UK Parliament / Open data

Education and Inspections Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Adonis (Labour) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 21 June 2006. It occurred during Debate on bills on Education and Inspections Bill.
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I say at the outset how sad we are to learn that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, who normally speaks on education from the spiritual Bench, has been readmitted to hospital. I know that the whole House will wish to send its very best wishes to him and his family. It may assist the House if I begin by explaining the Bill’s main provisions. Part 1 lays new fundamental duties on local authorities in respect of education, replacing their existing duty, dating back to 1944, which is simply to provide ““sufficient”” education in their localities. Clause 1 instead requires them to promote the fulfilment of every child’s educational potential and to ensure fair access to educational opportunity. Clause 2 requires them to promote choice and diversity; and Clause 3 requires them to respond to representations from parents not satisfied with local schools. Part 1 also requires local authorities to identify children missing from education and to secure access for young people to sufficient leisure-time activities and facilities. Part 2 further requires local authorities to meet the preferences and needs of parents and young people. Clause 7 requires them, as local commissioners of schools, to set out specifications for new schools needed to supply new places or to replace schools to be closed, including reasons for failure. The local authority—or in some cases the independent schools’ adjudicator—then has the duty to assess and choose between proposals. All those who wish to do so, including charities and foundations, parents’ groups, and existing schools—whether from the state or independent sectors—will be entitled to submit proposals in open competition. It may be appropriate for the local authority itself to enter a proposal, and Clause 8 sets out arrangements for this. Under Clause 28, school organisation committees are abolished and their powers in respect of the alteration and closure of maintained schools are taken on by local authorities. Clause 19, for example, gives local authorities powers to propose to add special needs provision or to add a sixth form to any foundation, special or voluntary school. Part 1 also enables every school to become a foundation school, to acquire a foundation, and to allow that foundation to appoint any number of governors up to a majority. However, even where a foundation appoints a majority, at least one-third of the school’s governors must be parents. In the Bill, ““a foundation school with a foundation”” is the legal term for what, in plain English, is called a trust school. Regrettably the legal profession defeated our attempts to have that plain English in the Bill, but I assure the House that trust schools are alive and well in Clause 18. Under the clause, the governing body of any school can decide to change to trust status, following proper procedures and consultation and subject to the local authority’s power to refer such a decision to the independent schools adjudicator, where it is concerned about the consultation or proposed trust. Trust schools automatically gain all the freedoms of foundation schools to own their own land and buildings, to employ their own staff directly and to administer their own admissions, subject to a strengthened code which rules out unfair admissions policies and practices. Further provisions in Parts 2 and 3 regulate the charitable and educational objectives of trusts, enable trusts to be removed and strengthen the voice of parents. We are also looking further at how we might strengthen the voice of children and young people, following the amendments to the Childcare Bill I have just tabled to this effect. Part 3 sets out the strengthened admissions regulation I mentioned a moment ago. Clause 37 prohibits new selection by ability. Clause 38 strengthens the legal force of the school admissions code. Schools and local authorities will henceforth have to ““act in accordance”” with the code, rather than simply ““have regard to”” it, as now. Clause 41 bans the interviewing of parents and pupils as part of the admissions process, including in faith schools. Clause 49 makes it easier for schools to introduce banding; that is, oversubscription criteria intended to ensure a fair cross-section of the ability range, as against simple proximity to the school. Clause 39 widens the role of local admission forums, to give local schools an opportunity to deliberate and report collectively on admissions, and to make objections to the independent schools adjudicator on unfair practices locally. Clauses 44 to 48 give local authorities new powers of direction to ensure that looked-after children, who too often get a raw deal at present, take priority in admissions so that they are able to go to the most suitable schools to meet their needs. Part 4 concerns weak and failing schools. Where schools fail Ofsted inspections, or are exhibiting notable weaknesses, local authorities are empowered to act more quickly and decisively than is often the case at present. A local authority can, for example, require a weak school to work with another school or external partner. In extremis, it can close a seriously failing school, although in many such cases the local authority would use its other powers to provide for a new school under different management, in the same locality. Part 5 creates a new nationwide entitlement for all young people to study any of the 14 specialised vocational diplomas which are to be introduced from 2008. It also empowers schools to enter into formal collaborations with further education colleges, not least to provide these diplomas. Part 6 improves arrangements for school transport and school food. It places a new duty on local authorities to provide free school transport for less affluent families, extending to the three secondary schools closest to their home, where they are more than two, and less than six, miles away. It permits the Government to set minimum nutritional standards to be applied to all food and drink supplied on school premises. Part 7 implements the legislative aspects of the recent Steer report on behaviour. Clauses 83 to 87 provide explicit statutory powers for staff to discipline pupils for inappropriate behaviour or not following instructions, including when they are off school premises. Clauses 93 to 96 require parents to take responsibility for excluded pupils in their first five days of exclusion; there is no such explicit obligation at present. They require governing bodies and local authorities to provide alternative provision from the sixth day of an exclusion, as against the sixteenth day at present. They make reintegration interviews with parents and pupils compulsory for all pupils who have been excluded. Part 8 provides for the creation of a new single inspectorate for children and learners: the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. This inspectorate expands Ofsted to include roles currently undertaken by the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Adult Learning Inspectorate, and the inspection of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. This is intended to reduce bureaucracy. Part 10 gives the National Assembly for Wales new and wide powers over education in Wales, alongside the Government of Wales Bill also being considered by the House. I have summarised the Bill and I shall now explain how it relates to the Government’s wider education policy. I can best do so by addressing four critical themes that have run through the debate on the Bill for some months past. First, is this a Bill for the many and not the few or, to put it bluntly—as have some of the critics—is it mainly a charter for the middle classes? My response is this: I very much expect that the Bill will lead to better education for all, and that includes the middle classes and those—who are by no means just the middle classes—who sometimes believe that they need to go private or physically move house in order to get a first-class education for their children. But we are absolutely clear that failing schools, poor school discipline and behaviour, weak school leadership, an inadequate choice of schools, often non-existent transport to schools, poor school food and weak links between schools and employers and the world of work are realities which hit poorer families hardest of all, and clause after clause in the Bill is focused on remedying them. The Bill redoubles our capacity to attack the association in education between deprivation and failure to benefit the many and not just the few. Secondly, does the Bill depart from the approach we have taken since 1997 which puts standards before structures? Again, the answer is no. The Bill is only one part of a wider programme of change, most of which does not require legislation. Beyond the Bill, there is our sustained investment in the teaching profession, which is to my mind the biggest plank in our education policy. Without good teachers and teaching, we will achieve nothing in our schools. The teaching profession accounts for the largest part of the 50 per cent real-terms increase in education spending that has taken place since 1997. There are 36,000 more teachers and 92,000 more teaching assistants; a 37 per cent real-terms average increase in pay for experienced teachers; a 29 per cent real-terms average increase in pay for head teachers; new training salaries for teachers; and the new National College for School Leadership. All together, they are transforming the status of the teaching profession, as evidenced by the fact that last year there were 56 per cent more applications for teacher training in England and Wales than in 1997 and Ofsted reported that the new generation of teachers and head teachers is the best ever. No one played a larger role in those developments since 1997 than my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley during her six years as a Minister. Beyond the Bill, there is also our investment in school buildings, facilities and information technology. There was seven times more capital spending on schools this year than in 1997, which made possible the Building Schools for the Future programme to renew or replace every secondary school in the country. That programme was extended by the Chancellor in the previous Budget to include half of all primary schools too. So, standards come first and last in our lexicon. Structural change in our hands is not an end in itself; it is a route to higher standards. But never have this Government said that higher standards can always be achieved without structural change. The teaching profession is a case in point. The new and highly successful Graduate Teacher and Teach First programmes, which are significant contributors to the recruitment picture I described a moment ago, have completely replaced the structure of the PGCE in order to bring in more career-switchers later in their careers and to bring in excellent young graduates who are prepared to do a few years in teaching before going on to other careers. Similarly, the recent school workforce agreement significantly changed the teacher contract to, for example, guarantee non-contact time for all teachers and enable teaching assistants to play a larger role in the classroom. Those are structural changes to raise standards. That is also the case with the national curriculum. The Bill, in one of its most important provisions, guarantees a national entitlement to the 14 vocational diplomas to be introduced from 2008. Vocational diplomas, which follow on from last year’s Tomlinson report, represent the greatest structural change to the national curriculum since its introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and they seek to remedy the most serious greatest 20th century weakness in our education system; namely, the absence of quality vocational and professional education beyond the age of 14. The new vocational diplomas involve structural change not only in curriculum and assessment, but also in the development of sixth-form provision in the half of our secondary schools that still stop at 16 and in collaborative arrangements between schools and further education colleges that are required to teach the diplomas in every locality. The Bill enables all these things to happen. Similarly, in primary schools, one of our first acts on taking office in 1997 was to limit infant class sizes to no more than 30 by law—a major structural change—and then to introduce the literacy and numeracy hours. That was a radical and essential change to the structure of the school day and teaching practice in very many primary schools, which we are taking further following the recent Rose report on the early teaching of reading, to ensure that all our children learn the 3Rs as soon as possible after starting school—without which they will learn little else. Within comprehensive schools, welcome structural change has also been taking place—for example, to identify and provide specifically for gifted and talented pupils; to increase the use of setting so that children’s individual aptitudes are better catered for; to introduce vocational courses; and to identify and provide better for children with special educational needs. In each case, it is not just better teaching within existing structures, important as that is, but change in that structure so that the work of teachers has better effect. Such changes are essential if schools with mixed ability intakes are to develop the talents of their pupils to the full, vindicating those of us who believe that state education can and should be as good as private education. Furthermore, with school organisation and governance, our first major legislation after 1997 was my right honourable friend David Blunkett’s School Standards and Framework Act—its very title combines standards and structures—whose provisions included the ending of grant-maintained status, and the creation of new legal categories of schools, including foundation schools, with distinctive freedoms. Next there was the Learning and Skills Act 2000. That introduced more structural reforms to raise standards, including the creation of local learning and skills councils and academies. That was followed in 2002 by my noble friend Lady Morris’s Education Act, which developed academies further, enabled schools to have much smaller governing bodies and introduced the concept of sponsor governors. That brings me to trust schools, which are the next step on this road. Like all the best policies, trust schools take existing good practice and seek to extend it widely. They bring together and develop three particular elements of good practice. First, there is the experience of head teachers and governors that schools generally run best when they run themselves, with as little interference as possible from either local or national bureaucracies. Trust status will enable local authority community schools, most of which now have a culture of self-management built up over 20 or more years, to take on the full freedoms of foundation and voluntary schools. Secondly, there is the successful experience of specialist schools—secondary schools designated and supported to develop specialist areas of strength, whether that is in sport, science, music, the arts, foreign languages, technology or business and enterprise, which do so over and above teaching the full national curriculum. Specialist schools often benefit from outside sponsors, including local and national businesses, and they work with neighbouring schools in their specialist areas including feeder primary schools. There was acute concern in 1997 that specialist schools, introduced by the previous government, were divisive and would create a two-tier system. Ministers at the time recognised the strength of the specialist school concept, and, as part of our increased education spending, we decided to ““level up”” and not ““level down”” by extending the programme to all schools and by introducing a community dimension so that schools could share their expertise locally and foster lasting collaborations. In 1997 there were barely 200 specialist schools nationwide. Now there are 2,600; and the evidence is compelling that these specialist schools have out-performed non-specialist comprehensives, including those in deprived areas. We face a similar ““levelling up”” decision today with trust schools. Should more sustained support from external partners be confined to good schools with entrepreneurial head teachers, or should we allow and encourage all schools to take advantage of these opportunities? The answer is surely evident from the success of specialist schools. Trust status will enable schools to develop stronger relationships with, for example, local businesses, charitable foundations, universities and other schools, including a role on the governing body for the partners who make a serious ongoing commitment to the school. That will benefit not only mainstream schools but special schools. I am delighted, for example, that Montacute Special School in Poole—a state sector special school—wishes to enter into a formal trust partnership with Langside School—a nearby independent special school founded by the special needs charity Dorset Scope—to develop a full range of services for children with complex special needs and disabilities. That is exactly the kind of path-breaking partnership which trust schools will promote, and we welcome it. The third element of good practice that trust schools take forward is the positive role that educational foundations and other organisations with an educational mission can play in the direct management of schools, including in entirely new schools, to promote greater choice and diversity—subject, of course, to proper legal, curriculum and inspection regulation and full public accountability. That is the principle that already underpins voluntary-aided schools, of which there are more than 4,300, mostly Church schools in existence since before the inception of state education and, since 1994, an integral and popular part of the state system. The issue here is simple: if it is acceptable for the Churches and other faith communities to manage schools and appoint a majority of their governors, why should non-religious foundations be barred, effectively, from doing so on a not-for-profit basis where there is parental demand? The previous Government started to change this position in their commendable development of city technology colleges. We have adapted the CTC model in our academies, which are particularly focused on areas of disadvantage where transformed school leadership and ethos can make a big difference. Trust schools will enable the model to be extended more widely, but within the local-authority funded system, whereas CTCs and academies stand outside it. In short, we see trust schools as a sensible, pragmatic development, building on successful existing experience, offering greater diversity and choice and providing existing schools with new ways of collaborating with outside partners and each other to enrich their curriculum, strengthen their leadership, and thereby raise standards. A final theme that I would highlight from the recent debate is about the pace of change. We have been criticised by some for seeking to press ahead too far and too fast with these reforms. It will not surprise your Lordships to hear that I do not subscribe to that view. School standards have risen considerably in recent years, and I am today surrounded by former education Secretaries of State and Ministers of all parties who deserve the credit for that—as well as by the most distinguished former education spokesman of my party, my noble friend Lord Kinnock, who made the most inspirational speech about educational opportunity of any of us, as the first Kinnock to go to university—a speech which I am told is regularly plagiarised by politicians worldwide. I doubt that there are any in the House today—certainly there are no teachers I meet—who are satisfied with the status quo and believe we should not be striving with all the resources at our command to extend educational opportunity and success faster. Let me give just one statistic.  The school leaving standard we have in effect set for the future is five good GCSE passes including English, maths and vocational qualifications. Last year, only 44 per cent of 16 year-olds achieved that standard. Nine years ago it was 36 per cent, so we have made progress. But who in the House is content that a clear majority of tomorrow’s citizens in our country are not securing an education which—to be absolutely frank—each of us would regard as an absolute minimum for our children or grandchildren? That 44 per cent success figure falls to 18 per cent—fewer than one in five—among teenagers from poorer families entitled to free school meals, those who most depend on state education to get on in life. Transforming that situation is the immense, continuing challenge that we face. I believe that we have the direction of travel right, but we need to go further and faster. That is the case for these reforms, and I commend them to the House. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Adonis.)
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
683 c755-62 
Session
2005-06
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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