Education and Inspections Bill

I very much agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. It is certainly the case that one of the distinguishing features of the Finnish system is that it requires all its teachers to have a postgraduate degree. That seems to be a crucial factor in the quality of the education in that country. I pay tribute to the Government for some of the steps that they have taken in that direction, not least in the training of head teachers and senior management staff, but, as a country, we must press much further with in-service training of teachers to ensure that they keep up with the many demands made on them. I rise to say a few words about Amendment No. 57A regarding sixth forms. It is a probing amendment. My noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford pointed out that we are confronting a decade of dramatic decline in school rolls. We all know that one of the things that makes a sixth form viable is an adequate number of pupils to maintain a range of choices for young people who are going on to take A-levels, NVQs or whatever the higher qualification may be. If the size of a sixth form falls below a certain point, it simply becomes uneconomic to offer a range of alternative courses, and the sixth form then constricts rather than broadens a youngster’s education. I make no bones about my worry that if a range of trust schools, in particular, academies, are created in a local authority area—most of them will expect and want to have a sixth form because it is part of the traditional prestige of a secondary school which many people involved very much prize, although the Minister may say that that is not true—that may bite into existing sixth-form provision, which will make it difficult for those secondary school sixth forms to be viable. I have in mind the more disadvantaged local authorities that have set up sixth-form colleges or, in some cases, tertiary colleges to try to meet the needs of their brightest, most ambitious and aspiring youngsters who want to go on to try to get A-levels and other advanced qualifications. I am frightened that in certain circumstances those sixth-form colleges could be undermined. The Minister will know well that they have a good record in secondary education of achieving outstanding results in parts of the country such as Devon, where it is difficult to sustain a sixth-form among a lot of small towns and villages. There have been notable results in those sixth-form colleges. I shall not press the Minister now—he may wish to answer the point on a later group of amendments—but the issue has been neglected in our discussions thus far. It is extremely important that every last boy and girl who wants it can get sixth-form or tertiary college provision and I am troubled by the difficulty already experienced by some authorities, where the sixth forms are only just viable, as to what might happen if a number of new ones open.