Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I start my contribution with good news: we have reached the end of the first page of the speakers’ list and moved to the second, rather shorter, page. However, there is also some good news in the Bill. I shall support a number of aspects, although I will raise questions about others. Specifically, I am pleased to see the attention being paid to the needs of looked-after children. I ask the Minister whether he can reassure me that that will include looking at the needs of those who have spent time in care homes and residences, in particular. If there is a dark shadow on our education system, it is the attainment—or lack of it—of children who have been in such homes for a large part of their life. They need special treatment, and I hope that the Bill will encourage it. I, too, support the encouragement of federal arrangements in the Bill. That is a positive way ahead, through which we can build the quality of our education system. I add the encouragement towards partnerships; although, for all the reasons given, they should be monitored. Let us not forget that the inspectorate will monitor specific aspects of the partnerships. Other provisions are there in the Bill, however, and I will watch how they develop as it proceeds. I also welcome the opportunity that the Bill gives for all schools to explore trust status. That will not suit all schools, but the opportunity for them to look at such status and consider whether it is for them should be there. I shall raise two specific points from the main sections of the Bill. One relates to Part 8 and Schedule 11, dealing with inspection. In passing, I say that I have great sympathy for the reservations expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, about the growth of the chief inspector’s responsibilities by accretion. That will have to be watched very carefully. I hope that there will be room for a review of it; larger is not necessarily better in such a context. On inspection, I wanted to focus in more detail on a point alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, about what is called ““the Office””. I invented the term ““Ofsted””. Little did I expect to see the first word picked out as the heading on a section of a Bill going through Parliament, but there it is. The use of ““the Office”” is now different from its original use. Ofsted was the whole organisation; the Office is a group of perhaps a dozen people. There are issues about precisely what the role of that group is, and what powers it might have. Noble Lords will recall that the group includes a chairman, appointed by the Secretary of State, between five and 10 additional members appointed by the Secretary of State, and HMCI. What is the group for? It has a constitutional place. According to the Bill, it is to set strategic direction. I would have thought that we were inclined to appoint chief inspectors who had the ability to formulate strategic direction and test it in wider debate, including debate with the department and Ministers, but it might be useful in that context. The group is also, according to the Bill, to hold the chief inspector accountable. I would have thought that accountability and setting strategic directions—particularly accountability—were the job of the Secretary of State and Parliament. The chief inspector reports to Parliament through the Secretary of State, and he is appointed by the Queen in Council on the recommendation of the Secretary of State. The group called ““the Office”” interestingly has one other power: it can appoint additional members of staff, but only by invoking the formal power of the chief inspector. That seems a strange arrangement, and it looks rather as if he is the Queen in Council transferred to the inspectorate body. Clarification on that would be helpful. The Office will not be responsible for pay and rations, it will not be responsible for hire and fire, and it will not be responsible for the annual report. Those are matters for the chief inspector or the Secretary of State working with him. There is an issue here and, at best, such a group seems to be one layer too many. It may perhaps be a layer of management but will almost certainly be a layer of bureaucracy. At worst—perhaps I am being too suspicious—it looks like a cat’s paw for the Secretary of State: a way of exercising controls on the chief inspector that will not be in the public arena. I would like reassurances that that is not the case and on how we can guard against it. Secondly, I turn to the issue of school funding. The Bill perhaps merits the traditional school report, ““Could do better, but doing well””. It could do better by looking at the possibility of alternative routes by which funding from Government could get to schools. We ought to consider that. I do not think that we will in the context of the Bill, but I am putting down a marker because the Bill implies something like that. We should look at the possibility of a schools funding council. I say that because one of the directions of the Bill is to create more schools that are independent of local authorities. That means that their money comes directly from the department on the agreement of the Secretary of State. I do not think that that is a healthy relationship in the long run. Questions have already been raised about capital expenditure in such a context and through such a route. There is an issue about how funding should transfer to independent schools. If the number of schools that are independent of local authorities but dependent on state funding increases, which is the intention of the Bill, there will be greater need for a more formal arrangement for transferring that money and monitoring its spend. There are ways of doing that that would involve local authorities and local interest input. Some sort of regional system would be necessary, but this is not the moment to spell out those details. I am proposing a schools funding council to test how well the current system of money going through local authorities works. When we ask what merit there is in channelling money through local authorities, the immediate response is ““local accountability””. That is perhaps the case, but there is also a concomitant risk of the local authority short-changing individual schools by building expenditure centrally in ways that may not be wholly accountable or to the benefit of schools. There is also the risk of political meddling. That is not true of all local authorities—there are excellent local authorities doing good work—but the first clause of the Bill puts a duty on local authorities to promote high standards. That seems bizarre. It is not that it is not a good thing, but it is something that goes with pay and rations to local authorities. If they are not interested in increasing standards, what are they doing? If we need to lay on them a specific duty to do it, there is perhaps something wrong in the relationship as it currently operates. A schools funding council would give additional transparency. It would certainly allow the possibility of equity unrelated to your local authority, and it would provide accountability for expenditure against school plans and bids from schools. There would be reduced central costs at local authority level, and the savings could be redistributed to the schools on a non-formulaic basis. I am not suggesting that I will table an amendment, because I do not think that that issue will run at this stage. It is a tendency in the Bill. We need to recognise it because, if the number of independent schools dependent on public funds grows, there will have to be a clear accountable mechanism for distributing resources to them.