Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I have two problems with this amendment, although I recognise the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness. When I read through the amendment, I asked myself how I would feel if I were the director of children’s services in a local authority. The director of children’s services in many authorities was the former director of education—the person responsible for all schools that were not academies or free schools. The director of children’s services still has the same responsibilities for all community schools and all schools that remain in the local authority’s purview.

If I were the director of children’s services, I would find it difficult to have someone coming in as a schools commissioner and suddenly having a role with the schools that I would regard as my responsibility. The noble Baroness is concerned about the academies and free schools that are not within the local authority’s purview, but she has overlooked the fact that schools can do intelligent and sensible things about collaboration and co-operation without someone from outside telling them what to do.

I recently visited the London Borough of Hackney, which now has more academies than community schools. The principals of the academies have come together informally to deal with special educational needs and with admissions. People who run schools are intelligent and powerful people. They do not need someone from outside coming and telling them to do these clever things. Most arrangements for collaborations between schools that we have applauded and encouraged in our discussions in Committee are not necessarily confined to one authority. Many schools have developed collaborations with schools that are independent and with schools outside their own authority, particularly in the big cities where boundaries are permeable and children go to school across them.

For all these reasons, I would find this very difficult. Once again, we are assuming that we have to be cleverer than the senior people who run our schools and who are making intelligent decisions.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, on a point of order I wonder whether we could have the timing clocks switched on. I am tempted to add wickedly that I am constructing a league table of length of contributions and I have yet to decide whether it will be published anonymously or not.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, there is a technical problem. Unfortunately, the clocks were not switched on at the beginning of this amendment and there is no way of winding them back, even though we all know that we started at 11.57 am. If the noble Lord could do some mental arithmetic, it would satisfy his curiosity.

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[Baroness Ritchie of Brompton]

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment in this group, Amendment 108A. As has been said, the passage of the Academies Act last year allowed us considerable debate on the merits of the academy system introduced by the previous Government and accelerated by the current one. Academies have become an established part of the education system and I do not want to revisit that debate. Through this probing amendment I wish to raise local government concerns over the ability of the education system to react to local circumstances. Here, I must yet again declare an interest as the chair of the LGA children and young people’s board.

Amendment 108A would alter Schedule 11 to allow it to continue to recognise the Government’s ambition of seeing schools transferred to academy status, but would retain the necessary local flexibility in the school system to allow for local needs to be taken into account and avoid the creation of a potentially burdensome process for establishing new schools.

Schedule 11 creates a requirement for a local authority seeking to establish a new school first to look at setting up an academy. Councils do not object to that first part of the schedule. However, its subsequent provisions establish a process by which the local authority must report to the DfE on the process of establishing that new academy. Further provisions place restrictions on the establishment of new schools, requiring a council to seek permission from the DfE before considering alternative models of provision and giving powers to the department to order a council to withdraw a notice issued to invite proposals for establishing a new school.

The DfE has projected that while overall pupil numbers in state-funded schools have been in decline, they will increase from this year onwards. Indeed, by 2014, pupil numbers in maintained primary schools will be more than 8 per cent higher than in 2010. Despite the current contraction in demand for secondary school places, the increase in demand for primary school places over the next three to four years is likely to create a sudden boom in the demand for pupil places such that the education system has not had to react to since demand began to decline in 2004.

The primary concern of a council and its community when managing this demand and seeking to establish a new school should be the needs of local parents, and of course of children. Furthermore, councils must be able to balance place provision to ensure that the needs of the entire local area are met. We need to ensure that the Bill does not reduce the ability of local parents, education providers and councils to respond quickly and effectively to new demand and that local choice and diversity of provision are maintained.

Unfortunately, the later provisions in Schedule 11 could restrict the ability of local communities to decide what type of school is established, not only by the creation of burdensome and bureaucratic reporting requirements but ultimately by placing decision-making in the hands of departmental officials in Whitehall rather than locally elected representatives in town halls. Councils understand their residents and local areas well. If local parents do not want schools to be established as academies, there needs to be an option to reflect local parental demand and to establish other types of schools. Councils should not be required to get permission from Whitehall before responding to and implementing the wishes of local residents.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I hope to speak to briefly on this question in view of my earlier remarks. This is a crucial clause, which has to do with the direction of government policy and a struggle that might develop between national policy and local authorities. The Academies Bill has gone through. I supported that, and I support the direction of travel in this Bill, not least because it clarifies very considerably what the Academies Bill amounted to. There are two or three points of difficulty that I want to mention, to which I hope the Minister might respond.

First, if every school becomes an academy, which is a possibility, then, as we have consistently pointed out, there may be cracks in the system. There has to be some oversight should these cracks appear. This is not regulating schools; it is trying to find a coherent policy that serves the needs of the whole community, should every school become independent of local authority control. As I said, the direction of travel is right, not least because we have had many decades of local authority supervision of schools and we do not have a system that any of us is content with. That is the reality, and it is one good reason why we should support the Bill, another being the excellence of the academy policy of the previous Government and the way in which many schools want to sign up to it. We have to give this a fair wind.

I have read the Explanatory Notes very carefully, and paragraph 180 contains a series of bullet points on which it is possible for local authorities to take a view on founding a further school. The most significant of these is a loophole. It is the last bullet point in paragraph 180, and it reads:

“Local authority proposals for a new community or foundation school”,

are possible,

“where following publication of a section 7 notice no proposals are approved by the local authority, no Academy arrangements are entered into, or no proposals are received”.

There is therefore, as I read this, room for the local authority to take steps to make provision for what otherwise might be absent.

I have two further points. First, the proposals for a series of schools becoming in effect independent over the years lack a proper sense of scrutiny of what might happen over the next five, 10 or 15 years in some of these schools. I shall speak to this point when we come on to exemptions from inspection and I shall not expand on it now. Secondly, 20 years ago a Secretary of State came up with a great new whizz and said to me, “Stewart, I plan to make all schools directly answerable to the Secretary of State. What do you think?”. I gulped and pointed out to him that this might mean that in Parliament he would be answering questions about the state of the lavatories at Walford primary school because there would be no other place to go to raise the questions. I hope any sensible Government would want to avoid that kind of situation.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, my Amendment 111A is different in content from the other amendments in the group, but like them it concerns the vigilance that we need to exercise over academies. Small-scale, local and innovative new schools and academies are good ideas in education. However, when groups of people get together to innovate in education, we will not want them to act in ignorance of good practice and the immense importance of the built environment. My amendment would give them exactly that access to good practice.

I have been in academies—which, as we all know, were formerly instigated to turn around fading schools—and the influence of the building and its design have been paramount. The latest RIBA report, Good Design: It All Adds Up, gives several examples of the educational effectiveness and economy of good school buildings. One of the most anti-educational elements in a school is insecurity—the lack of physical safety, the prevalence of bullying, petty theft, a culture of skiving off, persuading other members of a peer group to do the same, and vandalism.

I have seen buildings that have completely reversed this trend. It sounds like common sense but in fact the proponents of skilled design to improve security had to argue their case, such as everywhere being easy to see, personal lockers and toilets with only the cubicles private. The effects showed in the figures: much higher attendance, truancy dropping well below the London average, much higher attainment and even, at some schools, a reduction of crime in the immediate area. The only correlative was the new school building.

Of course it is not only security that makes a difference, although in failing schools it has been a huge factor. Ease and enjoyment of learning and pride in school are strongly influenced by the layout of classrooms, libraries, larger meeting places such as assembly halls, smaller informal ones, and other physical factors such as ventilation and light, which allow good teachers to give of their best. It all looks obvious when you see it in a school building, but far too few people realise what expertise goes into the right design and how much well-being is created by it.

I am sure that the Minister understands this point, as do his colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and I hope that he will grasp the opportunity for our children in the amendment.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the noble Lord for his interesting contribution. Is it the Government’s intention that in future all schools should become academies? I think the answer—although the Minister did not put it in these blunt terms—is yes. It was interesting that in his response to the very wide debate that we have had and the comments from around the Room he did not seem to mention parents and communities.

The Government have decided centrally that in future all schools should be academies and that local democracy does not figure in this brave new world that we are creating. That is sad because it means that all the local choice that the Government have been talking about will not exist in practice in the future. The Government are sending out a signal that high-performing maintained schools, of which there are many around the country, are being classified as second class: that they are not the current or future game in town. That is sad, because if you ask most parents around the country they would really like choice. Of course they all want high-quality, high-performing schools, but they want choice— and I do not see where choice figures in Schedule 11.

Under the current arrangements, without Schedule 11 we already have the opportunity for schools to transfer to academies and for new schools to become academies. The figures have already been quoted about how many existing and new schools are becoming academies—the process is already happening out there—and Schedule 11 adds nothing except to give the Secretary of State undue powers to instruct that this will always be the case.

I would have liked to have heard more from the Minister on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, about the expansion of the school role and communities being able to respond rapidly to and having some control over what happens in the locality.

I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and I was slightly disappointed with what he said. He seemed to be suggesting that we should not worry because there is a loophole. I would have thought that local communities want more than a loophole; they want the right to determine what should happen in their area.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

May I just clarify? That is the way in which the note is written. It seems to me that there is a power there that local authorities can use. There is an extra step—I concede that—but there is a power that they can use to create a school that meets the needs of the community if there is no alternative proposal that would meet them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

If that is what we have to rely on, it is to be regretted. It should be much more of a forceful and enforceable right. I do not think I have anything more to say. In some sense this is an ideological difference between us. However, it is not about academies or no academies but about central and local control. We are very much on the side of parents, local communities and local democratically elected representatives. I do not think that the Government have fully acknowledged that. I am sure we will return to this subject, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I take a more radical view than my noble friend, although if her amendment was accepted a lot of my worries would be dealt with. The Government are making a great mistake in going down this route. It is not that I like Ofsted—I do not like the old-style Ofsted; a lot needs to be improved about it. But going in this direction is going to cause considerable problems down the road.

Schools that are rated outstanding often do not stay outstanding. Quite a high proportion of them drift downwards. This is entirely natural, with changes in the staff and in tempo and other changes that mean that a school loses its grip on the excellence that it once had. Perhaps it was lucky to get a grade 1 in the first place and has just slipped back to its natural place in grade 2. Unless you have some contact with the school, you absolutely do not know that that is happening.

One of the main grouses that I have with Ofsted at the moment is that it is very late to pick up changes. Ofsted will pile into a school and put it in special measures when, if it had caught it a couple of years earlier, it would have meant a minor change of course. I can think of an excellent secondary school in Manchester that was dumped into special measures when it got a head who was being experimental and trying all sorts of things and forgetting to look after the basic management of the school. It was a very easy thing for an experienced head to pick up; if someone had just come in, as my noble friend Lady Perry suggests, and had a look at the school, they would have sensed that immediately.

I do not share the confidence of my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches that these things get picked up by parents, since parents are by and large terribly loyal to their schools. They do not talk to outside people or to Ofsted. There may be a flow of information round the local circuit, but it does not get out of that; no one complains. Often, there will be a flow of propaganda from the school that what it is doing is right and that the course it is taking is the best one. Even if it is experimental and there are some worries about it at the moment, it will all work out. Parents are inclined to accept that and an outside expert eye can make all the difference. At the moment, Ofsted is deficient in that it does not look at schools often enough and this causes much greater problems than there ought to be. If we get to a position where Ofsted does not see schools at all, we will start to have serious problems going unchecked, to the point where the rot is so bad that the fruit falls off the tree and the educational lives of a great many pupils are seriously damaged.

Beyond that, we are considering opening up the curriculum so that a great deal of what a secondary school, in particular, does will be down to that school. So we will start not to know what a school is doing and whether it is doing well unless someone tells us what is going on. How will we know that PSHE in a school is being done properly, or what is being done, or what is being taught? We will rely entirely on what the school chooses to tell us. If it is a good school doing the right thing, fine—that will be all right—but how will we know if that is the case?

The proposals in this clause, as they are now, will fail schools, fail children and fail parents and the information they should have. We should seriously look to do something about this.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, the clause is very radical in its consequences. Amendments 113D, 114 and 114A are all firefighting amendments and I support them as such, particularly with regard to the importance of safeguarding. However, I agree with my colleague and friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that, if we move away from requiring inspection of a whole range of schools, danger lies down the road and that we may be in a different position when debating this issue in five or 10 years’ time.

I was involved when Ofsted was established—I am sorry to be historical but this is relevant—and one of the earliest things I did was to go to a meeting with private school head teachers. I was wise to go to girls’ schools where they were mostly lady head teachers, who were much more reasonable. I challenged them and said, “If the state system can put up with this, what about you”? Much to their credit, they began to create an inspection system of their own and compared notes with Ofsted all the way down the line and found it beneficial.

On another bit of relevant history, five years ago during debates on the Education and Inspections Bill, a major issue about faith schools arose. Indeed, after re-reading Hansard and as I look around, it is like being back there—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharpe, Lady Perry and Lady Howarth, were all there when we debated it at some length. They may recall—I certainly do, as I tabled one or two crucial amendments—that there was an immense degree of what I can only call aggression. Except for the issue of assisted dying, I have not seen the House of Lords quite as split right down the middle as on the question of the future of faith schools.

We have had a sensation of that in this Committee but we have held back, I am happy to say. However, that could be recreated because the exemptions proposed include a number of faith schools that cause severe worries for Members of the House. This may reopen the whole issue of whether there should be any at all, let alone, as the question was, any new ones. I see, for example, Amendment 114 as a step towards this. There could be other ways in which one might take a step towards obviating the possibility of a certain kind of curriculum, the way in which it is taught and a lack of attention to community cohesion—which I believe were the words on which the amendments at that time focused.

The crucial issue was that there would be a backstop, and Ofsted would inspect all schools on the basis of their capacity to create cohesion in the community. That provided a net within which many of the worries of Members of the House were resolved sufficiently for them not to move down the much more radical secular path. I put it to the Minister that a number of us would be minded to introduce further amendment at the next stage if Clause 39 stands in its current form without these issues being dealt with.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I will ask a brief but important question in relation to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I should have stood up and asked her, but I have been told off before for standing up too soon, so I thought that I would wait.

I was unable to be present for the Statement yesterday about buildings, and I am sure that this might have been raised then. The question is whether or not a building should be a limiting factor in an Ofsted inspection’s outcome. Many schools now have huge problems with their standards, and I speak as a trustee of a college where the premises are totally inappropriate for the work that we are trying to do. This means that we can never get a good Ofsted inspection, despite the fact that the teaching is good and the pupils like going there. There would be nowhere else for these disabled young people to go if it did not exist. In the present economic climate, is this limiting factor appropriate when we know that it is not going to change? This school would have been redeveloped under the previous programme, which, of course, was abandoned.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Quirk and Lord Ouseley belong closely together because you do not have to visit many primary schools with children of disadvantaged backgrounds to discover that one of their chief difficulties is lack of linguistic capacity when moving from reception into primary school. That is why I support the amendments, as I do the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Flather. In view of what I said earlier, I shall not repeat myself, but there is a definition of community cohesion, quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, from the Home Office, available at column 39 of volume 686 of Hansard.

[Baroness Hooper]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 117 and 121, and I wish to associate myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, with regard to Amendment 117. Both these amendments were intended to remind us of and to draw our attention to the importance of the teaching and learning of modern languages for communication skills, for understanding other people’s cultures, as an added value for employment purposes and to enable pupils to have a better understanding of their own language. I wish to make that rapid interjection to support these amendments.