Education and Inspections Bill

I apologise to the Minister for asking her these questions after she has spoken, although I believe that that is permissible in Committee. One reason for that is that there are aspects of the SIP proposal that I did not think that I had fully understood, so it has been extremely helpful for her to have said more about it. There are three things that I find profoundly worrying—and I do not pretend not to be profoundly worried about some aspects of the SIP proposal, although I can see that in some circumstances it could be helpful and useful. First, I echo the question asked by my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford, which I do not think the Minister completely answered, on the source. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was kind enough to copy to me a letter that he had written to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, on the subject, in which he confirmed what the Minister has just said—that he expected most SIPs to come from the body of serving, retired and in some cases seconded head teachers and that a few additional people might be drawn from school management teams. My profound worry is, as the Minister will agree, that we face an extremely serious problem about head teachers. More and more responsibility for leadership now rests on head teachers and the problem is particularly serious with primary schools, which is the group to which the Government intend to extend the requirements of the Bill in the very near future. I happened to look through the Times Educational Supplement for this week, last week and the week before and in every case there were five, six or seven pages packed with advertisements for primary school head teachers. In some cases, as the Minister is aware, there have been primary schools that have had to replace head teachers several times—the most extreme example being Dunmore school in Abingdon, which has had 13 head teachers in 10 years, many of them in the past few years. I raise this because everything in the Bill rests on the capacity and ability of head teachers to respond to a huge range of additional responsibilities, challenges and requirements for standards. I wonder whether weakening the pool of head teachers in this way is wise—and it is not simply me who says that. For example, the deputy assistant secretary of the children’s care services in Oxfordshire responding about Dunmore said that there was a rapidly dwindling supply of well qualified and motivated people to become head teachers. That is sadly generally true. Secondly, I was not clear—although this may be my fault, in which case I apologise—on the position of trust schools and academies. Was the Minister implying that they would have to have a SIP but that the appointment would be made by a governing body and not a local education authority? Thirdly, I am troubled about what could be the quite difficult personal relationships between SIPs and the head teachers. What happens if there is a direct conflict? That is one reason why my noble friend proposed the idea that there should be only one SIP; schools might agree to federate just so one would not have personal conflicts about what the objective of the school was. All of us who have been involved in education for a long time will be very much aware that the good head very much cherishes his or her right to make the final decision in his or her judgment. Indeed, you cannot be a good head unless you have confidence in your judgment. I am troubled by whether SIPs, especially if they are seen to be answerable to the Secretary of State—and I repeat, ““seen to be””—might be seen by heads as undermining their authority, particularly if the head has a view about how to conduct education which is not the same as the SIP. Can the Minister say something about whether that would go to a school adjudicator and how it would be handled? I ask the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, to forgive me if I am trespassing on his territory, but I know that he and I share a profound concern about what happens if there is a personal conflict or sharp disagreement on strongly held grounds between an SIP and a head teacher, and how that would be resolved.