Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said that it felt to her like only yesterday that we were debating the previous education Bill. If it is any consolation to her, it feels to me fully like yesterday since I made by opening speech on this education Bill. Six and a half hours and 35 speeches later, I am faced with an impossible task. I have a list of about 85 questions that were asked of me, and that merely goes up to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth; there have been another 20 or 30 questions since she spoke. So my opening point is that I will engage in correspondence with all noble Lords who have spoken and I undertake to respond to all substantive points that have been raised. I will always be delighted to meet the noble Lord, Lord Rix—whether we do so with or without refreshments—and other noble Lords if there are particular issues on which we could have productive conversations. We have a while in which to do that before the Bill goes into Committee; I also look forward to continuing that process during and after the Bill’s Committee stage. My noble friend Lord Jones referred in his excellent speech to the Prime Minister’s three famous priorities—““education, education, education””. He did not mention the response of John Major at the time, who said that he had the same three priorities but not necessarily in the same order. That quip comes to mind because it very much sums up our debate. Everyone thinks that this Government are right to give a much higher priority to education than has been the case. There is also remarkably broad agreement on the component aspects of the reforms that we should put in place. However, some noble Lords—I freely acknowledge that this includes some of my noble friends, who made extremely powerful speeches, as well as some noble Lords opposite—would wish to order the components somewhat differently and give a greater emphasis here or a different priority there; it is fair to say that they particularly wish to do so in respect of trust schools. Some would wish within the educational firmament that one or two of the priorities were taken out entirely and others were put in their place. However, there is, I think, very broad agreement on the component parts of what we need to do to improve our education system. Indeed, as I listened to the speeches unfolding, I identified nine very clear areas of consensus that have developed in our debate. We all agree that investment is crucial. That is important—we have increased spending on education by 50 per cent in real terms in the past nine years, and no one is saying that we should start reversing that trend. That is a huge advance. Ten years ago, if I may put it this way, there was a debate coming from—let’s be fair—some in the Conservative Party that more money would be money down the drain and that this system was fundamentally incapable of absorbing the sorts of sums that we on this side were claiming were necessary to improve education. We now have substantially improved investment—there is seven times more capital spending than there was 10 years ago. The figures that I gave in my opening speech show really substantial real-terms increases in salaries for teachers and head teachers in all types of schools; there has been no discrimination in salaries between different sorts of schools and no one wants to turn the clock back on that. The issue is how we build on it. Secondly, we also agree that what matters above all are teachers and head teachers. I could not agree more with what my noble friend Lady Morris said on that. In all schools, irrespective of their type, formal legal character, status or whatever, we need to further nurture the training and development of teachers and head teachers. Thirdly, we all agree that it is right to focus on the disadvantaged and to seek to overcome the chronic class divisions which have bedevilled our education system for too long. Noble Lords focused, in particular, on looked-after children and children with special educational needs, who are dealt with in the Bill, but, in fact, the categories of pupils who are disadvantaged by the education system go far wider than those groups. There are whole communities where the standard of the schools is not high enough and where children do not get the opportunities that they deserve, and that is why we need further reform. But we all agree that it is right to focus the emphasis of spending and reform on the disadvantaged. Fourthly—I believe that this is a real breakthrough in the national education debate—no one in this debate has called for a return to a national system of selection at age 11. That is a path-breaking moment in the development of the education debate in this country. I take the two ends of this debate to be that of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is not in his place, and that of my noble friend Lord Judd. With regard to the 14 to 19 curriculum and the provision that is needed better to meet the needs of individuals so that all pupils succeed in schools, the question is how far the choice should be between schools, which to some extent will be the case as schools develop specialisms that focus on particular areas of the curriculum, and how far the choice should be within schools. As my noble friend said very powerfully, for the next generation schools must be far more effective at meeting the individual needs of pupils. I take that to be the constructive debate that we will be having in education over the coming years. Only three days ago, I was talking to people at JCB—another one of these iniquitous companies that have been referred to in the debate. JCB wishes to develop on its site in Staffordshire an academy specifically to teach construction and engineering skills to 14 to 19 year-olds. It is very likely to do that in the form of a set of trust arrangements with local schools. It will be equally open to all schools to participate and they will share the governance arrangements. To some extent in response to my noble friend Lady Morris—we will continue a dialogue on this—I can say that JCB is attracted to the trust model because it provides certainty in developing the model over time. It sees itself adding to the work of schools by providing courses which might involve pupils spending one or two days a week at the new JCB academy to follow these diploma lines, which are much needed in terms of employment prospects in the area. I see that as very much the debate. No one is calling for a return to the sheep and goats situation of secondary moderns and grammar schools at age 11, and I believe that that is a seminal moment in the debate. Fifthly, there has been very strong support for the holistic approach that the Government have sought to take in integrating social policy with educational policy. That goes to the heart of everything that we have sought to do, including the reforms that we have made to local education authorities to bring children’s social services into children’s trusts and the work of education departments, with new children’s services directors being appointed local authority by local authority so that we do not get Berlin Walls between the different parts of the local authorities, each of which deal with children. I believe that that holistic approach has been well evidenced in policy. We seem to be debating so many Bills at the moment that you have to be sure that you have the right pack when you come into the Chamber. Another Bill that we are debating at present is the Childcare Bill. For those of us on this side of the House who see it as a massive social mission, that Bill is, if I may put it in this way, a new frontier of the welfare state. We are creating a whole new under-fives segment of the welfare state in this country. I am glad to say that it has been warmly embraced in principle by the Opposition, although they have concerns about the role of the private and voluntary sectors, which is part of the ongoing debate. But the principle has now been accepted. This is a huge extension of what is taking place in the wider social sphere, but it relates directly to what is going on in education, including the fact that, as we speak, a large number of primary schools are becoming primary schools and children’s centres, developing their under-five provision. It is another structural change but one that will significantly boost standards and social care for children and families. The sixth theme on which we all agree, although there is a difference of emphasis, is that we want collaboration as well as competition within our education system. There never was a golden age when there was no competition between schools and no effective choice among parents. I could give the House some very interesting statistics in full but, in short, they show that at secondary level nine out of 10 parents in this country have at least two secondary schools within three miles of where they live. Very high levels of choice are currently available at both primary and secondary levels in most parts of the country. I acknowledge that in rural areas this is less so. In many urban areas the choice is much larger. In most of the big cities parents have a far wider degree of choice. They exercise that choice at the moment. It is a fundamental point of law that they have the capacity to express preferences, but we place very important emphasis on collaboration. The role for local authorities in ensuring effective strategic planning is crucial, as is the obligation that schools owe to their local communities. In my experience, trusts, with which I have dealt a great deal in academies, through the Churches and other contexts, are no less committed to their own communities and those with which they work than other stakeholders, who are also vital in the role of schools. In all those areas, both collaboration and competition are vital. We do not see these policies in isolation—far from it. Incentives are all. When the incentive under the grant-maintained regime was indeed for schools to go their own way and to pull up the drawbridge vis-à-vis other schools, that is how they tended to behave. The incentives are in the system now, thanks in no small part to some of the changes brought about by my noble friend Lady Morris in respect of specialist schools, which are encouraged very strongly to collaborate with each other. The trust model is to have a strong emphasis on improving management and governance in schools, particularly around the sorts of missions that schools have been taking on in specialist schools, but also using that resource to help other schools in the area, most notably and immediately feeder primary schools. Many successful specialist schools now have a mission to partner with, and in some cases form quite close governance relationships with, failing schools, which will benefit from their leadership and mission. That is as it should be. The seventh theme that has forged a high degree of consensus is that parents value most of all good local schools. In my experience parents do not have great knowledge about precise governance arrangements, let alone legal categories of schools. They want to be involved, and of course there is a role for parents in the governance of schools, but overwhelmingly they want good local schools. The process of having a good local school involves very high levels of accountability, and I have never believed that the prime form of accountability of a school to its community is through elected parent governors. They play an important role, but the prime form of accountability is in the quality of education that that school provides and the level of interaction with which that school engages in its community and with the parents who it serves in that community. The eighth theme that has broad consensus is that reform so far has been largely successful. No one has questioned the literacy and numeracy strategies. No one has questioned the role of specialist schools. No one has questioned the big reforms that we have introduced in teacher recruitment and training, and indeed, no one has questioned so far the measures that we have introduced to promote greater diversity. The issue has been whether we should take them still further. Ninthly, everyone has accepted that we need far more improvements. The levels of performance are still not as we would wish and there are unacceptable divides between different parts of the community and different classes. On the basis of that very broad consensus, there is also fairly broad consensus on most of the measures in the Bill. There is broad consensus that we are right to provide more for pupils who are excluded from school, better standards of school food, school transport, better standards of behaviour, strengthened vocational education and more support for failing and weak schools. As I noted down the pros and cons of trusts, there was broad consensus, too, that there was a role for trusts. I noted that my noble friends Lord Young, Lord Howarth, Lord Gould and Lady Morgan made particularly strong contributions on the opportunities that trusts can give, as well as the many contributions outside my own party from, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, who speaks with great experience of London schools as a former inspector, and the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Skidelsky. There was broad support for the opportunities that trusts can provide. We will debate trust schools at great length in Committee. If I believed that they were either a step down the road towards returning to grant-maintained status, as I think some in the Conservative Party probably still believe, or that they would break up a publicly accountable school system which values social cohesion and responsibility within its community, I would not support them. But I do not believe that either of those extreme views will be realised. Rather I see trust schools as a sensible, pragmatic reform, which builds constructively on the experience of specialist and foundation schools, and the local management of schools allowing them to forge new partnerships with external partners, many of whom will be local. We talk about these outside bodies as if they are going to be massively removed from schools, but organisations such as local universities, charities, local and further education colleges are very much rooted in the same local communities that schools serve. Schools will be able to forge much stronger partnerships with each other. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred to the extraordinary partnership between the Haberdashers’ CTC in New Cross and Mallory School, three miles away, which it has effectively taken over and which was one of the lowest performing schools in the London Borough of Lewisham. The highest performing school in Lewisham has formed a federal partnership—via academies in this case, but in a similar arrangement to that which would apply under trusts—with the lowest performing school. They now have the same uniform, ethos and leadership structure; it has transformed the ethos at what is now called the Knights Academy in Lewisham. That is a model for the kind of immensely constructive role that trusts can perform where they partner successful schools and the organisations running them with less successful schools, in many cases in their own neighbourhoods. Universities, charities and high-performing schools will have a role. Trust status will open up significant opportunities. On other areas that have been raised, school transport is going to be hugely emotive issue when we debate it, because large costs are involved for ineligible parents. I can give the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, the assurance she seeks that no child who currently receives free transport will lose out under the Bill. The noble Baronesses, Lady Shephard and Lady Perry, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough, raised funding for transport, and whether the six-mile cut-off proposed in the Bill could be looked at further. The cost implications of what we are already doing—the eligibility for lower-income families for the choice of three schools up to six miles—will be quite expensive: it will cost about £40 million extra per year, which we are committed to funding. But we have given considerable consideration to this, and will look at whether that six-mile limit can be raised further. We look forward to discussing that issue with noble Lords in Committee. I cannot give any commitment at this stage, but we understand the issues it raises, particularly in rural areas and over access to denominational transport for those from poor backgrounds. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, mentioned the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, and asked whether we need a further appeal from the independent local schools adjudicators, who are rightly likened by the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, to planning inspectors. Most of the role of the schools adjudicator in the Bill is to act as an appeals mechanism for the local authority in its locality in any event, as part of the wider reform of abolishing school organisation committees. It is not necessary to have an appeal from the appeal body, but it is important that the system is seen to be open and fully accountable. That is why we have put the local authority back as the decision maker in most school organisation matters, because it will be seen as, and is, the body which has most local democratic credibility to take these decisions; more so than the school organisation committees, which came to be seen as artificial creations. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, also asked about surplus places. She said that she might table amendments to allow schools to expand even if there are surplus places in other schools. I reassure her that we have already given all categories of maintained schools the right to publish proposals to expand, irrespective of whether or not there are large numbers of empty places in other schools. Local decision makers must take the impact on other schools into account when they make decisions, but the department’s guidance to those decision makers is that there should be a strong presumption for such proposals where they are in respect of popular and successful schools which parents want their children to attend. Indeed, we have even provided funding to enable schools in that situation to expand. Special educational needs are immensely important; I am sure we will spend a good deal of time on them in Committee. Our policy is simple: the needs of the individual child come first, not the particular character of the setting. The setting must serve those needs; it is not an end in itself. It is absolutely untrue to say that the Government have any prejudice or bias against special schools. In fact, the proportion of the cohort going to special schools has risen over the past two years. We are also investing significantly in special needs provision in mainstream schools, where standards need to rise considerably in this area, and unit-type provision attached to mainstream schools. That is our policy. I will be happy to set it out further in Committee, and I am sure we will look at how we can give further reassurances in this regard. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, and my noble friend Lord Judd raised the question of academies. In fact, they take a higher proportion of statemented pupils than maintained schools and a larger number of statemented pupils than the schools that they replaced. But we are clear that the decisions of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal should, in effect, be binding. We have given a commitment that only in the most exceptional circumstances would the Secretary of State not implement those decisions in respect of academies, and there has been no case where that has not happened. We are looking at whether there are further changes that we can make in that area. Many noble Lords referred to the Steer report and to behaviour and discipline and to the fact that the Bill mostly deals with disciplinary penalties. That is not because we have not paid huge attention to the other elements in the Steer report; for example, behaviour audits, good behaviour policies and the many aspects of school life that contribute to good behaviour, including an engaging curriculum, good teaching, good relationships between staff and pupils and a proper range of rewards and incentives. We lay great store by those elements, but virtually none of them requires legislation. By definition, what are in the Bill are those aspects that require legislation. That is why those other elements are not in the Bill. We are giving further attention to some aspects of the Steer report; for example, its recommendation that my department should look separately at how to improve the quality of provision for those with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties and, in particular, at the recruitment and retention of high quality staff and at minimising bureaucracy. Those are the areas that we are looking at further at present. The issue of science teaching in schools is very close to my heart. I took close note of what the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said about it. We are significantly increasing the recruitment of science teachers. We increased recruitment by 30 per cent between 1997 and 2005, and we have set targets for the recruitment not only of science teachers in general, but of physics teachers in particular. We are aiming for a quarter of science teachers to be properly qualified in physics. We are setting targets in this area, and, as I made clear to the noble Baroness in an earlier debate, we are seeking to ensure that the three separate sciences are much more widely available beyond the age of 14, particularly starting with the specialist science colleges. I can set out those arrangements at greater length. We see this as a priority area, but it is impossible to change the whole system at once. We inherited a huge deficit, particularly in physics teachers, which is taking us some time to put right. Much was made of the issue of interviewing. I am glad to say that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, who very rarely misreads legislation, is incorrect in his interpretation of Clause 41. It does not prevent pupils and parents meeting teachers and head teachers. We strongly encourage parents to visit schools before they make decisions about them. That is part of being a responsible parent. Clause 41(1) states:"““No admission arrangements for a maintained school may require or authorise any interview with an applicant for admission to the school or his parents””." It is interviews related to admissions that are not allowed, not contact meetings, parents’ evenings, open evenings and so on that enable parents and pupils to get a better understanding of what is going on. Several noble Lords raised the issue of whether vocational diplomas should be called vocational diplomas. This is an interesting issue because we do not intend that they should be. We are intending to call them specialised diplomas or specialised professional diplomas. I did not do that in my speech because I was not sure that noble Lords would understand what I was talking about if I did, so I used the traditional nomenclature of ““vocational””. I well understand that we need to move beyond that so that they are not seen as being for those of lower ability or as less attractive options for pupils. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, returned to the charge on the issue of inspection. Despite my arranging for her to meet the chief inspector, he has not sufficiently allayed her concerns and she raised the issue again today. We will need to continue that dialogue. Let me stress that the arrangements we have with Her Majesty’s chief inspector and the board are similar to the arrangements that apply in other agencies and inspectorates. Indeed, Ofsted has been criticised for being too focused on the role of the chief inspector without any board or policy-making role beyond that of the chief inspector. I can give an undertaking that, although there will be arrangements for sensible sharing of expertise in co-ordinated inspections, inspectors will, as now, have particular areas of expertise and will not be expected to cover all Ofsted’s remits. My noble friend Lord Judd referred to youth work in Clause 6. We made it clear in another place that a significant youth work contribution from the local authority will be central to the fulfilment of the new duty to secure young people access to positive leisure time activities. We agree with my noble friend that more needs to be done to ensure that the youth work provision available to young people is sufficient and appropriate. In Committee, I will therefore bring forward an amendment to the clause to make it explicit that local authorities in fulfilling the new duty must ensure access to activities that will promote their personal and social developments, which, in practice, includes youth work. That is an important area. I have so much more to cover that I hardly know where to start. We attach huge importance to PSHE and are investing in it largely. We have just set up a subject association and are training a large number of teachers each year in PSHE. In Committee, I will be very willing to engage in the issue of how much further we can get, but we see problems with moving in any rapid way to making the subject statutory. Banding as an oversubscription criterion was made much of by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, but other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Howarth, supported it. The Inner London Education Authority and several inner London boroughs have long used banding. They do not see it as some draconian way of constraining the intake of schools or introducing unfair ability tests but as a perfectly sensible way in many cases of getting a proper cross-section of the ability range into schools and limiting the effect of sheer proximity to the school as an entry criterion. An increasing number of schools are looking at that. We do not see this as something on which the Government should take a hard and fast view but something that should be available to schools to choose. But we have made it clear that there will be no question of local authorities imposing banding over the wishes of a governing body. We will move amendments to that effect at a later stage of the Bill. I could spend the next half hour discussing the difference between ability and aptitude, but I will not seek to do that. I have not even got on to faith schools, which is another important area. I strongly agree with my noble friend Lord Young that parental demand should be the key factor that we take into account, provided that the schools offer a good quality of education and have proper commitments to social cohesion. Where that is the case, for us to turn our back on the demands and rights of parents will, I believe, if we make a mistaken decision on this, simply drive large numbers of schools into the independent sector because so many parents so strongly value this element of choice that they will not take ““no”” from the state. I completely understand why that is the case. Everything we seek to do in the Bill is to raise standards of education for every pupil in the country. There are areas where noble Lords may not think the emphasis is correct, and we will debate those at length, but I believe our bona fides, in terms of the changes and improvements we have brought about in the past nine years, are clear. I hope that on that basis we will be able to forge a growing consensus as the Bill proceeds through the House. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.