Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, this has been an extraordinarily interesting and stimulating debate so far. I am sure that the Minister finds it a great comfort to have so much advice from his predecessors on all sides of the House. He also has the benefit of advice from a wide range of noble Lords who are deeply concerned about education and its importance in our society. As my noble friend has already made clear, we on this side wish to support large parts of the Bill. I hope that it is not ungracious to say that our support for it in the other place has enabled it to reach this House. The White Paper Higher Standards, Better Schools for All was debated in this House in January. On that occasion, I remarked that the Government have certainly not been inactive in the field of education. We have had five Secretaries of State, four White Papers, five Green Papers and two strategy documents, and this Bill is the 11th education Bill that the Government have produced since 1997. Its prospects were given star billing by the Prime Minister in his foreword to the White Paper. We were assured that we were at an historic turning point and that the Government’s aim was,"““the creation of a system of independent non-fee paying state schools””." The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, is not in her place, but I am sure that she will not mind me mentioning that she pointed out that there is a lot of ““language”” in the White Paper, and there has been a lot of ““language”” in the debate on the implications of the Bill. As is often the case in education debates, many people from many viewpoints have said that, in some ways, the Bill is a bit of a disappointment in view of its lofty aims. But it is not unusual in political life for lofty aims to be eroded. In this case, a lot of the erosion was done by the determined opposition of many of the Government’s supporters. Despite all that, we believe that the Bill moves in the right direction in a number of ways. It increases the autonomy of schools because it allows them to be backed by faith groups or businesses. Every school that wishes to can become a foundation school with a majority of foundation governors. Schools should have, we hope, a greater say over their admissions and budgets as a result of measures in the Bill and—this may have been mentioned when I was out of the Chamber—we welcome the useful measures to improve discipline and to help failing schools to be dealt with more quickly. Those are welcome developments, and we shall support them. However, in the January debate on the White Paper, I remarked on the importance attached to structural change by this Government and, to an extent, by my own Government when we were in power. A lot of today’s debate has centred on structure versus standards and we have had some reassuring words from the Minister on this point. We wish to support structural change only if it can be seen that it definitely enhances the prospects for raising standards in schools. Like the National Association of Head Teachers, which has commented on this point, I feel very strongly that what is important in education is what goes on in the classroom, the quality of leadership and teaching and, above all, the calibre of the head. Those are the things that most influence the quality of a school. If enhancing a school’s independent operation makes it easier for good heads to exercise strong leadership, that independence is to be welcomed. There are just one or two areas that I would like to probe at this stage of the Bill’s passage through this House. The first is the question of admissions. We know that the Bill bans selection and interviewing for admissions. I am not absolutely certain how the independence of the new schools that will be set up as a result of the Bill will be enhanced by the restrictions placed on their admissions policies by the Government. I agree with my noble friend about the difficulty of distinguishing between ability and aptitude. As a modern linguist and a former modern languages teacher, I would defy anybody to select children for a modern languages college without looking at their ability in language as opposed to their aptitude. I hope that the Minister will be able to enlighten the House on that point and give us some more detail about the Government’s thinking. It seems that the freedom of schools, particularly in the ability/aptitude area, may have been circumscribed, if not curtailed. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to enlighten us, if not today, then certainly at some point during the passage of the Bill. The second point that I would like to probe is school transport. The thinking behind the measures on school transport is good. It recognises that, without easier access to a number of schools, parental choice is by definition a non-starter. Assertions about choice in education—and I do not exempt my colleagues, except those present, of course, from this accusation—are usually made by those with no experience of households with one or no car or of the realities of life in rural areas. Sadly, the Bill as it stands will do little, yet again, to enhance choice in most rural areas. In Norfolk, and in most other rural parts of England, a child’s nearest secondary school may well be six or seven miles away. Other schools that that child and his or her parents might choose will certainly be 10 or 11 miles away, so that, as usual, rural areas will miss out. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on this aspect of the Bill. It is a good start; I am not merely carping or saying that we want more and more. Obviously, cost will be a factor. The Minister will wish to give us chapter and verse on exactly how local authorities will be financed to meet the additional transport costs, but he may also wish to explain, because no doubt it is the case, that it is the cost that is preventing the Government from offering equality of choice to people in rural areas. The final area that I would like to probe is the proposal in the Bill to make the appointment of school improvement partners compulsory for all schools. The thinking behind this proposal is clear: school mentors, as school improvement partners might be described, have played an admirable part in providing support and impartial advice to schools in difficulty. They can be professionally helpful in an informal way and have a clear track record in making a difference where they are used. So far, LEAs have had the freedom to appoint them, I assume, to deal with situations where they can be helpful. But the Bill requires LEAs to appoint them, as the Explanatory Notes state,"““to each of the maintained schools in their area””." We have 25,000 schools. It is always a temptation on these occasions to pursue an argument to the outer realms of the absurd, but I will resist that temptation because I can see what the Government are trying to do; namely, to extend a useful idea to benefit all schools. But if one takes the Bill at face value, it looks as if we might have an army of 25,000 school improvement partners and there are questions about who will appoint, pay, train and be responsible for that enormous army. As I said, I do not wish to pursue the argument to the absurd because I see what the Government are trying to do. However, can the Minister expand on the bones of the Bill to tell us exactly how he sees this working? Surely a better way—and this may be the way that the Bill is interpreted—would be to enable LEAs or, indeed, schools themselves to apply the principle in a flexible way. In Kent, for example, a variety of school improvement methods is used. The selective use of school improvement partners has been found helpful, but federations and partnerships of schools have been used to improve standards and, in the case of primary schools, clusters have been used. Successful heads are seconded to work alongside inexperienced heads, which has the additional benefit of giving invaluable experience to deputies who run schools in the absence of the seconded heads. Will the noble Lord reassure us that the provision in the Bill will not, through over-prescription at national level, reduce the impact of the imaginative use of school improvement partners? I am sure that he will be able to do that and I hope that he will be able to explain to the House how the expansion of this principle will be funded. There are many good ideas in the Bill. We feel that the direction is right. We hope that, as a result of the work that will be done in Committee, the Bill will return to the other place much enhanced.