspections to four areas; namely, teaching, leadership, achievement, and behaviour and safety. We want also to free outstanding schools and colleges from inspection so that more time and resources can be devoted to those who need help most.

Alongside the Bill, we are reforming the performance information made available to parents, including measures on the progress children make at school and not just their raw attainment. That should remove some of the perverse incentives on schools, which led to a focus on a narrow group of children who might boost rankings in performance tables. New destination measures for schools and colleges will allow parents and young people to see for themselves how well institutions do at academic and vocational courses and how well they equip their students for life afterwards.

We must also be outward-looking, comparing our education system with the best in the world. That is why we are strengthening the role of the independent regulator, Ofqual, and requiring it to look not just backwards in time to make sure our qualifications maintain standards, but outwards to ensure that they compare well with qualifications overseas. The Bill will also require schools that are sampled to take part in international surveys of educational standards to participate.

However, it is not only school-level accountability that we are keen to strengthen in the education system. Local and central government needs to be more accountable. We have a shared goal with local authorities to tackle underperformance and in most cases we are able to work together to achieve that. But in some instances local authorities have not gripped underperformance, so we propose to take a new power in the Bill to increase the focus on tackling weak schools.

The Bill also restores ministerial accountability to Parliament by abolishing four major statutory arm’s-length bodies—the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, the General Teaching Council for England, the Training and Development Agency for Schools and the Young People’s Learning Agency. Many of their activities will cease, as teachers and school and college leaders decide for themselves how best to meet the needs of their pupils and students, rather than receiving pages and pages of guidance. Where roles continue, they will be brought back within the department and Ministers will be accountable to Parliament, which is where accountability should sit.

The final theme that I want to cover is fairness. For far too long, children from disadvantaged backgrounds have not fulfilled their potential. That is why this Government, in difficult economic circumstances, have managed to find additional resources and target them on those most in need. Starting in the early years, the Bill provides for the extension of the entitlement for free childcare to all two year-olds from the most disadvantaged families. The previous Government did much work in this area and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, who oversaw a significant growth in early-years education, which this Bill continues. We will move from 20,000 to 130,000 two year-olds benefitting each year over this Parliament.

Outside the Bill, noble Lords will know that we are introducing the pupil premium—£2.5 billion a year by the end of the Parliament—to support children on free school meals, looked-after children and children from service families.

We are committed to continuing the last Government’s drive to raise the participation age. Overall, we can fund more than 360,000 apprenticeships across all ages in the coming academic year, while making changes to the underlying legislation in this Bill so that they are deliverable in practice. In particular, there will be sufficient funding for 135,500 apprenticeship starts in the academic year 2011-12 for 16 to 18 year-olds.

We are taking a new approach in the Bill by requiring schools to secure careers advice—which must be impartial and independent—for their pupils. That is supported by a range of measures, working with the careers sector, to improve the quality and professionalism of services in this area.

So far as higher education is concerned, the Bill takes forward two elements of the new student finance arrangements. They will be more progressive, with the lowest-earning 25 per cent of graduates paying less over their lifetime than they do at present. It will also mean that fees for part-time courses are capped so that new loans can meet them.

We are extremely fortunate in our country to have so many great schools and colleges, led by a superb generation of heads and supported by an extremely talented and committed cohort of teachers. Despite the dedication of these professionals and the fact that our children seem to work harder than ever at exams, other nations still appear to be overtaking us. Our 15 year-olds are a full two years behind their Shanghai-Chinese peers in maths and a year behind teenagers in Korea or Finland in reading. Evidence from these best-performing countries shows that giving greater freedom to professionals and schools, with stronger accountability, provides the best route to improving our education system. That, in essence, is what lies at the heart of the Education Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, am I too late—

[Noble Lords]

Yes.