Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 13: Page 2, line 13, after ““securing”” insert ““where appropriate”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 14 and 15, which are grouped with Amendment No. 13. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said that we needed to explore the concept of diversity. This group of amendments to Clause 2 raises that whole question in relation to diversity and choice. In particular, the amendments explore the concept of diversity. What is meant in the Bill by diversity? In current government-speak, diversity means a range of different types of school: faith schools and non-faith schools; academies; voluntary-aided schools; foundation schools; all sorts of different specialisations at secondary level. Indeed, it means everything but—in the famous words of an aide at No. 10—the ““bog standard comprehensive””, or, which I would prefer, the common or garden community school, which has served many a community in this country very well over a considerable period of time. Why are the Government and the Opposition so opposed to LEA-maintained community schools? I do not really understand why they have taken so against them. The average parent says that what they want in a secondary school is a good local school. The debate about diversity is partly about secondary schools, although it arises also in relation to primary schools. Parents want their children to go to a good local school. What is a good local school? I do not know how others would define it, but I was interested in a policy paper that I received from CASE, which set out features of what it considered to be a good local school. It makes 10 points about good local schools, but I will not read all 10 of them. The first points are interesting, and they pick up many of the points that I was making earlier and which are seminal to the concept of a good local school. It should, "““be an integral part of the local community, fostering constantly evolving shared cultural values and aspirations…Be a place where all parents and pupils feel welcomed and valued, irrespective of their ability, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, social background and educational needs…Provide ""a happy, secure and supportive learning environment where pupils and parents feel cared for and respected as individuals and where diversity is celebrated…Provide a range of learning challenges necessary to help all pupils to become autonomous learners, who can arrive at their own view of the world, take control of their own lives and make their own choices as confident, responsible future citizens in a tolerant, multicultural society””." Those first four points sum up very well what we are looking for in a good local school. The premise on which the Government are working is that one gets that good local school only if there is competition between schools. The fashionable word is ““contestability””; that there are other schools and that they compete with each other. At Second Reading, several speakers questioned whether there was any evidence to show that competition necessarily made schools any better. In some senses, the Government contradict themselves in simultaneously arguing that there should also be collaboration between schools. If you are setting schools in competition with each other for pupils and resources—that is effectively what is happening—it is difficult simultaneously to get those schools to collaborate with each other. We have no problems with the collaborative model. In many senses the federations and much that underlies this Bill, such as the school improvement partners, pick up the notion of best practice of stronger schools helping weaker schools. We are completely happy with that. The Government’s vision of the process is very much London-centric, looking at schools in the metropolitan area. We see education as a system. As my noble friend Lady Scott stressed, if you are going to have a strategic authority and if there is a system, it needs some hand to guide it. We were the political party that pioneered local management of schools and devolving responsibility to schools. We have no problems whatever with that model, but it needs to have some central steering coming from a local education authority. The management is better coming from the community, through the local education authority, which is accountable to local people, rather than having the micromanagement of schools that we have seen from central government over the past 10 years or more. There is a vision of local accountability and schools linked up with one another; nursery centres linking up with primaries; primaries with other primaries and feeding through to secondary schools; and secondary schools working not only with each other but with further education colleges and local higher education institutions. That co-operative model is one with which we are happy. This brings me to the central issue raised by this group of amendments. Amendment No. 13, the first amendment, seeks to insert the words ““where appropriate”” into line 13, so that Clause 2 would then require the local education authority to secure, "““where appropriate…diversity…in…provision””." That picks up the London-centric issue, because the vision of multiplicity of offerings between different types of primary and secondary schools is very much London-centric. It is a vision based on major metropolitan cities in which parents can get to many schools without too much difficulty. But in many parts of the country there is a limited choice—at most two or three secondary schools are accessible, and only then if you are prepared to travel, often two or three miles across town. In country districts there is often only one secondary school available to you. What do you do if it does not meet your needs? What do you do if it is a specialist sports college and you want a specialist language college? We would argue that in rural areas it is often inappropriate and impossible to provide the sort of diversity that the Government have in mind. The second amendment in the group, Amendment No. 14, seeks to remind people of the important role of further education colleges, especially in post-16 education. We recognise that local education authorities are not responsible for further education colleges, but, in looking for a diversity of provision, further education colleges should not be ignored. Many post-16 students with not very successful school careers find new incentives in the courses that are available in further education colleges and often achieve quite highly. It is notable that colleges achieve a high popularity rating from their students. These young people enjoy being treated as young adults and the greater freedom of the comings and goings that they get in a further education college. We should also remember that further education colleges make, and will make, an important contribution to the key stage 4 curriculum that we shall consider later. The third amendment, Amendment No. 16, argues that the key choice is not parental choice—that is often not on offer, because we have schools choosing parents, rather than parents choosing schools, where there is a shortage of places. The key issue is pupil choice. Although we will consider key stage 4 later, we Liberal Democrats would argue that this issue is where we really need to place the onus on choice. Just as those who move on to college at 16 enjoy the freedoms that they experience at college, so this sort of choice in relation to curriculum and career options needs to be available to all. Parental choice is something of a chimera and the real choice is pupil choice. I beg to move.