Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I shall at least begin by agreeing with the Minister on his opening remarks. There is a great deal of good in this Bill—and he listed some examples and explained the purpose. I congratulate him and his fellow Ministers on achieving those legislative changes. Without repeating them, I pick out particularly the preference that is now to be given to looked-after children in the allocation of school places. Of all underachieving groups, they are the most underachieving, and the fact that they will be given preference is a great credit to those who have worked hard to achieve it. Inevitably, one injustice of being an Education Minister, or any Minister, is that when the Bill comes to be debated, people concentrate on the things with which they disagree rather than on those with which they agree. In that, I shall be no different. I think that people can be excused for being confused about this Bill, and many people during the debate following the publication of the White Paper and preceding the publication of the Bill found it very hard to work out where the dividing lines were. What was the difference of opinion among the Government and their critics on this piece of legislation? Particularly in the advance publicity surrounding the White Paper, people were told that this was the biggest change in education since the 1944 Act; that it was a revolution; and that schools would never be the same again. It was the Prime Minister’s legacy, it was what he had always wanted to achieve and it was there in the White Paper and the Bill. The phrase used by the Government to explain what that revolution was about was ““independence, independence and independence””. But what was interesting in the debate that followed the publication of the White Paper was that when they came to explain what that independence was and what the freedoms were that would bring about this revolution, the list went something as follows. There was going to be freedom to form federations. Well, federations were actually in the 2002 Act. There was going to be freedom to work with business partners in the voluntary sector. Schools have being doing that for a decade or more. It was going to be about having joint governing bodies that would give stability to schools. They were in the 2002 Act—I remember that very well, because I was Secretary of State at the time. It was going to be about curriculum freedoms. There are no new curriculum freedoms in this piece of legislation. The freedoms about the curriculum and the freedoms to innovate are in Part 1, Chapter 1 of the 2002 Act, called ““Powers to facilitate innovation””. It was, above all, going to be about links with universities and colleges. My own university, the University of Sunderland, is already working hard to host a sixth-form college on its site. It does not need the freedoms that will be given in this Bill to enable it to do that. It was going to be about freedoms to have alternative providers. That is not in this Bill, either. That is also in the 2002 Act. It was also going to be about the freedom to have trust status—and, of course, trust status is not in this Bill, either; it is actually catered for by the legislation around voluntary-controlled and voluntary-aided schools. When it comes down to it, there are very few, if any, extra freedoms in this legislation. Certainly, the language that has been used by Ministers and the examples that they have given of added freedoms to justify both trust status and this Bill have, quite honestly, been insulting. Then, to develop an argument that if you are against trust status and this Bill, you are against all the freedoms that I have just described, is beyond the pale. Let me make it clear from the start that I agree with all those partnerships. I agree with federations. I agree with joint governing bodies. I agree with bringing different providers into the system. I agree with links with businesses. I agree with promoting innovation. I agree with those, because I spent six years as a Minister trying to bring them about. What I object to is the Government seeking to use those examples in their language to justify the changes that they now put forward in this legislation. So, what is the Bill about? Is it about something or nothing? I think that the Bill is about what leads the next stage of secondary school reform. It is a debate about the direction of travel. That is why it is important not to look just at the details of the legislation, but to look at the speeches around the legislation and to look back, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, to the White Paper, because there you can see laid out the direction of travel which the Government want to take. The Government have made clear in the way that they have publicised this Bill that they see the future shape of our school system being, they say, a new generation of independent state schools run by charitable trusts. Although the Government have repeatedly said that there will be no incentives and no force to make schools take on trust status, there is no doubt that that is the Government’s preferred structure. If you put that together with the Government’s belief that schools will thrive and get better only if they are given more independence and power to engage even more with the private and voluntary sectors, you will see the core of what this direction of travel is about. You will then realise that what Ministers think will lead the next generation of school improvement is trust or foundation status that shifts the power from schools and parents to outside voluntary and charitable bodies, greater independence, more choice and a market in providers. It is at that point that the Government go wrong. They claim to have looked at the evidence of what has worked so far. I believe that they have done that, but what is sad is that they have drawn the wrong conclusions. The Government have fallen into the trap that every single post-war Government have fallen into—believing that structural change will bring about higher standards. The Government make three serious errors in defining what the direction of travel should be. First, they make the mistake of believing that the category of a school determines the quality of education. One of the things I have found most offensive to the teaching profession and the world of education is that Ministers have said that the only innovation is to be found in foundation schools, the only good ideas and freedoms are being exercised by city academies and the best results are being delivered by foundation schools. I have no problem with their status as schools. I pay tribute to every city academy, every foundation school and every voluntary-controlled and voluntary-aided school that is improving results, but I also pay tribute to every community school that is doing the same. When you look at the evidence, you find, thank goodness, success—good heads, successful schools and achieving students—right across the system. You conclude from that that the best results are determined not by the category or the governance of the school but by something else. The second error that the Government make is the move to greater independence. Frankly, schools have an awful lot of independence at the moment but the problem is that they do not use it. If you move along this road of greater independence being the driving force for school improvement, you will move into areas of freedom for individual schools that will hold back improvement across the system. We see that in the White Paper and in the language used by Ministers. Freedom in admissions is a natural consequence of what the Minister is saying now. Expanding popular schools and building new schools are not wrong in themselves and are not to be decried or looked at and examined. But when you look at the evidence, you see that those freedoms will bring some more good schools. I have no problem with that but I am more ambitious than that; I am more ambitious than wanting some more good schools. I am ambitious to have a better school system. Those freedoms for some schools could make it difficult for other schools to achieve. The third error that the Government make is to believe that a free market will lead to higher standards and that the private sector can always deliver better than the public sector. Education is unique among all public services. It is the only service that is universal. Other services you choose to use but education you have to use, and if you do not, you go to prison. That places special obligations on those who run the system. A compulsory, universal service must offer universal high standards. No one is against choice; who could be? I exercise choice whenever I can for myself, my family and those I care for—and even for those I don’t care for. It is most important to have a system with schools of universal high provision. I am prepared to be persuaded that more choice will give us that but the evidence is not there. When you look at the evidence, you see that the Audit Commission says that choice might be welcome and give some more parents what they want but it will not deliver the high-quality schools right across the board that should be our aspiration. That is the tragedy of this White Paper and of the Bill: they claim to be based on policies that have worked. I think that what has happened is that people have looked at the evidence and chosen what feeds their prejudices. Because of that, we have had a White Paper and a Bill that have ignored the evidence of more than seven years that have brought a remarkable improvement in standards. The evidence shows that success comes to schools that use the freedoms they have and do not stand and complain that their hands are tied. Success comes to schools that understand the importance of interdependence. I have grasped the fact that in the 21st century you will be judged by the quality of the partnership that you make, not by the extent to which you go it alone. Quality schools are schools that are well led, schools that invest in the training of their staff, schools that have a balanced intake—I have been persuaded of that in recent years; I was not persuaded of it some time ago—and schools that are good or that have an ethos and a value that unite them. Those things will not be found in one category of school or be provided by a change in governance. Those things will not come about through new structures and new labels. Those things will come about if we continue to do what we have done for the past seven years: invest in school leadership; invest in the training of our teachers; support learning assistants; enable schools to learn from each other; and support families who find it difficult to support their children. At the end of the day we need a Government and an education system that have the highest aspiration for all children and that believe in them. That does not make sexy headlines, it might not give you a legacy and it might not make good press releases. But the lesson you learn sometimes in government is that the things that make the difference are achieved when you get your head down, look at the evidence and do what works. I fear that this Bill, at its best, will deflect from the real work of government and of schools. It is no good saying that both structures and standards are involved; what will happen when this approach is launched on schools is that they will have to look at their structure, they will have to consider whether they want trust status, they will have to consult on whether they want foundation status and they will have to battle over academies when what they should be doing is concentrating on teaching and learning. So far as the Bill’s worst paragraphs are concerned, they are harmless because of amendment in the House of Commons, but I still worry about that direction of travel. It behoves this House, as the Bill passes through its many stages here, to ensure that we make further changes, so that the direction of travel is not merely halted, but that we win the debate and the argument and put our school system back on track again.