Education Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. The fact that the House is so packed to hear this amendment on technology brightens my soul.

When the noble Lords, Lord Puttnam and Lord Knight, and I raised this amendment in Committee, we were hopeful that the Minister would reflect on the issues raised and the importance of technology in our schools, and bring back government amendments on Report that indicated that this Government listened to one of the most important technologies driving our education system, our society and our economy. However, there is not a word in this piece of legislation about how we empower our young people to enter a technological society where they can take full advantage of all that pertains.

In responding to the debate in Committee, my noble friend the Minister said:

“We are talking to a number of interested parties—school leaders, professional bodies, educational charities, industry, academics and other experts—about how the department should take forward its thinking about technology”.—[Official Report, 13/7/11; col. GC 306.]

Sadly we have not had a single word about where those discussions have led. We have not had a single idea from the Government as to whether technology has a place in a modern UK education system in the 21st century. It is enormously disappointing that we still have from the Government a view that technology, particularly information communications technology, is a distraction from the central aim of raising standards. It is absolutely essential to the raising of standards to have proper technology and technology policies in our schools.

We are not promoting the case for ICT as an alternative to conventional subject matter or pedagogy but as an integral part of delivering a world-class, 21st century curriculum. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, recently reminded us that,

“Lewis Carroll didn't just write one of the classic fairytales of all time. He was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford. James Clerk Maxwell was described by Einstein as among the best physicists since Newton—but was also a published poet”.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who sadly died very recently, said:

“The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists”.

This amendment is about digital inclusion. It is about encouraging schools to meet their responsibilities to generations of young people who access ICT as both a tool and a discipline, and not to disadvantage themselves—or indeed the nation—as they move forward. However, it is so much more than just a pious and well-meaning amendment. All the evidence from studies from the Royal Society, the EPSRC, the Times Educational Supplement, the Government’s own department, major corporations, and charities such as futurelab and the e-Learning Foundation, of which the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and I are privileged to be the respective chairs, emphasise the link between the use of ICT, educational motivation and achievement and future economic success and well-being. Not a single reputable study points to our young people or our society being disadvantaged as a result of access to high-quality ICT. You have to go to parts of the United States to get that view.

However, some 4 million people in Britain today are not online and are usually the most disadvantaged. Forty-nine per cent of those without access come from the lowest socioeconomic groups, and 70 per cent are in social housing. Thirty-eight per cent of those who are currently unemployed are not online, despite the fact that 70 per cent of all jobs are advertised online. That is a very cruel deception. Ministers must understand that the majority of those households will have children, who, without our support, will be part of tomorrow’s statistics.

One million children in our schools today cannot get online at home. Yet so much of the work they are being set in schools, and so many of the projects which they are being asked to complete, rely upon them being able to get online and do their work in that way. By encouraging schools to be proactive—particularly in recognising that an IT policy must extend into the home, where often the greatest disparity exists—the Government can make children and their schools part of a solution to support a wide range of government objectives.

This amendment is not a plea for special funding. I have not mentioned funding once, and nor have my noble friends. Encouraging schools to use their pupil premium would go a long way to meet both school and home access requirements. However, it requires the statutory authority of this amendment to say to schools, “Technology should be at the heart of what you do, and you need to report every year on that to the Secretary of State, as well as to your pupils’ parents and to your governors”.

Finally, this amendment would also address one of the real challenges facing our schools and colleges: that of addressing the shortfall in the number of students studying computing across the UK. According to the current Royal Society study, from 2006 to 2009 we saw a fall of 33 per cent in the number of students studying ICT at GCSE level. There has been a similar fall since 2003 of one-third of students studying ICT at A2-level. We have also seen a 57 per cent reduction in A2 level students studying computer science. Such dramatic falls in numbers of students going into our universities to study computer science are having a seriously detrimental effect on our ability to produce the sort of graduates we need for our modern economy. That alone is a reason for us to put ICT and technology at the heart of delivering the 21st century curriculum.

I hope that, as this will not cost the Minister anything but will win him friends throughout the nation, this is one amendment about which the Minister can simply say to the House, “I accept the wisdom of your words”. I beg to move.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willis, for keeping this ball on the park. Like many other Members of your Lordships’ House, I have a number of interests in the education sector, all of which appear in the register of interests.

The omission of a clause such as this in the completed Bill in my judgment—and I put this to the Minister—would be literally mind-blowing: not a small omission, not something that has just slipped by, but a truly mind-blowing omission. That is why I support what I think is a very modest, simple and very easily deliverable objective, as laid out marvellously by the noble Lord, Lord Willis.

My contribution will concern the very serious issue of employability, possibly pre-empting one or two debates that will come up later on Report about jobs. During the summer break, I read a book by Jim Clifton, the chair of Gallup, entitled The Coming Jobs War. It is drawn from the largest survey Gallup had ever undertaken in its history. The view expressed in the book, and the conclusion that Mr Clifton comes to, is that the relationship between ICT skills and jobs in the developed world is absolutely everything. There will be winners and losers, and unless this Government —this was to an extent true of the Government previously—get a real grip on this issue, we can only be among the losers in the next 10 to 20 years.

I would like to offer a few statistics that may alarm the Government. If they have different statistics, I would be very happy to hear from the Minister. Only 9 per cent of ICT classes in this country are taught by teachers with any relevant qualifications. That means that 91 per cent of young people in this country are being taught so-called ICT by teachers with no qualifications whatever in the subject. I am not sure what other subjects fall into this category. I cannot believe that there are very many, and I cannot believe that a civilised nation would let this go on for very long when it knows that its entire employability framework for the next 10 to 20 years is reliant upon success in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Willis for raising this important issue. We agree entirely with him, the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate that the effective use of technology is critical to education in the 21st century and indeed to employment.

In his speech to the Royal Society on 29 June, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State outlined the importance of technological innovation in supporting good teaching and how successful ideas need to spread rapidly through the system. The role of Government in this area is to encourage schools to take better advantage of opportunities presented by digital technologies to engage pupils, improve teaching and deliver education more effectively and efficiently—and, from the messages in this debate, more excitingly as well. The Secretary of State will say more on this later in the year and I cannot pre-empt what he plans to say in that speech.

We know that many schools and teachers are already making excellent use of technology to help deliver their educational aims, and we need to learn from them. As noble Lords have set out so eloquently today, though, there is room for more widespread and innovative use across the system. Some teachers also need more knowledge about how to use technology effectively to support their practice, and we heard from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Paisley, how the very young are often far more proficient in technology than their teachers, parents or, dare I say, grandparents.

However, we should not seek to dictate how schools use technology or seek to plan this centrally. We should allow schools to innovate, working in partnership with industry and other experts. Schools need to respond to these opportunities, making informed decisions about whether and how to adopt new approaches in the best interests of their pupils.

We have spoken to many interested parties including school leaders, professional bodies, educational charities, industry, academics and other experts about technology in schools. The department is also taking forward work to help ensure that schools can get best value when purchasing technology—the noble Lord, Lord Knight, mentioned procurement as one of the issues here—and we are working with industry to agree data standards for educational systems. It is at this level that we feel the department should be involved in supporting schools to make best use of technology.

There is no doubt that the effective use of technology can support good teaching and help to raise standards. We welcome the noble Lord’s commitment to the potential of technology to improve education and are grateful for all the ideas that have come forward in this debate and in previous ones.

[Lord Puttnam]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but I have a question before she sits down. Do the Government conceive it possible that a school might be considered successful that was unsuccessfully delivering ICT, coding and all the other things that this debate has thrown up as being fundamental? Again, my experience of education, having worked in the department, is that heads will react and respond to what they consider will win them brownie points, and the ultimate brownie point is to be deemed a successful school. Could she possibly give us a firm commitment that schools that fail in this area could not be deemed successful?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

It would be almost impossible to deliver the curriculum successfully in a 21st-century school without the effective use of technology. I would have to come back to him on chapter and verse, but I cannot think that it would be possible for a school to deliver the curriculum successfully without a good use of technology.

The ideas in today’s debate and previous debates will be passed back to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. As I said, later this year he is planning to say more about technology in schools and the role and work of government in this area. We have had a typically constructive and diverse debate today that has taken in acorns, tadpoles and apples. These issues are under active consideration and I hope, in the light of this, that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Education Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, the Bill abolishes the General Teaching Council for England. However, in abolishing it, there is a fear that the Government are getting rid of some of the crucial features and functions that it has previously carried out. One of those crucial functions is to maintain a register of teachers.

The register and the requirement to be qualified, to which we will come later, are important for maintaining the professional status of teachers. The register of those qualified and entitled to teach in our schools has been successful in enabling employers to make recruitment checks and is valued by employers and teachers alike. Under the Government’s proposals, all that will be held is a database of those prohibited from teaching, which is a very different thing.

The Bill sets out that certain GTCE functions will transfer to the Secretary of State and others will stop completely. In his letter to us of 13 June, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, confirmed the Government’s intention that they will not continue to maintain a register of teachers. I acknowledge that he has subsequently written setting out how the Government believe that the database of teachers prohibited from teaching will be established. To be frank, we do not accept that that meets our concerns.

There does not appear to be any pressure from educationists for the register to be discontinued. Indeed, as I reported in Grand Committee, the ASCL told us that,

“abolition of the GTCE and discontinuation of the registers removes the public’s guarantee that all registered teachers are, ‘eligible, suitable, properly qualified and of good standing’”.

In Grand Committee we were also told that independent schools value the existence of the register. Parents and pupils want high quality, qualified teachers. They want an assurance that the profession is regulated. As I mentioned in Grand Committee, a survey showed that,

“93 per cent of parents want teachers to be regulated, to have an agreed level of training and to be registered with a regulatory body before taking up a teaching post”.—[Official Report, 4/7/11; col. GC 55.]

The GTCE has told us that it carries out something in the region of 676,000 checks on teachers’ registration each year, saving employers significant time and money. At the Committee stage in the Commons, the Minister acknowledged the benefit of a register of people with qualified teacher status and said:

“We recognise the central benefits of providing head teachers and employers with access to a central record of who holds qualified teacher status. We will explore whether and how to provide that in future”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 17/3/11; col. 498.]

Our amendment would go further than that and make the Secretary of State accountable for an up-to-date register.

If the register of teachers in England is abolished, we will be left with a farcical situation where up-to-date registers are maintained in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but not in England. Those three nations have seen the sense in keeping the register. What are the implications of England not keeping the information? Will rogue teachers slip through the net? Will the lack of an English register undermine those being kept by other countries, as teachers move between the four nations? What does that say about how England perceives the professionalism of teachers, compared to the other nations?

The abolition of the English register is unnecessary and provocative. All other professional sectors in this country keep a register of those entitled to practise. Some—for example, the General Medical Council—share the information publicly on a website, along with details of any disciplinary action that has been taken against a doctor. Is this not the way that we should be moving if we believe in empowering parents?

The abolition of the register is a retrograde step that the Secretary of State will grow to regret. In the past, the GTC has administered the register, but it does not have to be this body in future. The Secretary of State is equally able to carry out this function. Given that he has been so keen to take on so many additional powers himself, we hope that he will see the sense in also taking on this responsibility. We trust that noble Lords will see the sense of these amendments and hope that the Minister will feel able to support them.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I rise to support both amendments in this group. I will not go into detail because they have been beautifully set out by my noble friend Lady Jones. I must point out that in passing these clauses we will effectively be officiating at the funeral of the General Teaching Council. It would be quite wrong of me, as a former chairman, to allow that to happen without saying a few words about why it is a catastrophic mistake.

It is not just a catastrophic mistake. I have absolutely no doubt that within 10, 15 or 20 years, this or another Government will come to the Dispatch Box and announce the creation of something remarkably similar to the General Teaching Council. The reason goes to the heart of the paradox that the Government have embraced in their approach to the teaching profession. Unless I misheard the Minister, he referred just now to the emergence of an outstanding generation of leaders, particularly in the teaching schools. I celebrate and support that. However, these are leaders of a very peculiar type: they somehow fall short of being allowed professional status. I am not sure that there is any other area of British public life where that is true: where we seek and promote outstanding leadership but refuse to acknowledge the professional status that ought to go with it.

I do not for one moment defend the clumsy and frankly inadequate legislation that led to the creation of the General Teaching Council. It was not good enough and I and many others suffered from trying to make it work. However, it was a dream and an ambition that was worth while. In rejecting and scrapping it, the Government must acknowledge that they are flying in the face of the ambitions for the profession of every leading educationalist of the 20th century, from Sir Alec Clegg onwards. Every single educationalist sought, promoted and fought for professional recognition for teachers.

There is a very simple line to draw. Skilled, professional teachers lead to well educated children, who in turn give us some hope of a successful society. The key is the skill of the professional teacher. The notion that you can have a successful education system without the wholehearted buy-in and support of the entire profession is a fantasy that all noble Lords in this Chamber would agree is unsustainable. We will not get the profession buying into educational reform and improvement until it comes to understand that it is just that: a profession.

The disastrous mistake that my Government made was in ever contemplating the notion that we could have a professional body that was not paid for by the profession. I am afraid that what is happening here—it is a tough thing to say—is the infantilisation of the profession. We are scrapping its professional status because no one has the courage to say to the profession: “Grow up, understand the responsibilities you have, understand that there is no possible success for this country unless a generation of brilliant teachers emerges, and understand that along with that responsibility comes the need to be professionals—and professionals pay for their professional status”. We will have something like the General Teaching Council. I hope it will be in my lifetime, but it may be after it. Today, I want to register the fact that this is a sad day for the profession, a sad day for the Government and a sad day for the future of education because, as I say, we will have to return to it. When we do so, I hope we will return to it in a more constructive spirit than the manner in which we are scrapping it.

Education Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

Debate on Amendment 83ZA resumed.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, this amendment is grouped with Amendment 107C tabled in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Willis. I want to add to what was said towards the end of the debate on Monday. I should say that I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said. He is correct that technology is not an add-on, something it would be nice to have or that we ought to be looking at. Technology in education today is absolutely fundamental. Here I must declare a series of important interests. When I worked for the department for six years between 1997 and 2003, I became fascinated by the impact of new technology in education. On leaving the department, I became engaged with and subsequently joined the board of Promethean, a company producing interactive whiteboards. I still sit on that board. I am also chairman of Futurelab, which is an educational research charity. It is important to say that the reason I joined the board of Futurelab was to try and ensure that—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Perhaps I may intervene on the noble Lord for a second. Could I ask our expert in the corner whether the microphones are switched on because we cannot hear the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, awfully well? Perhaps I may also suggest that noble Lords make sure that their mobile phones are turned off because it is their phones which are causing that curious buzzing noise.

[Lord Puttnam]

Thank you, Lord Chairman. I could go into detail about why I think this is so important, but perhaps I should go straight to something I read the other day which is absolutely factual. It concerns a teaching assistant and special needs teacher called Bev Evans at Pembroke Dock Community School in Wales. Bev Evans puts lesson plans up on the web using the TES Resources website. Over the past few years she has shared 276 teaching resources on the web with other teachers. As of last month, her work has been downloaded 1,345,330 times by 237,364 educators in 169 countries. Teachers save an average of 30 minutes per resource, the equivalent of 672,665 hours of teaching time, which is worth 431 teaching years. I cite that because it is a fantastic illustration of the way that technology has the ability to transform teaching and learning. These figures and indeed the whole concept would have been unimaginable a decade ago, so the role that technology now plays in education is fundamental.

To put it kindly, I am afraid that, at present, the White Paper is technology-light. I am concerned about that because the whole purpose is to start a serious conversation both at the department and with the Minister. We need the reassurance of knowing that this subject will not be like discussing the adaptation to or mitigation of climate change with someone who does not really accept that climate change is an important reality. This is a reality. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, sensibly cited the example of electricity. It is absolutely true to say that in the early part of the last century, the difference between the attainments of some children over others depended on whether there was electricity in their homes. That would allow them to do homework in the evenings, whereas those without electricity could not. Technology is as fundamental as that. That may sound like a large claim, but it is not an irrelevant one.

I am also puzzled because two weeks ago the Secretary of State, Mr Gove, made a really remarkable speech at the Royal Society. The second half of that absolutely nailed and eulogised the use of technology. He was completely clear as to how important the adequate but intelligent use of technology was to our competitiveness. He was very clear about the way technology is being used in other countries successfully and that we had to get our act together and make a success of it. He could not have been more crystal clear on that. Yet none of that speech is contained at the moment anywhere in the White Paper as I read it. It would be good for the Government, the country and, I suggest, the Minister if it were. The purpose of these two amendments is to try and ensure that that finds its way into the Bill and the Government prove for good and all that they are absolutely committed to technology within teaching and learning.

[Lord Peston]

Before the Minister speaks, I unfortunately missed the last meeting of your Lordships’ Committee. I broadly support what is said here but would like, as someone who spends a lot of time using this sort of technology, to offer one or two caveats. First, I know of no other way of wasting more time than in getting on to the net. It is not merely ordinary time-wasting because it is addictive. I am keen for our young people to get involved in all this but we should not be naïve about it. When I come into your Lordships’ House, I am one of the early arrivals at 8.30. By 9.30 I am fed up to the teeth and immediately log-on. I start typing into my machine. Some two hours go by and I have looked at The Wasteland by TS Eliot—you can download it for free, which surprises me. I then begin to wonder if that is a better poem than The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. That is all good for young people except for the amount of time that it takes. Equally, one should not be naïve in assuming that they will do as I do and look for intellectual, aesthetic and scientific things. They will spend a lot of time mucking around. I am not saying a word against any of this being the right path to go down—quite the contrary. We really must go down this path but I wanted to add those words of caution.

The other words of caution already emerged in your Lordships’ earlier deliberations. For a lot of young people, we are talking about a great deal of money. As much as I support my noble friend’s Amendment 107C, it would cost quite a lot of money. Also, one should not forget how many homes still do not have computers. That was perfectly clear from the earlier discussion. It again troubled me a little that—I have forgotten where I read it now, but it was apropos of what is developing in California—increasingly if you do not submit your work via computer it ceases to be acceptable. Are we absolutely certain that we want to be completely committed to that path? I am quite certain that, were our successors to read my speech a generation from now, they would say, “Well, they really had some old fogies in those days, didn’t they?”. By then, it will just be the norm but we should just be a little cautious about the path to that norm. Nothing of what I have said should be interpreted as meaning anything other than support for technology in schools. As I say, the world wide web is a fantastic treasure trove of valuable things. We certainly want our young people to use it. I simply add the caveat that there is a little more to this than just saying what a wonderful thing that is.

Education Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Puttnam]

64: Clause 7, page 10, line 30, at end insert—
“( ) This section shall only come into force if its provisions have been approved, by a simple majority, in a vote of registered teachers.
( ) For such a vote to be valid, 50 per cent of registered teachers must have voted.”

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to challenge the Government but in effect also to challenge the profession itself. During Second Reading, I and the Minister disagreed on one issue. I suggested that the Bill challenged the professional status of teachers and diminished them, while he felt otherwise. If there are two overused phrases in this Bill and in discussions on education generally, they would have to be “world-class education” and “professionalism” in relation to teaching. I have not done a word count on the Bill but it is literally littered with the words “profession” and “professionalism”, normally prefixed by the words “enhanced” or “increased”.

It is the refuge of a pedant to look in the OED but the words are very clear. Under “professional” and “professionalism”, it says:

“Reaching a standard or having the quality expected of a professional person or his work; competent in the manner of a professional”.

Or there is,

“raises his trade to the dignity of a learned profession”.

A professional is:

“One who belongs to one of the learned or skilled professions; a professional man”.

As someone who comes from outside politics, I have never ceased to be amazed by the sometimes brilliant ability of politicians to oppose, which in my judgment is only matched by the apparent hopelessness to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. It is something that I have observed over the past 15 years and I have no reason at all to think that I am wrong.

I declare an interest as a former chair of the General Teaching Council. I make two points. I genuinely loath government by assertion, which is what we are dealing with here, whereas I celebrate government by evidence. We came in in 1997 on a mantra of evidence-based policy-making. Sadly, that had died by the millennium. None the less, it was a good idea in its time. Creating policy involves learning lessons from the past and gathering evidence from the present. In support of my contention that scrapping the GTC was the coward’s way out, I started looking for lessons from the past and I found more than I could ever possibly have hoped for. In the process, I have become a quasi-authority on the formation and development of the General Medical Council.

I have an advantage over the Minister in that I have looked through a number of interesting and riveting documents from the Library on the development of the General Medical Council—and I shall certainly hand them to him. What strike you immediately are the extraordinary parallels between the development of the GMC and the hoped-for development of the GTC. It is also interesting to see that throughout its history the GMC relied on lessons learnt, and mistakes made, by the development of the legal profession, which in turn relied entirely on the very ragged process of the development of the clergy. Only Henry VIII tried to interrupt this learning process—at least, until now. I will not go into that at this stage, although I certainly could.

The parallel is quite extraordinary. For example, there has always been only a minority of pressure within the profession for increased professionalism. Prior to 1858, when the law was passed in this House, the bulk of doctors did not think that it was necessary that they be regarded as professionals. They were perfectly happy with the way things were and thought that the market operated very satisfactorily. Throughout the history of the GMC, there was very little agreement on the level of the retention fee that ought to be charged to be a member of what was termed a profession.

Here I come to a challenge to the profession itself. I bow to no man in my belief that this is an important profession and that all my futures, and those of my children and grandchildren, are entirely dependent on several generations of outstanding teachers. That is very clear throughout the Bill. It cannot be squared with an attempt to scrap the embryonic professional body that we attempted to create, inadequately, in 1997.

Another fascinating parallel that I dug up a moment ago is that the inadequacy of the original legislation for the GMC in 1858 was described as a sort of disgrace because the public were ill served as the legislation was watered down to a point where they could not rely on the professionalism of an individual doctor. Noble Lords may think that I am overstating this parallel but I think that it is a very important one.

For 153 years, a great deal has been learnt about turning the medical profession into a respected professional body, frequently in the face of fierce opposition from within. I am not pretending that the GTC was remotely what I would have liked it to be—dreadful mistakes were made—but you do not scrap a professional body; you build on it and enhance it. You improve it and nurture it and sometimes you have to cajole and maybe kick it. But our aim is to have a far more professional and far more effective body of teachers adhering to a set of responsibilities.

Finally, I say this to the Minister. If the profession does not want the proposals in my amendment—and I have deliberately used the form of balloting for which the Government clearly have a preference in settling disputes—you will hear not one more word from me. But let the profession decide whether it wishes to be professional, whether it wishes to acknowledge the obligations that go with being professional and whether it wishes constantly to prove itself to the point where we have a generation of teachers of whom we can truly be proud. I beg to move.

[Lord Quirk]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, on the status of the teaching profession, I agree with everything that has been said. The issue that we are debating today is whether professionalism can be captured only in some national regulatory body or whether it can be found in other parts of the wood.

I was very struck at Second Reading when the noble Lord, Lord Knight, spoke of the success of Teach First as being great achievement of the previous Government. He could have spoken about the work of National Leaders of Education or Local Leaders of Education, or the work of the National College, which are all very good examples of professionals working to raise standards and help other professionals. He could have mentioned the growing numbers of academies taking on responsibility for helping other schools in chains or clusters. Those all seem to be aspects of a profession taking responsibility for itself. I may be wrong because I was not around at the time, but I am not sure how prominent the role of the GTCE was in taking forward Teach First, National Leaders or partnership working between schools. Having a national body of that sort does not deliver professionalism, raise standards or deal with important issues about continuous professional development. The Government believe that we need a regulatory system that is credible, effective and provides value for money—I think that there is acceptance for that today.

I do not take any particular pleasure in the ending of the GTCE. I know that it was started with high hopes and that there were many who had wanted it, as we have already heard, from the 19th century. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, both today and at Second Reading, spoke eloquently of the practical problems that it faced at its birth—I think that the phrase he used at Second Reading to describe his appointment was “hospital pass”. However, what is clear—I do not want to labour this too much—is its record. Since the GTCE was formed in 2000, nearly two-thirds of local authorities have never referred a case of incompetence to it, despite employers having a statutory duty to do so. Since 2001, the GTCE has concluded only 82 competence hearings and struck off 15 teachers for incompetence. The majority of our teachers, we know, are highly competent professionals, and we would not question that, but it seems unlikely that in the whole 10 years there have been only 15 incompetent teachers.

One fact that struck me as evidence of the attitude of teachers towards the GTCE was the point raised by my noble friend Lord Lingfield; that is, of the modest £36.50 annual registration fee, the taxpayer has to subsidise £33. That does not seem to be a very powerful sign of a profession that feels strongly about the role that the GTCE performs.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made reference the views of the NASUWT. I recognise that its views can change over time, and they clearly did, because the general secretary of the NASUWT has said:

“I have frequently said that if the GTCE was abolished tomorrow few would notice and even less would care. I have absolutely no doubt that the Secretary of State’s decision will be warmly welcomed by teachers across the country”.

The key question is that posed by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam; namely, what should replace the GTCE if one accepts that it has not delivered in the way that he and others had hoped at its beginning?

Perhaps I may set out what we are proposing. It is, in essence, the following. A smaller, more cost-effective body, the teaching agency, would deal only with matters of misconduct. Hearings would be heard by a panel made up of representatives of the profession and independent lay people, with a right of appeal, as now, to the High Court.

Issues of incompetence would be dealt with separately. I have always thought that the GTC’s current sanction for incompetence was a surprisingly nuclear option. Rather than a slow, cumbersome process that led painfully to a national process and ultimately—for 15 teachers—to barring from the profession, we think it would be better to have a much more flexible, local system whereby issues are resolved more quickly. We can all think of people who have not made a go of it with one employer, but who flourished somewhere else. We are therefore keen to move to a system with all the same protections in employment legislation whereby employers can exercise judgment, address problems more swiftly, and help teachers to improve.

We have been carrying out a review of the professional standards for teachers, which will give employers clearer national benchmarks for performance and conduct. We are currently consulting on simplified arrangements for performance management and tackling poor capability. That will streamline the system and remove the current duplication that employers have found is a barrier to tackling performance issues. We will also strengthen the training and support available to school leaders, so that head teachers and aspiring heads are better prepared for their management role through a revised national professional qualification for headship. We think that these measures will leave the powers to deal with teacher incompetence in a more appropriate place and help head teachers to exercise those powers more effectively than the current regulatory system does.

So far as conduct is concerned, none of this is to say that we think there is no role for a national regulator. On the contrary, we are clear that where teachers are guilty of serious misconduct, they should be referred to the national regulator for potential barring from the profession. That mechanism is cumbersome for head teachers and the regulator, because every case where a teacher is sacked for misconduct must be referred, even though the vast majority of these cases do not warrant barring. The new arrangements will be more effective by giving employers discretion, while still ensuring that the most serious cases are referred. Where cases are referred to the regulator, the Bill gives the Secretary of State a new power to make interim prohibition orders. This power was always intended for use in the very rare cases where it is in the public interest to bar an individual from teaching while an investigation is under way. Amendments 64AA, 65A 65B and 65C have been tabled by the Government in response to your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s recommendations that the safeguard for this power be put in the Bill.

Noble Lords have asked for reassurance that the element of discretion that we are introducing will not lead to a weaker and less consistent system. It is of course important that the new system protects pupils and maintains confidence in the teaching profession. Let me say straightaway that the proposals make no change to the duty on all schools to refer any cases of serious misconduct relating to children to the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

I should also draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that the Bill provides for referrals to the Secretary of State from members of the public. Where a parent or other member of a community disagrees with the judgment of a head teacher who has not referred a teacher dismissed for serious misconduct, they may make the referral themselves. This provides a further safeguard that teachers in the most serious cases will not in some way slip through the net.

I turn to the important issue of the Register of Teachers, which a number of noble Lords raised, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, my noble friend Lady Jolly, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and my noble friend Lord Willis of Knaresborough. The Government said in another place that we would consider the arguments in favour of making available data about teacher qualifications. We have listened to what the head teachers’ unions have said—that point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I have also listened to the case eloquently made today by noble Lords, particularly by my noble friend Lord Willis of Knaresborough. It is right to say that the teaching agency will maintain a database of teachers who have attained qualified teacher status and who have passed their induction period. That seems to be an eminently sensible point and we will take it on board. That database will be available online to employers from April 2012.

Some amendments concerning surveys and statistics—CPD and so on—were spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The Government will continue to commission research and to support the effective management, assessment, planning and development of the teaching profession. We are in the process of considering what the data and research needs of the new teaching agency and the department will be.

The CPD part of the GTCs’ work is currently shared with the TDA, and in future work on CPD will form part of the remit of the new teaching agency. However, as I have already said, over time we would tend to see more and more of that work being delivered by schools.

With regard to some of the more technical issues, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, raised the question of information-sharing between the GTCs in the devolved Administrations. Officials in the department recently met their counterparts and the GTCs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to discuss this issue. We have an agreed approach to sharing information between the four nations and will continue to meet regularly to discuss that.

On cash reserves, I agree with the noble Baroness that, if money was originally paid to the GTCE for the benefit of teachers and some of that money is still available, it should continue to be used for a similar purpose. If there were any cash reserves, we would use them for the benefit of teachers and the teaching profession—for example, to contribute to the continuing administration of the regulatory function, which a large proportion of the GTCE’s fees was spent on.

I recognise that my answer is disappointing to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. I never like to disappoint the noble Lord, for whom I have great respect. I hope that what I have been able to say about the register will provide some reassurance to noble Lords who I know were concerned and that, taken together, my response will enable the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Puttnam]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hill. I certainly do not want to detain the Committee but wish to make two points. I was very impressed by what the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, said and was very impressed at Second Reading by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. I should like to touch on those for one second. As both of them know, I am conscious of the fact that the job I took on was very much a question of standing on the shoulders of giants. I had read a lot about but, sadly, never met Sir Alec Clegg, and I knew John Tomlinson very well. These were great men. They were noble and decent, and my job was to try to deliver something of their vision. I fought hard and successfully, and I think that it was a good move to bring the independent schools on to the GMC. I could not have had two more heroic figures than Ian Beer and Elizabeth Diggory to support me, and I feel very strongly that, were they both here today, they would not wish to throw in the towel at this point.

I also want to touch on Scotland, which both noble Lords mentioned. I spent a fair amount of time in Scotland and took a lot of advice from the then chairman of the Scottish GTC. He said, “Give it time, laddie. Give it time”. He was right. We needed to give it time but we have not given it sufficient time. I should possibly have listened to him even more. No one is pretending that Scots unionists are any person’s pushover; they have intense pride in the profession. My amendment is simply intended to challenge the English teaching profession to show similar pride, similar determination and a similar commitment to getting their act together. It requires them to create something of which they and we can be proud, and we can be very proud that we protected it when it was under pressure. For the moment, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 64 withdrawn.

Education Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, this Bill is not wholly bad but it is flawed, and in my judgment may be fatally flawed. At its heart it lacks authenticity in that it claims to embrace the concept of greater professionalism, but in willing the ends it effectively destroys the means.

I declare two interests. The first is as the inaugural chair of the General Teaching Council for England. The second is as someone who over the past 14 years has spent a vast amount of time in schools talking to pupils and teachers. That has been a privilege, not a burden. I have always tried to bring back what I have learnt to the department, to your Lordships’ House and to anyone prepared to listen to what I have seen and heard. I have also tried to be strictly non-ideological. What has come back has not always been either comfortable or welcome, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley will confirm. My overwhelming message, then and now, is that none of the improvements that we may wish for will happen without total buy-in from the whole profession. The Bill in its present form will not achieve that.

My appointment as the first chair of the General Teaching Council was, as someone put it the other day, the ultimate hospital pass. The 1998 Act that created it was, I say somewhat cynically, inadequate. Some of the unions that claimed to want a GTC backed off the moment they realised it might involve power-sharing, and the Government of the day were extremely ambivalent about how much power they were prepared to give away. It, too, in essence, was an inauthentic piece of legislation.

After 40 years of working in public bodies, I would say that every single public body that I have worked in could at some point have been a candidate for being abandoned. Every one of them had a flaw; every one of them needed improvement—sometimes significant improvement. However, making something that is essentially worth while into something that is truly excellent is very hard work. The cheap and easy option is to scrap it and walk away. This is a point that I was eager to make but was not able to during the passage of the Public Bodies Bill. What could be more worth while than a teaching profession that sees itself as exactly that—a profession, with all the challenges that come with professional status? The embryonic GTC tried to be that. It was an opportunity for teachers to re-evaluate themselves and the vital role that they play in society, just as doctors, lawyers and nurses did before them. I will not go down that road; the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, have done a far better job than I could of making that argument.

I put it to noble Lords that the teachers of Scotland have their General Teaching Council. The teachers of Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where I was last week, have all confirmed the status and need for a general teaching council. Indeed, Scotland has added to its General Teaching Council’s responsibilities. What is it about the teachers in England that makes them less deserving of professional status? I look forward to hearing the Minister explain why the teachers of England are being treated in this way.

At present the Bill is misleading. Teachers will see through it and through the honeyed words of the Secretary of State in introducing it at the other end of the Corridor on 8 February. Make no mistake; the Bill diminishes teachers. It diminishes their role and removes some of their freedoms.

My second point, which I shall make quickly, is on something that is almost ignored in the Bill: the role of technology in teaching and learning. The Secretary of State has been fulsome in his admiration for successful comparator countries. However, the Bill, which sets out a vision for education a decade ahead, barely mentions the possible role of technology. Consider this; if you took a surgeon from 1911 and popped him into an operating theatre today, he might as well be in a spaceship. He would have no idea of what was going on and none of his competencies could add to the process of an operation.

If you took a teacher from 1911 and put her into a classroom today, she—and it probably would be a “she”—would make a real fist of teaching a lesson, for a very simple reason; none of the technological advances, and none of the knowledge we have gained of the way that the brain works, have, as yet, been fully applied to teaching and learning.

This is a grievous mistake. It is an omission from the Bill. I argue that this iPad is as vital to the education of a young person today as was the slate on which our forebears learned to scratch their names. To ignore that fact, not to take advantage of that possibility, is a major omission from the Bill.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, this question was asked in Committee but was not answered. Is there an obligation on academies to have elected parent governors, or can they appoint them?

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, not for the first time I speak in support of my noble friend Lady Howe. I did not speak on this subject in Committee, but on Second Reading I did make the point that the Government’s handling of governors and governance issues had been “clumsy”. I had hoped that in the intervening weeks I would be able to withdraw that, but, unfortunately, according to the DfE website,

“no decisions have yet been taken on the composition of future academy governing bodies”.

That is a foolish way of putting it for all sorts of reasons.

I have spent the past 12 years visiting almost 400 schools. What have I learnt from that? I have learnt that successful schools are typified by engaged staff with good leadership from heads, engaged parents, and engaged governing bodies. In almost 400 schools I have never come across a school in which the relationship between a successful head and the chair of the governing body has been anything other than excellent. I am sure that it is possible to find one, but I never have. It is a pivotal relationship and I cannot imagine that a successful academy will manage matters differently.

I have a real concern. I think that in years to come, largely as a result of the work of the national college, and possibly the recession, we will have a generation of first-class head teachers. They will tend to be quite young and very professional. They will probably have led three, four or possibly five schools at different times in their careers. As they move on, the only continuity left to the community will be the governing body. If you begin to minimise the role of the governing body in some way and solely optimise the role of the heads—or, as we shall increasingly come to think of them, the CEOs—we could reap a whirlwind. The Government will make a massive mistake if they do not addressing the legitimate expectations of governing bodies.

I would go further. I think that there should be mandatory training for the chairs of governing bodies. I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. My own Government, in a dozen years, did nothing like enough in this area. To repeat that mistake in an educational environment in which this relationship will become ever more important as schools need to connect and remain connected to their local communities, will be a grievous error. I fear that academies which believe themselves able to get up and running while ignoring the role of the governing body will fail. There is a danger that they may simply minimise it, or go through something perfunctory such as having one or two people just because they feel they must. Governors are crucial to successful schools, and anyone who thinks otherwise has not visited enough of them.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, with one other thought. School governing bodies are related not only to the community responsibility for schools but to the whole fundamental concept of democracy. In many ways the idea of a governing body of a school is a simple, low-level neighbourhood concept of what democracy is about. It is about fulfilling one’s obligations to society and recognising that society has responsibilities that it carries out for all its citizens.

I am worried about reducing the importance and significance of governing bodies. I hope the Government will feel that they can support the idea of strengthening them, albeit with the legacy of the one parent governor in the case of a limited number of academies. In doing so, they would bear out one of the central issues that the coalition has repeatedly said it believes in, which is the decentralisation of power to ordinary people. Many people find their first step towards responsible democracy when they first become a governor of a school, particularly a primary school. There are powerful constitutional as well as educational arguments for recognising that the role of governing bodies is a crucial element of what one might call a mature democracy. I hope the Minister will bear that thought in mind.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, Amendment 22 provides that an annual report should be made to Parliament on the quality of SEN provision in academies and seeks to ensure that academies are effectively doing their fair share. As we have discussed, I have sympathy with those aims but I believe that they will be delivered through different processes. Academies will continue to be, as they currently are, accountable for making provision for children with SEN and subject to the same accountability mechanisms as maintained schools. These mechanisms include published Ofsted reports that give judgments about the quality of SEN provision; the publication of attainment data, including for SEN pupils; and school census returns from which comparable data are published about the numbers of SEN pupils, including those with statements, in different types of schools. There will not be any reduction in the amount of information about academies that we make public but, as regards the report to Parliament—which we have spoken about in a different context—we want to reflect on the quality of SEN provision in academies.

On Amendment 44A, I take the points that have been made about design. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, that she has not had her letter sooner. We have been awaiting the announcement of an independent review of capital investment—this relates to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—which is due to report to Ministers in mid-September. As the noble Lord pointed out, that review will include consideration of school design requirements and school premises regulations. I know that both noble Lords have strong views on that—the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, also has strong views about its membership—and their points on the design aspect ought to be made to the review. I am sure they will be. I accept totally the case that has been argued that the environment in which learning takes place must be conducive to education as far as possible, and that good quality buildings, classrooms and equipment are necessary for children to learn and to ensure that school is a place where they feel happy and secure in their learning.

No one is arguing for unnecessarily prescriptive building and design requirements—this may be a point made to me by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in a different setting—particularly in times of straitened financial conditions. The balance must be to ensure that we have effective regulation which delivers the design features that noble Lords have talked about but which is not bureaucratic, cumbersome and wasteful. There is a balance to be struck and we need to consider the evidence on it.

The core point is that it is our intention that the same standards should apply to academies as to maintained schools. As my noble friend Lord Wallace said in Committee, all schools are required to comply with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to draw up and implement accessibility plans which provide for the implementation of improvements to school premises to accommodate existing and future disabled pupils within a reasonable period.

Amendments 45 and 46 would require academies to alert local authorities when a pupil is identified with SEN. This is already a requirement on academies. Section 317 of the Education Act 1996 imposes an obligation on governing bodies of maintained schools to use their best endeavours to ensure that special educational provision is made. That would include notifying the local authority where necessary. Obligations under Section 317 are replicated in the current academy funding agreements and will continue to be replicated in the new academy arrangements. I can pick up on more detailed points with my noble friends.

I turn briefly to Amendment 52, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low. I understand the purpose of the amendment, but there are legal reasons, as we touched on earlier, why the Secretary of State cannot take powers to vary the contracts unilaterally. They have been entered into willingly by both parties, so the retrospective change that the noble Lord, Lord Low, requests would be difficult. My main concern in thinking about SEN has been to ensure that, where there is a policy change and where there could be a reasonable number of schools converting, all those new academies are put on an equal footing. I believe that we have achieved that. It is a significant step forward which I know has been welcomed by the noble Lord. Existing academies which move to the new model funding agreement will also have to comply with our new requirements. Not all existing academies will have to wait for the whole period. Those which move to a slim-line funding agreement will automatically be covered by the new requirements.

I hope that that has dealt with the main points that have been raised.

[Lord Puttnam]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Perhaps I may make a general point which I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, whose experience is greater than mine, would agree with. Teachers are peculiarly sensitive people. They are used to being let down; they are used to being underappreciated. I used possibly the wrong word earlier when I said that a lot of what is going on at the moment is clumsy. I cite an example that my noble friend Lord Howarth mentioned. Use of Dixons and Tesco as advisers on school building gives the impression that there is an interest in shelf space as opposed to aesthetics. That is not a good impression. I suggest to the Minister—who has done very well during the passage of this Bill—that at every single turn he thinks through the message that is being sent out to the professionals. It is very important that the Secretary of State’s intent is understood, that it is couched in terms that they can empathise and sympathise with and that they do not feel that they are being bullied or taken advantage of.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I take the point that the noble Lord makes; I take also his point about aesthetics. He and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned Tesco. I had better not be drawn into commenting on its designs since it has kindly agreed to serve on the review, but one thing that I know about it is that it is brilliant at finding ways of delivering what it is tasked to deliver in the most efficient and cost-effective way, learning each time and driving down costs. If one can find an approach that does not send those messages about aesthetics but enables us to deliver more well-designed school buildings for a lower cost, and if, as some people allege, Building Schools for the Future has been running 30 per cent over budget—

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.