Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction of this much awaited Bill. His explanation has painted a clear picture of Her Majesty’s Government’s approach in your Lordships’ House to the legislation, which, from its stormy beginnings in another place, now finds itself, I hope, in calmer waters. After nine years of legislating, I hope the Minister does not feel too nostalgic at presenting what I suspect will be his party’s last word on education. I only hope that we on these Benches will be able to help him and his colleagues to fulfil the courage of our convictions. I commend his approach to the Bill, as I commend the broad thrust of the Bill itself. Yet I make it clear from the start that we can—indeed, I hope we will—send a much braver and much improved reform of our unsatisfactory education system back to another place as we deal with this legislation in your Lordships’ House. My position on the Government’s education reforms remains unchanged from my stated position in January after the introduction of the White Paper. We will support the Government wherever they promote rigour, encourage discipline, and give schools more autonomy and parents more choice. My honourable friend in another place, David Willetts, said that the Bill was a ““pivot”” on which major education reform could turn. The Education and Skills Committee has described it as a ““catalyst””. I concur with those views, which stretch across the political spectrum. I will encourage noble Lords on all Benches to harness the great opportunity presented by the Bill to effect change in the most vital areas of education. However, the Bill is an unfinished work. I remain concerned about much of its detail and about five major points in particular: the status of community schools; the content of the curriculum; admissions on the basis of aptitude and discipline; the provision for children with special needs; and the role of the schools adjudicator. Although I remain hopeful that the Bill will grow more teeth in your Lordships’ House, I believe that it achieves a net victory by giving schools greater freedoms in the way in which they are run, and by encouraging a wider diversity of schools and a wider diversity in schools. In turn, parents will be presented with far greater choice, and will find practical support of that through the introduction of improved transport provisions, which we on these Benches hope to improve even further. One of the key areas I look forward to debating in Committee is the role of local authorities under the Bill, particularly the right of local authorities to promote the establishment of new community schools. In their White Paper, the Government stated that they would,"““remove the right for local authorities to publish their own proposals for the establishment of new community schools””." Yet the Bill fails to achieve that. Instead, a substantial number of local authorities will be given the power to propose community schools, a small number of which will have this power as of right. This issue goes to the very heart of the vision expressed by the Prime Minister, both in his speeches and in the introduction to the White Paper. The Government’s decision to retreat was both unnecessary and unwelcome, and seems to be a move designed to placate a tiny minority in the Labour Party rather than to improve the quality of education for all, as the Minister said this afternoon, in our nation’s schools. The Opposition consistently opposed this in another place, and I hope to ensure that there are no further concessions, and no further dilution of the proposals, as the Bill continues through this place. In stating that local authorities should not be allowed to propose new community schools, I concur with the reasons to which the Prime Minister has committed himself so eloquently time and again. On 24 October, the day before the White Paper was published last year, he said:"““Local authority efforts to create equity often produced deadening uniformity, with child-centred learning and a rigid adherence to mixed ability too often failing to raise expectations and meet basic standards””." In the introduction to the White Paper, the Prime Minister goes on to speak of his vision of,"““a system of independent, self-governing state schools””," backed by a firm commitment to,"““encourage all primary and secondary schools to become self-governing and to acquire a trust””." The removal of the power to propose community schools is key to the development of the kind of system the Government want to create. The regulatory impact assessment for the Bill warns that local authorities,"““tend to regard community schools as ‘their’ schools and to regard other categories of schools as being outside the local family of schools””—" a very telling statement. It is right that the Bill puts education back into schools. Members on these Benches of course welcome diversity across the board, enabled by schools acting under their own direction. We warmly welcome the Minister’s commitment in another place that self-governing schools will be expected to make up at least 15 per cent of schools in an area before LEAs are given the go-ahead to establish community schools. The duties for LEAs to consider diversity and choice under Clauses 1 to 3 are broadly common-sense measures for improving parent choice and participation. I welcome the new measures for recreation and activities in Clause 6 and I hope the Minister can reassure noble Lords that the contribution from the existing private sector in providing recreation services will be encouraged and harnessed before money is spent on extra provision, which may result in an unnecessary overlap. Indeed, I am reminded of the case in Reading, Berkshire, where 300 children were allocated a total of 500 places due to a misdirection of funds that saw overspending by the Government result in a detriment to existing private sector care. I was concerned to read in Commons Hansard that a number of honourable Members in another place suggested that this Bill presented a conflict between schools’ independence and their collaboration with other organisations. Collaboration is diversity in action; it will only contribute to further development. Above all, we hope to produce a Bill that will leave the so-called ““deadening uniformity”” of local authority-run education and provide instead a system driven by choice—one that provides choice. The running of self-governing schools, which I hope will themselves become the foundation of this country’s newly reformed educational profile, will be focused on providing outcome for their pupils by taking into account the wishes of governing bodies, parents, teachers and the opinion of the local education authority. I support a Bill which gives schools freedom and autonomy as the great incentives and will seek to strengthen it, but we have concerns about restrictions in the Bill that threaten to undermine those incentives, diversity and freedom for parents in schools. The Bill increases enormously the power of the adjudicator without appropriate accompanying safeguards. I do not deny that the adjudicator will be key to this reform, but I cannot condone the freestanding power that the adjudicator will wield under these new provisions without providing an appropriate process of appeal. The only way to challenge a decision of the adjudicator will be by application to the High Court for judicial review, a costly and lengthy process. It is important for noble Lords across the Benches to consider whether we are content with that level of unfettered discretion. I also remain concerned about the functions of the so-called school improvement partners. Clause 5(4) allows for regulations to detail the exact role of SIPs. I understand that they are an invention of the DfES and that it is not supported by an evidential need. I am concerned that SIPs will become another way for local authorities to influence schools. I know that my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold is keen to address the issue, so I shall leave it in her eminently capable hands. I am sure that I will say this time and again over the coming weeks: schools must be allowed to become their own admissions authorities. I will be tabling amendments to cancel the ban on surplus places so that surplus places in some schools are no restriction on the expansion of other good schools in an area. Federation is already one option for failing schools to improve, and the powers to close failing schools should be supported by the power for those that are doing well to expand with minimal direction from the local authority. I turn to the section of local authority influence that concerns me the most—pupil banding. This is little more than streaming outside the school gates. It seeks to impose uniformity as opposed to encouraging diversity of choice. I find it somewhat ironic that while the Government are happy to allow local authorities to use ability tests to support an exercise in social engineering, they are not willing to trust schools with that method to aid selection. I was pleased to see a copy of a letter dated 6 June 2006 sent by the Minister in the other place, Jim Knight MP, who pledged that the governors of foundation and trust schools would have the right to refuse pupil banding even if the local authority were to demand it. I therefore keenly await progress on that point and intend to follow it up with an amendment in Committee. I hope that we will make further progress on giving schools more freedom to set their own admissions criteria. I accept that there has to be a national admissions framework—it is a structure which enables standards within admission to be upheld—but I do not believe, however, that it should preclude the innovation of schools acting independently. Admissions policy is one area of the Bill where we stand to let confusion overcome common sense. The Bill provides fantastic opportunities for the structuring of schools, but makes few steps in the direction of standards within schools. One of those steps is statutory disciplinary powers; one of those structural opportunities could be a flexible code for admissions. We can bring those steps and standards into tandem. There is a strong argument to introduce home-school contracts as a part of the admissions code. According to the White Paper, only 6 per cent of secondary schools have behaviour that is unsatisfactory or worse, with 74 per cent at good or better behaviour. That is an encouraging statistic. But it can be improved on, not by reactive punishment alone but by allowing schools the freedom to set that ethos as part of admissions policy. I echo the White Paper when I support,"““reinforcing parents’ responsibility for their children’s behaviour””." Schools, under Clause 91(3), can apply for a parenting order as a pre-emptive measure to bring pupils into line before their behaviour reaches exclusion stage. It is a half-hearted policy of early intervention. It provides schools with the power to intervene before a child’s behaviour stands in the way of his education—but why leave it so late? Why provide only 11th-hour disciplinary powers to schools? Parent orders have been used in the past to little effect. What is more, the All-Party Group on Children’s child impact statement points out that:"““The extension of parenting orders raises questions about due process in terms of resorting to enforcement measures where no offence has been committed””." It also highlights the relevant rights under the ECHR and UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which ask the state to ensure that children are encouraged to attend school regularly. My proposal is an alternative to state intervention just before the point of failure. It takes up the mantle of the UN’s recommendations by encouraging school attendance and good behaviour. There is no assumption of future bad behaviour in the home-school contract. On the contrary, it is a positive commitment which will send a clear message to parents from the start that their role in their child’s education is holistic and begins with their first day at school. Admissions will, I am sure, provoke authoritative debate in Committee. I should highlight my approach in advance of that. While the Government advocate specialist academies that select on the basis of aptitude, they clamp down firmly on selection by ability, the reason for which has never been made crystal clear to me. Colleagues in another place have raised this issue again and again and I have raised it in your Lordships’ House, as has my noble friend Lady Shephard. There seems to be little more difference between the two definitions than a lexicographical nicety. The Chief Schools Adjudicator, Dr Philip Hunter, has proposed a possible definition—that,"““aptitude + preparation = future ability””." The Oxford English Dictionary defines ““aptitude”” as,"““natural talent, ability or fitness””." Those two definitions point to one fact: that this is distinction without a difference. That false distinction between aptitude and ability reminds me of another false distinction in the Bill between a focused range of academic ability and diversity. What is crucial to the pupils in a school is not how many of their classmates are of the same ability as them: it is whether or not they are pushed to their full potential academically, and whether or not they are able to study the subjects that are really going to stretch them. The curriculum in the Bill falls short of a real commitment to raising standards. I hope that the Minister will come to recognise the real benefits of allowing children to learn history and geography together until the age of 16. I am hopeful, too, that we will be able to reach a consensus on the introduction of the international GCSE. But one of my most impassioned crusades in the course of the Bill will be to ensure that all children can choose to study all three sciences as separate subjects, up to the age of 16. It is absolutely key to these reforms; it is the one guarantee that will see our country’s education system succeed in contributing to economic competition on a world scale. The Chancellor knows it—he stated it in his Budget speech—and I am confident that the Minister knows it too. I know that time is running out, but I am sure that a brief mention of the next subject will not try your Lordships’ patience. I know that my noble friend Lady Morris will have more to say on this matter, but I must express how seriously we take the provision for special needs children in this country. In another place, we introduced amendments to protect special needs schools from easy closure. They should not be closed lightly. Their nature dictates that the services they provide are hard to replace and the problems their displaced pupils will encounter as a result will be far greater than the mainstream. I am talking about maintaining a balance. I was heartened, therefore, to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, state in response to a Question last week that:"““The Government do not believe that it is a case of either/or—of special needs schools or mainstream schools””.—[Official Report, 14/6/06; col. 207.]" Her answer in the negative to my request for a moratorium on the closure of special needs schools was therefore a great disappointment. I intend to build on this in Committee, as well as focusing on the awareness among school improvement partners and choice advisers of special needs and disability legislation. In conclusion, I encourage all Members of your Lordships’ House to work constructively on the Bill. Now is the chance to take the politics out of education and to deliver serious, sensible and effective reform. I hope that when we come to send the Bill back to another place, we will deliver a raft of hopes fulfilled, not of opportunities missed.