Education and Inspections Bill

I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said. There is a demand for this information from all parents—I am very well aware of that from my work with the Good Schools Guide—from those in the most deprived circumstances to those who are relatively affluent. Parents tend to be very busy. A lot of them are uninformed about schools; all of them want comfort and help when undertaking an extremely difficult decision; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said, the quality and consistency of information out there is well below par—certainly with regard to easy access. School websites are often dire and local authority information provision varies from the really quite good to the extremely difficult, obscure and unhelpful. There is not a good consistent standard there. One of the things a school adviser could do is to help bring up the general level of available information to a common and consistent standard and, ideally, as the noble Lord said, to something approaching the American model rather than the ““Do we have to do anything?”” standard that occupies a lot of British websites. To have that co-ordinated in a way which makes it easier for a parent to access it on a casual basis would be a great advantage. As I will come on to, one of the difficulties I see with the Government’s scheme is the question of how this adviser finds the parents they are talking about. My amendment focuses on the need for independence. A lot of the time this adviser will be the Thomas à Becket character who wishes to give clear, honest and good advice regardless of the consequences to himself. If they do not have a position that enables them to do that without fear of imminent execution, they may well not have the courage of the right reverend Prelate’s predecessor and may temper their advice accordingly. That problem has become prevalent in, for example, the educational psychology service, where many people rely for their bread and butter on a relationship with a particular local authority. If the local authority likes to be dilatory, difficult and restrictive about giving statements, it is the common experience of parents that you will get a relatively bad service from those educational psychologists because they know who is paying their bills. It is necessary to have a measure of independence because, much of the time, a competent adviser will say, ““Don’t go to that school in Dorset. You are much better off if you hop across the boundary into Hampshire. It has the provision that you want, it has easy access so you have a good chance of getting in”” or, ““No, whatever they say, that school does not really provide well for your child’s special need but there is very good provision a couple of miles away and, if you can establish a special need—and this is how to do it—you will have a reasonable chance of getting your child in””. Giving advice that is in the interests of the child and the parent will often be advice that the local authority wishes had not been given, to give it an easier life. From the draft guidance, we are clearly envisaging a system that is quite well integrated with the local authority system. I should like to be sure that there is a good guarantee of independent advice; otherwise parents simply will not trust it. I am very grateful to the Minister for having distributed the draft guidance. Exactly how are those advisers going to turn away the middle classes? Yes, they may be targeting the 30 per cent who are most deprived, but if someone like me comes knocking on their door and says that they want help, are they going to say, ““Go away””? Once they get a reputation, people who are aware of their existence will be after their services. I am puzzled by the Government’s idea of the correct budget. If we are aiming for 30 per cent of pupils, we are looking at a budget of about £30 per target family. With the usual overheads, especially if these families have to be tracked down because they are difficult to get to, people will have to spend time at the end of the day at primary schools waiting for those parents to turn up. That will not be a time-efficient process. I suspect that the Minister's budget allows for about 15 minutes per target family, which is about a quarter of the time required to give a reasonable standard of service. I am surprised that in-year admissions will not be catered for. That is one real problem for parents who are moving. We are trying to encourage a mobile and responsive labour market and make it easier for people to move around the country. Getting into schools out of term, or just moving generally, creates immense problems in our current system. You cannot even consider a place in a school until you have an address. If you get the wrong address, you may find that there is not a school place within five miles. You have no time, are out of the area, have no local contacts or infrastructure of other parents to talk to to find out what is going on, and no existing school to turn to for advice. Those people most need such advice. It is very helpful to the fundamental economy of this country that moving should be made easier for those people. They should be a target of the system. I will be interested to hear how the noble Lord envisages that the system will work in practice. If it is aimed at disadvantaged people, how will they be tracked down without an awful lot of the money going into the system being spent just on the process of finding the parents, rather than giving them useful advice?