Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Promethean World, an educational technology company, and as chairman of Futurelab, Britain’s premier educational research trust—I can already hear the howls of outrage from just about every other research trust, but that is the way I see it. I add my welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, not just to the Dispatch Box but to the House itself. I have known the noble Lord for some while in his professional life and I can attest to the fact that we are all fortunate to have gained him as a colleague. His intelligence and integrity will, I hope, inform this Chamber for many years to come.

It had been my intention to put in an appearance last week in response to the gracious Speech, but the vagaries of international travel made that impossible, which is unfortunate because I could have covered at least some of what I am about to say this evening. I had the privilege of spending eight very happy and, I hope, productive years in one iteration or another of the Department for Education, where, among other things, my task was constantly to take the temperature of the teaching profession and those who support it. One way or another, the best part of 1 million people, along with parents, in England alone are directly engaged in the world of education. I learnt very early on that when it comes to bringing about change, unless you can carry the vast majority of those people with you, you are unlikely to make anything like the impact that you might expect or even hope for.

My own party, when in power, consistently made four mistakes. The first was to confuse initiatives with progress and to interpret each and every swallow as heralding summer. The second was that, although it talked a great deal on arrival in government about evidence-based policy making, such evidence as there was quickly became subsumed, or sometimes even distorted, into promoting more ideologically driven solutions. The third was to pretend to consult when in reality far-reaching decisions had already been arrived at. Experience tells me that few things infuriate intelligent people more than being cynically dragged through the motions of consultation. It is demeaning to the point of condescension and it infantilises the very people whom you are pretending to consult. It is also somewhat dishonest. Last, and to my mind most inexcusable, was the failure fully to grasp and implement what just about every piece of education research had been telling us for the past Lord knows how many years: it is the quality of classroom teaching, not changes in structure or administration, that fundamentally determines educational improvement.

I mentioned evidence, and the Minister may be pleased to hear a little from his own Benches. Earlier this afternoon, an outstanding former Secretary of State was seated behind him: the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. In fact, at one point, we had no fewer than four former Education Secretaries in the Chamber. I wonder how many other legislative chambers in the world can boast that level of experience and expertise.

In a new book that looks back on the educational successes and failures of the previous Government, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, is quoted as saying:

“I came ingrained with the view, which I retain, that Ministers ... can say what they like about what teachers should do, but in the end teachers are on their own in the classroom and, therefore, they are the most important component in education”.

Here is another other eminent educationalist, the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, in the same book, making the same point:

“You can fiddle about with examinations; you can introduce targets and all the rest of it, but they’re not at the real heart of the thing. When, as a teacher, you get into the classroom and shut the door, it’s between you and the kids”.

Lastly—I know that this new Government lay great store by the views of captains of industry—here is a marvellous contribution from the private sector. No less a person than John Pepper, the former chairman and CEO of Procter and Gamble, had this to say in a speech just two months ago. He believes that,

“our single-biggest realistic opportunity for progress”,

is,

“significantly improving the preparation and continued professional development of principals and teachers … we must give them the quality education and continuing development we would expect in any profession”.

Here are three experienced and respected voices coming to exactly the same conclusion; or, as Bill Clinton might have said, “It’s the teachers, stupid”.

What has all this specifically to do with the Bill? The answer is everything. Here we are with a new coalition Government who are making exactly the same mistakes that we made 13 years ago and trampling on many of their most vaunted devolutionary principles in doing so. I will argue in Committee that, one way or another, the Bill as drafted repeats all the errors of judgment that I have painfully conceded we were guilty of. I will give an example: consultation. The Minister knows more than I will ever know about the corporate world and the way in which it communicates with the outside world. Can he imagine, in the case of a merger or an acquisition, anyone writing to the CEO of the target company, telling them of their intentions and putting a note to the chairman on the website? I can think of no faster way of ensuring that no such collaboration ever took place. At best, I would say that it was clumsy. Yet, in a sense, that is precisely what was done in the letters that went out to head teachers last week. Is it possible that we have learnt nothing in all the intervening years about how to communicate with this complex and interconnected profession?

Strange as it may seem to some of my colleagues on these Benches, I want this experiment in coalition government to succeed, if only because I believe that the only way in which this nation will claw its way out of its present problems is through a dramatic and well resourced improvement in educational standards. We need those if we are to make even a reasonable fist of what will be a highly competitive 21st century. Furthermore, we cannot wait another five years to get it right, as this would jeopardise the life chances of a further five cohorts of young people in the process.

As I hope is by now evident, I will have a great deal more to say when legislation reaches this House to, for example, abolish the General Teaching Council for England. I also intend to be pretty lively when it comes to consideration of the other educational issues of which the Minister gave us advance notice last Thursday. For now, I will simply ask two questions.

First, having listened to the debate this afternoon, and given the significant ramifications of this Bill, let alone the complexity involved in implementing it, does the Minister really feel that two days in Committee will sufficiently scrutinise the Bill and offer answers to the many, many questions that have already been raised? In this respect, I am not sure that he is being all that well advised and I suggest that he clears his diary for several weeks, if not months, ahead.

Secondly, will the Minister give this House a commitment that, in one form or another, the advancement of professional classroom practice will be the sine qua non of this and all future education-focused legislation that emanates from his Government? I ask this because, should that not be the case, with a heavy heart I must advise him that, despite all his best efforts, this Bill and this coalition Government will ultimately fail to enhance the life chances of several million children and young people in this country—but then it is quite likely that his mother, from her own experiences as a teacher, has already told him that.