Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, we have before us, like the football games in the current World Cup, a Bill of two halves. Half of it is new and half of it re-enacts powers which already exist. Half of it is to be welcomed and half of it is not. Half of it accepts opportunities and challenges, and half of it funks them completely. Half of it might do something to improve the educational experiences of our children, and half of it endangers them. Worst of all, half of it contradicts the other half. Indeed, even the Children’s Commissioner, Al Aynsley-Green—soon to be Sir Al Aynsley-Green—has said in his briefing:"““There is a distinct mismatch in the spirit and intention between ““Every Child Matters”” and the Children Act 2004 and the Education and Inspections Bill””." The Government spin on the White Paper, itself apparently written by two different people who did not really agree with each other, claimed that the Bill would improve educational outcomes. The tool chosen by the Government for such improvement is structural change to promote diversity and so-called choice. Instead of looking at how the system is working and putting effort into improving that, the Government’s gut reaction is always to legislate, even when they already have the powers to do whatever they want. They are continuing to fall into the trap of imposing Whitehall’s will instead of listening to the children, their parents, their schools and their communities. Their mantra appears to be ““divide and rule””, since they are setting school against school in a competitive market-driven system. Education is the most fundamental public service and should be treated as such. The goal we should all be aiming for is a good local school for every child. Our mantras on these Benches would have been: accountability to local communities; fair access; allowing children to choose schools rather than schools to choose pupils; co-operation among schools rather than competition; putting the individual child, his needs, wishes and feelings at the heart of decision-making; and having regard to environmental considerations when managing school admissions and school transport. Schools should represent communities and pull them together, not divide them by working against each other. These are the principles that drive our approach to the Bill. I said that there were two halves to the Bill; I will therefore put on record those things that we welcome in the good half. We welcome the more clearly defined role of local authorities in the planning and commissioning of relevant services for children and young people, although there are problems with some of the duties, to which I will refer later. We welcome the strengthened admissions forums and the improvements to the admissions code of practice and its influence. We welcome the duty on LEAs to direct a school to admit a looked-after child who has been excluded from two or more other schools. We welcome the framework to take forward the Youth Matters programme and the duties to provide sporting and leisure facilities after consulting young people, but regret the failure to put the youth service on a statutory footing. We welcome many of the proposals on school curriculums, food and transport, and we welcome the measures on inspection, as long as they focus sufficiently on children’s well-being. We welcome the establishment of the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills and the transfer of the post of Children’s Rights Director, although we would like to see his duties extended to children in custody. Although there are specific problems and shortcomings with many of these things, which we will address with amendments, they are broadly welcomed. Having reached half-time and had half an orange and a team talk from Sven-Goran Eriksson, I now turn to our concerns. We have serious concerns about the dangers of allowing schools to choose pupils: the failures in the embedding of the Every Child Matters outcomes; the lack of consultation with children; the need for real powers for parents rather than just spin; issues relating to missing pupils; the lack of personal, social and health education and a workable integrated commitment to vocational skills in the curriculum proposals; the emphasis on punitive measures and the use of force and parenting orders in the behaviour and discipline section; and the potential for disadvantaging pupils in vulnerable and lower economic groups. I will look first at the issues that have had the highest profile as the Bill has gone through another place and been addressed ad nauseam in the media. Schools already have the right to become foundation schools and do not need the powers in the Bill to do so. By re-enacting those powers and encouraging more schools to detach themselves from the local authority and set up shop as state-funded independent trust schools, the Government are, in one blow, removing democratic accountability, making it difficult for parents to exercise real choice and setting school against school. They are giving the local authority certain duties and making it almost impossible for it to carry them out. That is an own goal. The admissions code may have been much improved during the Bill’s passage through another place, but academies and city technology colleges can still not be forced to take any pupil. That damages the rights of children and parents in the area, particularly disabled and SEN pupils, and reduces LEAs’ ability to co-ordinate and manage services according to the obligations put on them by the Government. During the passage of the Children Act 2004, we on these Benches tried to amend it so that schools had an explicit duty in relation to the five outcomes in Every Child Matters. The Government successfully resisted our efforts. Now that schools are to become even more autonomous, it is even more vital that they have this duty—a missed opportunity in the Bill that we will seek to rectify. All the research shows that schools that choose their pupils, especially when they are placed in league tables, eventually find ways to skew their intake in favour of the more able. We will continue to resist selection by ability in whatever form. The Minister knows the commitment of your Lordships’ House to children with disabilities and special educational needs, and he will not be surprised when a large number of amendments are laid to protect their interests. I am extremely concerned about evidence I have recently received about the reduction in the Government’s commitment to seriously disabled and special needs children by the closure of the Aiding Communication in Education centres, and the ignoring of special needs by the Curriculum Online initiative, the National College for School Leadership and initial teacher training. The number of DfES staff focused on special needs has fallen from 71 to 17 over the past three years. That does not bode well for those particularly vulnerable children. Many children with special needs are excluded from school, and I welcome the fact that the Government have turned their attention to this matter. However, the behaviour and discipline section of the Bill is one of the missed opportunities I referred to. The proposals in the Steer report contained many positive, proactive measures that schools could take to prevent bad behaviour and nip it in the bud, as well as measures to deal with it early. There is no reference to all this in the Bill, which contains only the punitive measures that shift the balance in the law towards enforcement. Alan Steer, among his many excellent proposals, recommended that children should be drawn into the process of setting the school’s behaviour policy. The policy would be more accepted and owned, and therefore more likely to be followed by pupils. It is short-sighted, therefore, not to involve them and to concentrate on punitive measures. That is only one of the many ways in which the Bill fails to legislate for consultation with the main beneficiaries of the education system—children themselves. We will be looking to correct that during the course of the Bill. I am concerned about the powers to use force. Some commentators claim that Clause 86 could give schools greater freedom to use force against children than any powers in other settings, including psychiatric and prison establishments. There is no definition of what sort of force can be used, and no obligation for teachers to be trained in safe methods of physical restraint and measures to prevent escalation of difficult situations. If such situations are not handled sensitively real harm could be done to teachers and pupils, and teachers could be even more open to litigation than they were before—another own goal. We are also concerned about the powers relating to parenting orders. The Human Rights Joint Committee has expressed concern about them because of the lack of proportionality and due process. One of the most contentious elements in this section is the so-called ““house arrest”” measures, by which parents of excluded pupils can be penalised if their children are seen in a public place for five days after they have been excluded from school. That is likely to impinge more on parents in lower-paid jobs, who may find it difficult to take time off. We notice, by the way, that there is no corresponding obligation on the education authorities regarding students in PRUs, or other units for excluded children, if they are seen on the streets during school time after the first five days. With regard to the curriculum, we on these Benches regret the Government’s failure to put PSHE among the mandatory subjects at key stage 4. If education is to be for life, there is no point in a child being able to do quadratic equations if he has no idea how to manage his own money. There is no point in handing down edicts about the nutritional standards of school food if you are not giving children the knowledge about nutrition they need to make healthy decisions about what they eat. You may control what they eat in the canteen, but most of their life is led outside it, and they need to know that it is a bad idea to snack excessively on crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks. Our overarching criticism is the Government’s failure to fully grasp the wisdom of Mike Tomlinson’s proposals about how vocational courses could be integrated into the 14–19 curriculum and delivered by schools and colleges in partnership rather than in conflict. Here is another example of the damage that can be done to the Government’s own agenda by their zeal in setting up independent schools. I heard last week about an area where there is a proposal to set up an academy. All the other schools are now saying, ““We must have our own sixth form and try to deliver a wide-ranging curriculum ourselves in order not to lose out to the shiny new building when our own rolls are falling””. The local college, on whose existence and co-operation the Government depend to deliver vocational courses—and a very good college it is, in this case—is very worried that many of its courses, even its very existence, will be made unviable by this competitive struggle—another potential own goal. I think that that makes it three-nil so far. One of the saddest things about this Bill is the Government’s misleading spin that it gives parents real power and real choice. It does not, and this is a cruel confidence trick. The Bill gives parents no enhanced powers in proposals to change the status of the school. It reduces the role of elected parents on boards of governors. The new parents’ councils have no real teeth, and the shambles of different sorts of schools in an area that may result from the Bill makes it very difficult for parents to pick their way through the mess, even with the help of school choice advisers. As for the effect on the self-confidence of the children who are rejected by school after school, well, I think it is just cruel. I would like to say more but I do not have time. This is an enormous Bill. I have not really had time to do it justice today, although I have briefly outlined some of our concerns. But we will have many hours of pleasure with it in the coming months and I look forward to that.