Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady David, I vowed never to speak on education again, but like her I am making an exception. Not the least of my difficulties in returning to the subject is the continuous change in the terms. What Tony Blair called the ““bog standard comprehensive”” is now labelled, I believe, the community school. There are also foundation schools, and foundation schools with foundations called trust schools, along with specialist schools. And then outside the Bill there are the old grammar schools, the city technology colleges started by the previous government, and academies. This continual relabelling of institutions certainly gives the impression of diversity, but how much diversity there is or will be in practice depends on what happens on the ground, and what happens on the ground depends on how permissive the legislation is and the attitude of local education authorities. Choice and Diversity was the title of a White Paper produced by the noble Lord, Lord Patten, when he was Secretary of State for Education in 1993. The fact that it is the newly proclaimed goal of this Government shows just how much resistance to it there is. The tendency of the reforms of the past 10 to 15 years has been to chip away at the inherited structure of comprehensive schools to create a diversity of provision which can offer parents a choice between different types of school. I believe that this is the right way forward even though the Government cannot, for political reasons, advance the most convincing argument in its favour; namely, that competition between schools that are free to innovate is the best way of driving up standards and expanding educational opportunity. Choice and diversity are euphemisms for competition. Freedom of parental choice means competition between schools because choice is always relative—it is a preference for one thing over another. I am chairman of an independent school, and the governors have been discussing whether to introduce the International Baccalaureate. We are free to do so and there are no regulations to stop us, but whether we do it will depend on whether we think that in the end we will attract more pupils or repel them by doing so. That is competition. To those who insist that all schools must improve together or no improvement can be tolerated, parts of this Bill will be anathema, and that has been eloquently expressed by several noble Lords. But let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that all improvements in standards in any walk of life are accompanied by a temporary increase in inequality. That is because improvement always has to start somewhere. Some individuals, companies or enterprises are more energetic, creative and vigorous than others and it is by giving those people and bodies their head that the general improvement comes about. The success of some schools will be a challenge to others to do better; if they do not, they will lose market share. Failing institutions will die and successful ones will take their place. That is the way of the world and education is not exempt from it. I am not blind to other considerations, of which ““community cohesion”” is surely the most important. We already have segregation by housing and schools should try to counteract it. So, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, it seems reasonable to me that schools should aim at some degree of social and intellectual balance through a banding system. But the condition of that must be an acceptance of setting and grouping by ability within schools. I suspect that many people who are in favour of a banding system are passionately opposed to grouping by ability within schools, but I think that the two go together. Any successful educational design has to be a compromise, a trade-off between choice and cohesion. The question is whether the Bill gets the balance right. I think it does in most respects, but I shall refer later to one place where it definitely gets it wrong. How is the choice and diversity agenda set out in this Bill? All new schools will be able to become trust schools by forming links with external partners. The Bill seems to open up the possibility of trusts being set up to run not just single schools, but groups of schools rather like the Girls’ Public Day School Trust or the old Woodard Foundation, perhaps in line with a distinctive educational or religious philosophy. But I have some questions about the financial aspects of trust status, a point that I do not think has been considered. Can trusts be a source of extra funds for a school, and in what ways? For example, can a wealthy trustee pay for a new arts centre? Would a trust be allowed to raise secured or unsecured loans from banks? A secured loan is one of the things that the ownership of property allows, so will the trustees be allowed to do this? I highlight these points because trust status raises the possibility of differential per pupil funding unrelated to the national school funding formula. Is that what the Government have in mind? Trust schools will be able to set their own admissions arrangements subject to the new school admissions code, and it is on this that my criticism of the Bill is quite strong. The Government were forced to concede a fairly draconian code to counter fears of what is known as selection by stealth. I understand the case for banning selection by ability—provided, as I have said, that internal arrangements allow for grouping by ability. But the admissions code goes much further than that. As other noble Lords have pointed out, it bans schools from interviewing parents and children. In the independent sector, it is not just schools using interviews to select parents and children, but parents and children using interviews to select schools, particularly to select head teachers. So the ban on prior contact between schools, parents and children in Clause 41 runs directly contrary to the Government’s aim of increasing parental choice in Clause 40. That is a contradiction; it is not a fine balance. The code reflects what I believe is a pernicious British obsession with class, with its condescending assumption that a child’s class or race can be held to be a proxy for his ability. The admissions code is something that will certainly need to be revised in the future. I turn to Clauses 7 to 13, which deal with the establishment of new schools. Private promoters as well as local authorities will be able to set up new schools. Those local authorities whose schools have the best inspection ratings will have the right to enter competitions to start community schools, while others will have to get the permission of the Secretary of State. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, I think this is a reasonable compromise. But I urge that there should be no retreat from the principle of earned autonomy, as many critics of the Bill from the left have been urging. The success of Part 2 of the Bill—I come to the end of my remarks—depends on the local authorities adopting a commissioning mentality. The Bill requires them to hold open competition among suppliers for new schools. This is a huge step forward, but how will they conduct these competitions? How welcoming will they be of new independent managers of schools? If they are not welcoming, how effective will be the Bill’s provisions in enabling such operators to get fair consideration? Here the role of the independent schools adjudicator is absolutely crucial. His role is akin to that of a planning inspector in the planning system. This officer will have powers to override local authorities in a quasi-judicial manner. It is extremely important that he or she be truly independent of the local authorities. There has been a change in local authority mentalities in many areas, not least because they are so much more accountable now for school performance through inspections and league tables. But this change has been patchy and parents should not have to rely exclusively on a top-down mechanism to bring about an overall increase in standards. We need that increase sooner. The Government have also taken powers to pursue a choice and diversity agenda outside this Bill—for example, in setting up academies completely independent of local authorities—and much will depend on how a future Government use these powers to complement those contained in the Bill. But that is a top-down operation and it could easily stop under a future Government less concerned about standards and even less ready to challenge local authorities. I come back to my starting point. This is necessarily an interim Bill, whose potential for widening choice and variety will be disclosed in the course of operating this legislation. It represents a temporary balance between the forces in Parliament and it will shift one way or another. I hope it shifts in the further direction which I believe this Government, or some members of the Government, want to go.