Education Bill

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Rix]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 77 in my name, which is also concerned with teacher training. First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for being such a gracious and excellent understudy for moving my Amendments 34 and 42 last Thursday week. If I was back in my old profession I fear that she might grab hold of my trousers and take over my part. I am very grateful to her.

The current teacher training programme provides inadequate provision in special educational needs. It is thought that on a typical teacher training course the voluntary module of SEN is provided for less than one day. I do not believe that the Bill builds confidence that the aspirations of the SEN Green Paper will be met. The proposal in the Bill to allow outstanding schools—as judged by Ofsted—to become training hubs is inadequate. This judgment does not factor in a requirement that there be outstanding provision of SEN teaching in such schools.

I had a meeting last week with the Minister of State for Children and Families, Sarah Teather, at which I sought assurances that all teachers in all schools will have access to quality training in SEN issues. I seek similar guarantees here today. I suggest that the proposal in my amendment for a minimum of 20 hours’ training in SEN is still a fairly modest target. For this to encourage effective training, I believe that a 20-hour requirement should be integrated within the newly qualified teacher training framework and that it should seek to transcend all aspects of the training curriculum so that newly qualified teachers have the skills and confidence to adapt all aspects of teaching in order to increase the educational outcomes of children with SEN. The identification and subsequent delivery of a child’s support needs is vital. To achieve this, teachers and other educational professionals need the right skills in place to know when a child is displaying SEN and not bad behaviour so that they can respond appropriately. I hope that the Minister, too, will respond appropriately and assure the Committee that teachers will receive the necessary level of training to meet the educational needs of all students, including those with SEN.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I question all three amendments. I do so because this is a thread running throughout the Bill. This is a Bill that is all about structures and yet more structures, without looking at the fundamental reason why we are having an Education Bill, which is to improve the lot of our young people, particularly those with the greatest needs.

In terms of SEN, we are moving back from what I thought was the direction of travel which occurred over the past two decades of having schools as inclusive organisations where all members of staff are continually engaged in training in order to meet the needs of children. My worry about these three amendments is that by simply ticking a box which says you have, say, eight or 20 hours of training, somehow that makes you an effective teacher of children with special educational needs. It does not. It might give you some of the rudimentary elements, and for that these amendments are certainly a welcome direction of travel. But in reality I am looking for the Minister to say what the Government intend to do who encounter children with special educational needs in every one of our schools—not simply our special schools and not simply those children who have a statement of special needs—to ensure that all teachers have a required level of teaching and engagement, the like of which, quite frankly, we have never seen in our schools sufficient to meet the needs of those children. That is what we should really be looking for in terms of amendments to the Bill.

I hope that the Minister will give some satisfaction not only to those who tabled the amendments but to the whole of the Committee in order that we can feel satisfied that after the Bill is passed, our children with special educational needs get a better deal than the one they are getting in the vast majority of our schools today.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I hesitate to speak, but the amendments raise very important issues about the teaching profession and the future professionalism of teaching. Will the Minister keep in mind what happened to social work? At one time it was a highly respected profession with high thresholds of entry, but those thresholds were lowered for various reasons. A short while ago one could get on to a social work course with a couple of Ds as qualification. The result has been a highly variable quality in social workers.

While I wish to be as flexible as possible to recruit the right people into teaching, it would be a backward step if we were to lower standards trying to do so. I look to the Minister for reassurance that that will not happen.

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Moved by

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

83ZA: Before Clause 20, insert the following new Clause—
“Technology in schools
(1) The Secretary of State shall publish a plan detailing the delivery of the use of technology to aid teaching across all subjects in the curriculum, for pupils of all ages, in all maintained schools and Academies.
(2) The plan must be published and laid before Parliament by July 2012.”

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I am conscious of the time and of a message from the Front Bench that I should be as brief as possible, which is always the wrong thing to say to me on these occasions, but I will try. I certainly do not want to be controversial. I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some comfort on both amendments and that on Report he may be able to agree to them.

If I were to ask your Lordships whether it is necessary in terms of delivering every subject on the curriculum to have electricity, most would say that on balance it probably is, whether it is sport, music, the arts or the core curriculum—whatever that is now—or faith, though I gather that the Bishop has left.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I meant the other bishop—the secular bishop.

Electricity is considered a very important part of delivering the curriculum. I have tried to get your Lordships’ support for both amendments. The idea is that to deliver a 21st century curriculum we have to have 21st century methodology and 21st century equipment. To deliver the curriculums to all children, they have to have access to the technologies and be able to take advantage of them. There was a time when technology, particularly information and communications technology, was regarded as an additional extra. If you had the resources you put it into schools. It was certainly a resource that the wealthiest families in this country provided early on, and which most families now provide. In reality, it has now become not simply an additional extra but the lifeblood of schools.

I was in a primary school on Friday last week watching a young teacher teaching the solar system to a group of primary children. She had blacked out the whole room and had her white board and overhead projector and was using the BBC programme on the solar system by Brian Cox. It was very dark and by the time one of the episodes of that wonderful programme had come on, the children’s faces looking at the solar system as they had never seen it before, were remarkable. That is the use of technology today. In every area of the curriculum we can bring countries from the other side of the world into the classroom. Skype can be used to communicate directly with children in other parts of the world. I remember when I began teaching geography back in 1963 that it took three months to get a letter from a school in Sierra Leone. Now children can talk daily. Technology is no longer simply an added extra; it is very important indeed.

It has worried me, and I have said to the Minister that we seem to have messages from the Government, particularly from the Schools Minister, that if you have technologies you are putting books out of reach of children and that somehow it is either/or. You either have books or technology. It is not like that at all. You have to have both. The reality is that most children today, often from the age of three, use Google as a normal part of their activities. As they get older they cannot use internet search engines unless they have a good command of English. They have to be able to read effectively, disseminate and arrange information. This is not an added extra. It is fundamental. It is not an either/or; it is part and parcel of the same activity.

I have another worry. I say to the Minister that this is an impression rather than a reality. We now have a Division, which is a reality.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)]

If the noble Lord is not about to wind up, I think that we probably do not have time to get through this so we will have to come back after the Division. There is a Division in the House. We will adjourn until 7.40 pm.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I have made the case that technology is crucial in supporting the curriculum today and not simply an added extra. I hope that the Minister can give the Committee a clear undertaking that his Government are not luddites, that they are looking at the use of technology, that they are prepared to support its use across the curriculum and that schools will be required to say how and where they are using that technology. This is not a matter of spending a fortune on ICT within our schools. Like many noble Lords, I get quite irritated going into schools to be taken into a room with 20 or 30 wonderful new computers and have people tell me that that is what they are doing for ICT. It is not the computers; it is what you do with them. There are very simple devices, certainly costing less than £200, that can give all the capacity needed to deliver so much of the curriculum as it exists.

If having ICT in school and using technology in school effectively are important in delivering a 21st century curriculum, it is also crucial for children to be able to access the curriculum from home and for them and their parents to be able to communicate with school from home. Amendment 107C states that it is vital that children have 24/7 access in order to be able to complete their national curriculum work, complete their homework and be able to access a broader general education. The Minister’s response to a Question in Hansard about the number of children unable to access the internet at home is therefore quite disappointing. The Minister’s answer is:

“The Department for Education estimates that around 15 per cent of households with children currently lack access to the internet … Take up of internet access remains strongly correlated with household income with only 68 per cent of households with children eligible for free school meals having access to the internet at home”.—[Official Report, 07/07/11; col. WA 110.]

That means that 32 per cent of children eligible for free school meals do not have the internet at home. Can you imagine the difference in opportunity that that denies them compared with those children who have good access, live in homes with a computer in the bedroom and are in schools that can set them homework and projects where they can access all the sorts of learning materials that are essential to 21st century education?

If you look at the IFS study 18 months ago, right across Britain the poorest areas have the least access to the internet. The 32 per cent figure is not across the board. If you go to the north-east, you find that 41 per cent of homes do not have access to the internet. The figure is 36 per cent in Scotland and 31 per cent in Yorkshire and Humber. Some 27 per cent of our poorest households do not have access to the internet at all. According to the IFS study, the correlation between qualifications and use of the internet is equally stark. Some 55 per cent of individuals with no qualifications at all have never used the internet and do not have access to it. That is a shocking statistic if we are talking about a level playing field for learning.

Amendment 107C simply asks the Government to ensure that,

“all secondary age pupils in maintained schools or Academies who are eligible for free school meals, in receipt of the ‘pupil premium’, ‘looked after’ by a local authority”,

and who are the poorest and most disadvantaged on current measures, should have access to the internet at home and at school. I hope that the Minister will accept that amendment. It is something which his Government—I am sorry, I should have said our Government; you get so used to being in opposition in the other place—should feel proud to deliver. At the end of this historic period of coalition government, any Government would be proud to say, “No child living in poverty in this country is denied access to the curriculum because they do not have broadband and do not have a computer at home”. In saying that, I declare an interest as chairman of the e-Learning Foundation.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have my name to one of these amendments and should have it to the other one as well. I absolutely support what my noble friend has said. In relation to the first amendment in the group, if such a report were made by government, could the Minister look into the technology centres that are closing in a number of local authorities? They are centres of excellence and expertise and are of enormous value to schools that are trying to make the best use of technology not just for children who need assistive technology—that is a very important group—but for every child. Unfortunately, a lot of them are closing. That means that not only is the expertise going but the actual knowledge that helps schools to buy cost-effective equipment and have the technical support they need to ensure that the equipment works properly all the time. I would like to see that issue included in the report.

Amendment 107C concerns a subject which I am pleased to say my party will be discussing at our party conference in September. If the Government are set on reducing inequality and the achievement gap, making sure that every child from a deprived family has access to a computer and broadband is something that we should be prioritising. It is not a luxury. It is a tool for education and in this modern world it is an absolutely essential tool. It is very important for every child, not just, as my noble friend has said in his amendment, those from secondary age upwards, but going downwards as well. Knowing the sorts of deals that government can do with equipment suppliers and with the telecoms companies, I do not think that that would be anywhere near as expensive as it might at first seem given that you would be buying things in bulk. Not so long ago, there was talk of providing children with little laptops for £50. I reckon that you could probably get very basic ones for less than that now. Broadband should be able to be provided very cost effectively given the quantity that government would be interested in. This is an important measure. It is achievable and is absolutely in line with the coalition agreement and this Government’s stated aims in regard to education.