Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, large parts of this Bill are highly commendable. The provisions on school discipline, professional development of teachers and school heads, special education, school diet and school transport deserve praise. The further innovations in ““personalised learning”” and in post-14 vocational education need extra explanation and assurances. Together, however, those and several other proposals are plainly motivated by the Government’s repeated and emphatic desire to create a schooling system,"““which delivers excellence and equity developing the talents and potential of every child””." I profoundly support those purposes. They are the prime principles of comprehensive schooling, rooted in values of fairness and liberty for each individual and in the essentials of utility. Schooling must be comprehensive in purpose and in high quality provision and outcome, for the implacable reason that the demands and opportunities of life are comprehensive. No developed society, least of all in this century, can afford the economic, scientific, cultural or behavioural consequences of educational underperformance for any proportion of its future producers and citizens. That is the prosaic, compelling reality that, I am sure, drives the Government. The great problem—the great and the tragic inconsistency—is that parts of this Bill, which I have listed and which reinforce further progress towards ““excellence and equity”” for ““every child””, are contradicted by the provisions that seek to put all of England’s primary and secondary schools into the ownership and governance of independent foundation trusts. Sections of this Bill sustain the realism and relevance of the Government’s original commitment to standards, not structures, in schooling but the policy doctrine that provides for the autonomous trusts shows a fixation with ““structures”” and collides with that sensible, original commitment. The Government have evolved an ideology that is not substantiated by any authoritative evidence: that the higher schooling achievement that all must want can universally be gained through an increased multiplicity of types of school and through the operation of the resulting educational market, where providers are governed independently and mainly by interests from outside the school and the local community. Each component of that doctrine is mistaken. In England now, there are grammar and ““bilateral”” schools in more than one-fifth of local authority areas and there are foundation schools, faith schools, city technology colleges, academies and specialist schools. More children now face secondary school entry tests than did in 1997. That mosaic—that educational crazy paving—is a product of the persisting illusion that multiplying extra categories of schools has overall educational merit. But 60 years of experience of divisions—divisions by title, by mission and by ““ethos””—has definitively shown the contrary. All evidence shows that the resulting fragmentation mainly reflects and perpetuates social and educational divergences rather than fulfilling the Government’s solemn and worthy mission of,"““breaking the link between disadvantage and underperformance””," and between—as the Minister put it earlier today—““deprivation and failure””. All evidence shows that segmentation cumulatively produces disparity in status and esteem and, consequently, disparities in funding, in teaching and learning provision, in expectations and in outcomes. All of that directly confounds the noble cause of,"““excellence and equity for all””," to which the Government swear undying fidelity. I do not seek schooling uniformity except at a high level of universal provision and opportunity. I abominate mediocrity because it sabotages the future of children. I want schools to level up, not to level down or indeed to level out. But neither assured universal quality nor equity, nor cohesion, nor maximum output of potential achievement will be provided by the further manifold autonomies of trust schools, which are their own admission authorities and which must perforce seek the intakes that are most likely to enhance their results and reputation in an educational market. I believe that Ministers’ reluctant recognition of the risks has prompted their decision to try to mitigate the market and inhibit manipulated admissions by making the recently published school admissions code statutory and more detailed. I welcome that. The fact remains, however, that the increased need for the code’s ““nine different safeguards”” that were proclaimed by the Secretary of State arises mainly from the proposed new school regime. There are nine different safeguards, including a schools commissioner, the schools adjudicator, £12 million-worth of ““choice advisers””, and appeals panels; nearly all of these are occasioned by one salient reality: the operation of an enlarged bazaar in schooling—an area in which the mores and mechanisms of the market, whatever their value in commerce, should not apply. Schooling for the nation cannot be a traded commodity, especially if it is to provide ““excellence and equity for every child””. While most commercial choices include tolerable lower-grade alternatives to the best, no conscientious parent—and no conscientious country that is aware of its needs for high capability and cohesiveness—can settle for silver, bronze or dross. In a commercial market, choice is exercised by consumers; in an educational market with an inevitable hierarchy of preferences, the choice is most exercised by highly demanded schools and not by consuming parents and pupils. A market system, by definition and necessity, has relative winners and relative losers. It thrives on that reality. In schooling, losing is too often for life. That is why it cannot be afforded individually or nationally. It is also why a Government who are inspired by the objective of ““excellence and equity for all”” should reject the fallacy that the goad of competition between schools can achieve that noble purpose. Instead, all concentration should unerringly be on further strengthening the local authorities and schools that are performing well, while simultaneously identifying underachievement and systematically combating and overcoming the physical, social, educational or parental reasons for repetitive underperformance. I appeal to the Government: focus on known causes, not just on woeful symptoms; deal with the roots of inadequacy and failure; insist relentlessly on advance in every area and every school, as your duty commands and as your 50 per cent real-terms increase in education funding justifies; but do not succumb to the naive belief that awarding autonomous ownership of assets and governance to bodies that are outside a school and a community will deliver ““excellence and equity”” to ““every child””. Ministers articulate almost ecstatic faith in what they call the ““dynamism””, the ““innovation””, the ““drive and direction””, the ““energy””, the ““expertise not available locally”” and the ““success culture of external partners””. But, when asked what prevents schools exercising real freedom and what impedes universities, parents, companies, other schools or well motivated, non-educational interests from continuing and increasing their injection of expertise and other benefits into schools without seeking ownership and governance, the Secretary of State—gamely but lamely—replies that trust status will,"““put existing collaborative arrangements on a more secure footing””.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/05/06; col. 1346.]" It is as if the trust school enterprise were a mere administrative adjustment instead of an educational maelstrom. That is just another policy incongruity to go with others. For example, the Government say that they want parents to be ““empowered”” but not, apparently, to be guaranteed a ballot to mandate the change to a trust or to elect more than one governor to a school. Local authorities must exercise ““strategic”” responsibility and, rightly, fulfil extensive children’s services obligations, but they must do so through self-governing, private institutions that have scant duties of accountability to the local community. Schools are expected systematically to collaborate but, simultaneously, to be independent and in contest for parents and pupils. Those contradictions are systemic. They add to the conflict between the Government’s desire for quality and equity for every child and their promotion of a system that will worsen the fragmentation that disables such progress. I sombrely regret that collision of purposes. Even more, I grieve at the casualties that it will allow to continue. The new Secretary of State, who I value greatly as a friend and as a Minister, said that there was a world of difference between trust schools and the grant-maintained schools introduced by the Conservatives and ended by Labour. The sad truth, however, is that the ““difference”” would be a few amending lines in legislation that would be introduced by a Tory administration. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, was good enough to spell that out earlier. That is why the only manifestly productive effect of the trust schools’ doctrine has been on the saliva glands of the opposition party which provided the Government’s Commons majority for this Bill.