Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, as I recollect her campaigning many years ago for the youngest children. I was glad to hear the Minister refer to the National College for School Leadership and to literacy, special educational needs and skills. I support what the right reverend Prelates said about faith schools, and I acknowledge, in particular, the power and passion of the speech made by my noble friend Lord Kinnock. It seems that sometimes, in these political times, idealism is still the engine of our public life. High standards and the fulfilment of potential are best obtained by dedicated head teachers giving inspiring leadership to staff, pupils and parents. The Government already have available a first-class mechanism for achieving higher standards. It is called Investors in People, and it is for organisations that invest in their people. The costs of the programme are very small. It is a voluntary scheme, but already 42 per cent of our schools have engaged with IiP and are showing very encouraging results. I commend the chief executive, Ruth Spellman, for the success of her organisation’s work. Perhaps I may ask the Minister to expand further his department’s interest, and I thank him for his positive approach to these matters. From my many visits to local schools and from assessments by Investors in People, it is clear that the IiP programme leads to better leadership and management in schools and to better communications with parents, pupils and governors. There is improved access to learning; many more staff in the programme stay on after school hours; there are improved examination results; pupil absence rates decline; staff turnover and absence rates decline; and vocational studies appear to get a boost. Here, then, is zero ideology, cost-effectiveness, practicality and success, and, above all, the underpinning of the vital head-teaching role in our schools. I have visited only some 10 to 12 schools annually over 40 years, but I can report in relation to the programme that, at the University of Chester, the dean of education, Anna Sutton, has set a fine pace as a motivator and that the senior lecturer, Mr Don Platten, has had huge success in the surrounding primary and secondary schools. For example, the Flintshire LEA now knows that the participating heads are achieving more. The Minister has had the acumen to encourage a cost-effective, practical programme to enhance the achievements of his head teachers in the nation’s schools. A good head teacher is a blessing for any school, and a failed head blights lives because a child’s full potential is not realised. With the context of this debate in mind, perhaps I may say that, early in his premiership, the late Lord Callaghan hastened to Ruskin College to make an education speech. The noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling, then an MP and prime ministerial aide, had advised him of the need to train more mathematics teachers. Eventually, Lord Callaghan fashioned a broader-based speech and delivered it to some effect. It began a national debate on how Britain might answer the challenges of overseas industrial and commercial competition, to say nothing of the increasing need to bind British society closer together and to promote higher school standards. Those challenges remain and are now ever more urgent. I recollect, in another place, the late Keith Joseph as Secretary of State—sometimes, bemusedly—attempting to change the direction of his department, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, placing a computer in every school, and even the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, attempting to consolidate the continually changing schools scene. In that same other place, from the Opposition Front Benches, my noble friends Lord Hattersley and Lord Kinnock, for example, declaimed passionately on the need for investment in our comprehensive schools. I am a witness to the incessant campaigning of my noble friend Lord Kinnock from 1969 to this very day for the ideal of the socially just comprehensive school. There was Minister after Minister, Bill after Bill, circulars, memorandums, reports and papers. It has gone on for some 30 years to this very Bill—a process always informed by the pressing necessity to face up to world competition. Still we seek the schools’ gold standard. The Times in January 2006 devoted most of its front page to the report of the National Audit Office. It states:"““A million children are being failed by schools””." It goes on to say:"““The education of almost one in four children at secondary school is at risk of being substandard””." That is how it was reported in the Times, but it came from the National Audit Office. There is another problem in all this. While the Prime Minister rightly declaimed his famous mantra, ““Education, education, education””, the ratcheting up of the pressure on the national teaching force is now perpetual. New Bills, league tables and frequent inspections bring many teachers near to breaking point. Our teachers should be acknowledged. They should be considered. The average teacher is not bred to withstand the now frequent scrutiny and pressure. Many of them just cannot cope with that pressure and accountability, which should be acknowledged. The question for many of them is, ““For how long can I cope?””. Hence, I believe in the high value of the Investors in People programme. I should declare myself as chairman of a diocesan education board, a former full-time official of a teachers’ union and a one-time class teacher—perhaps even as a former schools Minister under Premiers Wilson and Lord Callaghan. If Her Majesty’s Government do not press for higher standards with determination, how will we ever defend the remnants of the British manufacturing base, our problematical skills base and even the City of London’s massive invisible earnings? They are the guarantee of our continued national prosperity—indeed, of British greatness. No Government could fail to bring forth an Education Bill in these times of awesome global competition and continuing massive social change. Our particular predicament today is a great continuing social revolution. It is harder and harder for the average teacher to deliver the goods because too many other influences are taking our children off us. That is the scale of the challenge in the classroom today. I acknowledge the need for more investment and improvement. Always, these must be the priorities.