Education and Inspections Bill

We are addressing the very important issue of tackling school failure. We have had a constructive debate on a number of the issues raised, and I should like to respond to them. I think I can allay the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, in respect of Amendment No. 185 on unacceptably low standards by reference to those achieved at comparable schools. Our concern, of course, is that all schools should not be judged as entirely alike in their intake when it comes to making judgments about the speed at which they can be expected to improve. We have high expectations of all pupils in all schools, but the expectations for rate of improvement, given that the starting point is often very different, need to be tempered by an acceptance that schools have different levels of challenge to address. We are not talking about arbitrary measures; the main measure involved is the new contextual value-added data currently being developed. This takes into account not only prior attainment, which is the main basis of the value-added tables and judgments at large, but also special educational needs status, first language, mobility, ethnicity, whether a pupil is or has been in care, free school meal status and a rating from the income deprivation affecting children index provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government. I think that the noble Baroness would accept that these are perfectly legitimate factors to take into account in devising an index of contextual value-added data. Precisely how they are weighted has been the subject of an elaborate pilot. While we are taking account of the findings of the pilot in the way in which we introduce the measure, it is a valid measure. However, we are not prepared to see local authorities empowered to make purely arbitrary interventions in schools, as is proposed in the next group of amendments. That would take us back to a situation where schools could feel that their relationship with their local authority was not productive. We are talking about very serious interventions: warning notices which can lead to changes of head teachers or governors and other actions in that category. They must be based on fair and objective data that are defensible. That is why we have put so much time and effort into developing contextual value-added data. It is also why we have given schools the right to appeal to Ofsted directly where they believe that a warning notice issued by a local authority is unfair. In that case, Ofsted would need to make a judgment on the bona fides of that warning notice before it would take effect. I understand completely the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who said in respect of Amendments Nos. 185B and 185D that it often takes time to see a turnaround carried through in a school. However, the progress can sometimes be made in a shorter time than a year. Many schools come out of special measures in less than a year. I do not have the figures before me, but a high proportion of schools do so or move into a lesser category of intervention. Our concern is that if there were a statutory requirement for there to be a year between the first and second inspections, it might have the effect of slowing down the rate of improvement in a school, because one of the main things that a school quite rightly seeks to do when it is in special measures is come out of them. If it is told that it cannot come out of special measures for another year because it is not allowed to have another inspection, there would be category of schools over which, as it were, the Sword of Damocles would continue to hang, when they want to move on from their situation and put it behind them. While the noble Baroness raised a legitimate issue, we do not support the solution which the amendments propose. I am not in any way saying that the regime which will apply to academies and city technology colleges will be less strenuous than it will be for other schools. I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that they are inspected on exactly the same basis as other schools. Their reports are published on the same cycle. School improvement partners are appointed to them. As they are regulated by the department rather than the local authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, recognised, it is the department and not the local authorities which appoints the SIPS, but we act on the reports of Ofsted, as we should do, and will take full account of the advice that is given by the relevant school improvement partners. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, made some sweeping claims about the performance of academies which were not correct. If she reads my remarks in an earlier debate on academies, I hope that they will satisfy her. However, she quite properly mentioned one academy which has had very serious problems, the Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough. That bears out what I said. In the case of Unity, the Secretary of State took radical and early action in response to a critical report by Ofsted, including substantial changes to the governing body and immediate changes to the leadership of the academy. They are precisely the kind of steps which we would expect a local authority to take in an equivalent situation. I believe that I have covered the points raised.