Education Bill

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I do not have those figures to hand, but special schools closed in my constituency and in my local authority area because we pursued a vision of inclusion within state schools. That was the right thing to do, because some of those young people are now educated alongside other children in their community, and it is human and social progress to teach those young people in that way. The question I put to the Secretary of State, which he did not answer, was this: how can he ask any Member to be sure that the Bill will not harm vulnerable children in their constituencies when we have not seen his proposals on special educational needs? What ability will anyone have to place obligations on academies or free schools to look out for their children? We do not know whether he is creating them as self-sufficient islands that can do whatever they like, so how can we be sure that children with special educational needs will not get second best from the schools system he is creating? He cannot answer that question tonight because we have not seen the Green Paper. It should have been published before the Bill was brought before the House.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State knows very well that under the Labour Government some special schools closed because they were just not good enough, but special school places were created, and there were more when we left office than when we came into office.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend, who knows more about these matters than anyone in the House, has put the Secretary of State straight.

I have one final comment about parents. We support the extension of free early years provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds, but we are deeply concerned that that is undermined by the Government’s failure to protect Sure Start. Furthermore, giving the Secretary of State the power to define early years provision, who gets it and when they get it places question marks over the universal free entitlement for three and four-year olds. I ask him to make it clear that he does not intend to cut such provision or to introduce means-testing, particularly as fears have also been raised by the Bill’s introduction of powers to charge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I share the aspirations and passion of the Secretary of State to improve standards for all our children and young people, and I welcome the proposals to improve discipline in our schools, to tackle bullying of all types and to protect teachers from false allegations. Of course I also feel that head teachers need the freedom to exercise their professional judgment.

The Bill contains some welcome proposals, and some others that merit close scrutiny at later stages. For me, the most important part of improving standards is investing in early years in order to get the foundations right. I hope that the commitment to, and funding for, free pre-school provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds will be welcomed across the House. Research shows that good quality early-childhood services have wide-ranging benefits for children, particularly disadvantaged children. That obviously helps disadvantaged children with their development, and speech and language skills, which are vital as they progress through later schooling.

In 2010, the latest findings from the effective provision of pre-school education research project were that children aged 11 still showed benefits from attendance at high quality pre-schools, which emphasises the importance of high quality provision. With the cutbacks, however, we have to keep the focus on driving up the quality of pre-school education. I also agree with Save the Children that local authorities should be asked to publish the proportion of free early places for disadvantaged two-year-olds taken up in good or outstanding settings.

I commend the Labour Government for achieving the universal free entitlement of up to 15 hours for three and four-year-olds, and for achieving that very high take-up. However, we still face the conflicting problems of cost, quality, quantity and sustainability—we will face those challenges throughout. It is important in early years to establish the joy of learning, so I hope that any reforms we make will encourage it throughout schooling—and through life, really.

I want to comment, however, on a few clauses that concern me and on which I would like reassurance. I am particularly concerned about the removal of the duty to co-operate with local authorities. I have been involved in many Bill Committees concerned with legislation for children and young people, and I have always felt that schools have to be included—I think that my coalition partners felt that too. I can understand that people might be concerned about unnecessary bureaucracy for schools and colleges, and I can see a case for reviewing how that provision is working in practice, but a repeal with no obvious measure to fill the gap concerns me greatly.

Like the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), I am deeply concerned about child protection. When I read through a serious case review that went back some years, I noticed that spattered throughout were cases in which teachers had not reported incidents. I worry, therefore, about taking away that duty, about the possibility of child protection being overlooked and about teachers not taking on their full responsibilities. I am also concerned about removing the duty to co-operate in respect of looked-after children, young carers, children with parents in prison and children with special needs. How can we ensure co-operation between schools, local authorities and other vital services for our vulnerable young people without something being put in place? I hope that the Minister will tell us what that something is.

[Pat Glass]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the number of middle-years serious case reviews in this country—those from the point of starting school until the mid-teens, when other factors come into play—has reduced significantly because of the duty on schools to co-operate?

[Annette Brooke]

I am afraid that I do not have the hon. Lady’s professional knowledge, only that of the limited serious case reviews I have had the opportunity to see. It is vital that everybody concerned with children is looking out for their protection.

I am equally concerned about removing the requirement on maintained schools in England to have regard to the children and young people’s plans. Obviously, the provision for vulnerable children within the plans is really important. I have even greater concerns about special educational needs. The National Autistic Society points out that where services are not co-ordinated, children may undergo tens of assessments, and essential support can be delayed. Parents have reported the constant battles they face to get all the services that their children need. I believe that by working together we can reduce bureaucracy and costs, but I remain concerned about the removal of duties on schools to co-operate and to have regard to the children and young people’s plans.

During the passage of the Autism Act 2009, which was sponsored by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), and which I was pleased to support throughout, the previous Government committed themselves to ensuring that the needs of children with autism would be supported locally through children and young people’s plans. How will the Government ensure that these needs are recognised and met locally?

The shadow Secretary of State for Education challenged the belief of Liberal Democrats in local authorities. I believe strongly that local authorities should play an important strategic role in the provision of high quality education in their local areas, and that they should play a pivotal role in ensuring that other related services necessary for a child’s well-being work together effectively.

I am concerned not only about removing the duty to co-operate but about the abolition of admissions forums and the reduction in the role of the schools adjudicator. I welcome the extension of the adjudicator’s role to academies, but I think that the ability to look at a whole school admissions policy when responding to a particular complaint has brought many benefits. I would hope that we all want to promote fair admissions to schools, but I seek reassurance from the Minister: if we are to reduce the role of the adjudicator and get rid of admissions forums, how are we to monitor the situation and ensure that admissions policies are administered fairly at a local level? I sincerely seek answers from him, because these are important aspects of the Bill—they are important across the board for disadvantaged young people, children with special educational needs and looked-after children.

With those comments, I would like to emphasise that local authorities have a strategic role to play. I would not want to return to the old-style model for local authorities, but I do think that they have a role to play, and if we are to take away some of their powers, we need to know what will be put in their place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

There are elements of the Bill that I welcome. I like the parts that are intended to ensure that full funding follows an excluded child from their school. Too often, some schools have simply washed their hands of children with difficulties and problems, and hopefully the Bill will make schools think carefully, and financially, before doing so in future.

I also like the plans that will, we hope, ensure that schools remain responsible for the educational outcomes of children they exclude. I have visited very many schools over very many years, from the smallest nursery schools to the highest-achieving grammar schools to the most specialist behaviour schools, and eventually the conversation always gets round to behaviour. At almost every school, I have been told at some point, “If you could just take away the five most difficult children, everything would be wonderful.” But teachers know, and I know, that if they took away the five most difficult children, the next five would simply rise to the surface.

Only when schools start to deal properly with their difficulties in the quality of teaching and learning, and introduce consistent approaches to behaviour and staff training, do they begin to feel confident in their ability to manage behavioural problems. I hope that preventing schools from simply washing their hands of the difficult children will make all schools begin a proper internal dialogue about those issues. I also welcome plans to provide anonymity to teachers accused by pupils until they are charged, and I hope that the Government will consider extending that to all school staff.

Given that I welcome some clauses in the Bill, I hope that Members will see that my remarks today are not about opposition for opposition’s sake but about making the Bill better for all children and young people, their schools and their families.

I wish to focus for a while on early intervention. We all know that there is an enormous body of evidence to support it, not least that provided to the House in recent months and years by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). As we all know, early intervention means not just intervention in the early years but intervention with children and young people as soon as a difficulty becomes apparent, whether that is when a special educational need is suspected, when other barriers to learning become clear or when the safety and well-being of a child or young person is suspected to be at risk.

The Bill is full of good intentions about early years and early intervention, but it cannot be separated from the reality of, in some cases, biblical-sized cuts facing local authorities. In the early years, Sure Start is widely recognised as a distinctive and increasingly important service that plays an essential role in helping our children get the right start in life and ensuring that they are ready to learn when they start school. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have made personal promises to keep Sure Start centres open. Even since the election, they have said that they do not want any to close, yet there are to be significant budget cuts that will mean the removal of funding for Sure Start and the ring-fencing that would have protected those centres.

The Government have said that they are safeguarding Sure Start funding, but they have cleverly rolled together 10 separate and previously ring-fenced budgets, including that for Sure Start, into their new early-intervention grant. That budget will increase to £2.2 billion in 2014, but they have dictated that that money has to support not only Sure Start centres but the cost of extending free education to two-year-olds; the cost of short breaks for disabled and vulnerable children; all support programmes targeted at preventing children from engaging in crime; all support programmes targeted at tackling substance misuse; all teenage pregnancy support programmes; programmes for children with mental health problems and learning difficulties; and all transition arrangements. It also has to support all behaviour support services in schools and local authorities; child and adolescent mental health services; children’s community paramedic services such as speech therapy; special educational needs services; and youth services.

For the Government to say that they are providing funding to support Sure Start and early intervention is not only wrong, given the current financial situation facing local authorities, but insulting. They are tying the hands of local authorities by slashing their budgets, while at the same time washing their hands of any proper support. Closures in the children’s centre network are inevitable.

Although I welcome some things in the Bill, some matters are missing from it that would have benefited it. I urge the Secretary of State to include measures to ensure that all schools take their fair share of pupils from poorer homes and those with special educational needs. All that we have had so far is a promise to simplify the admissions code of practice, but for many parents there are real concerns that “simplify” will mean “make opaque”, and that it will therefore be easier for schools regarded as good or outstanding effectively to exclude those groups of children through their admissions policies.

I also urge the Secretary of State to amend the Ofsted framework to ensure that all schools are properly held to account for all children’s outcomes. That can be done by including a limiting judgment that ensures that no school can be designated an outstanding school if it cannot demonstrate, first, that it takes its fair share of pupils from poorer homes and pupils with SEN, and secondly, that it is narrowing the gap between the achievements of those children and the most able in the school. In my view, that is what makes an outstanding school. Those would be real sanctions, and I recommend them to the Secretary of State if he is serious about improving outcomes for vulnerable children and those from poor homes.

As well as clauses that are missing from the Bill, there are those with which I disagree outright, including the ones that reduce the powers of independent exclusions panels. They will have a direct detrimental effect on children with SEN, particularly those with hearing impairments, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, epilepsy and diabetes. There is a known link with behaviour when those conditions are not properly addressed. The Select Committee on Education looked at that in some detail recently, and I recall that not even one witness from across the educational divide felt that the reduction of those powers was a good thing.

I disagree with the measures that seek to remove the requirement to give 24 hours’ notice of detention. That is at best disrespectful to parents, and at worst a child safeguarding issue. I also disagree with the measures that repeal the duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities and those that repeal the duty on schools to have regard to children and young people’s plans. As I said in an intervention, those duties have had a significant impact in reducing the number of serious case reviews in the middle years—from when a child starts school to the middle teenage years.

Finally, there is much in the Bill to recommend it, but there is much that I ask the Government to reconsider.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—