Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I will probably echo quite a few of the final sentiments of the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser. She has just spoken about the need for stability in academic standards and ensuring that what you have actually works before dreaming up something new. A difficulty for somebody ranked 28 on the speakers list is that you arrive at this point and think about what original contribution you might have to make to a debate that has been packed full of such insight and wisdom from people with immense experience in the fields of education and training. I therefore briefly mention some of your Lordships’ comments in the debate that particularly resonate with the point I want to make, which I will come on to in a second. First, I declare my interests as a director of three academies in the north of England. I am a director of a city technology college in Gateshead and vice-chairman of the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, which was founded by my friend the businessman Sir Peter Vardy, who has done an outstanding job of turning around failing schools where once he had turned around failing businesses, using the same expertise to deliver some outstanding results. It is wonderful to participate in this debate with my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking, because he was instrumental in establishing the city technology concept with independence from local education authorities at its heart. It said that you needed to set beacons of excellence into the areas—such as Gateshead, which was and still is one of the most socially deprived towns in the country—to show what good looks like and what can be achieved with outstanding teaching, great leadership, well behaved students and supportive parents. A school opened when the average attainment of five GCSEs in Gateshead was 16 per cent. It was set up and, under statute, was required to take two-thirds of its pupils from deprived and semi-deprived areas. Yet, last year, it was turning in 85 per cent good GCSEs, including English and maths. It regularly sends students off to Oxbridge universities. It has had a transformational effect on the town of Gateshead. As people have seen what has been achieved at Emmanuel City Technology College, other schools and parents have seen what can be achieved there, too. Clearly, given the importance of that experience of the benefits of independence, with teachers, governors and directors being able to shape education and raise the bar of academic attainment, I share many of the concerns that have been outlined so well by my noble friend Lady Morris about what happens when you strip powers away from the schools and academies and the impact that that has upon falling standards within those schools. I would not necessarily want to argue that it was an indication that the local education authorities are not interested. It is just a question of the level of ambition and expectation of the level of possible academic achievement that people have when you come into an independent school. I am at issue with the Minister who introduced the debate. She mentioned trying to get more good schools and then set the bench mark at 30 per cent five A to C grades. That is appalling: it means that 70 per cent of the children in those schools are failing to meet the most basic academic attainment. That is a staggering indictment. We must consider raising the bar of expectation and performance much higher for all schools. If schools, academies and city technology colleges can demonstrate in some of the most socio-economically tough areas that standards can be delivered—that 84 per cent can achieve five good A to C grades—why not set that as the benchmark? Why not set 50 or 60 per cent as the achievement benchmark? We ought to look at that. There is a staggering problem. If we leave that 30 per cent hanging and say that we only have 639 failing schools out of 3,000, we are fooling ourselves as well as letting down a whole generation of children at those schools. That leads me to my other point, about academic standards and performance. I have talked about one measure of school performance, but there is another: what actually constitutes a GCSE. We have talked about Ofqual, a qualifications body that will try to raise standards. Yet, as my noble friend Lord De Mauley mentioned in his opening remarks, one of the first actions of that body was to put pressure on one of the examination boards to lower its threshold for a C-grade in science; it was lowered to 20 per cent. When you discuss this with parents and teachers—as I have had the opportunity to do—and ask people outside of the educational elite what they think the score for a C-grade qualification is, most would probably say somewhere around 40 or 50 per cent. A B-grade would be about 60 per cent, and an A-grade probably something over 70 per cent. Those would be the general expectations, but we find that getting 80 per cent of the answers wrong can constitute a good GCSE pass in many areas. How can that be allowed to stand? We must ensure that that bar of academic achievement is raised. As has been mentioned, there is some concern that some of the examination boards are selling their services on the basis that their exams are easier for students to pass. We must be much clearer and tougher on what academic performance we expect. I move from academic performance to another area central to the academic performance of children. Sadly, it is not mentioned anywhere in this Bill. It is the role of parents, who are central to setting children’s exam expectations and supporting their learning at home. They play a critical role. Students only spend 15 per cent of their time within the school building. The vast majority of their time is spent at home, with siblings, parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents, who are all feeding into that child’s education. We have found that unless you engage the whole family in the educational achievement of that child you will not be able to attain nearly as much as you could if you did engage them. We have the concept that every child matters but every family and every parent matters. Unless you engage those people in the process, I am afraid that you will not see good results. What do I mean by "engage with parents"? I mean helping them to help their children. There is a staggering level of illiteracy and a lack of numeracy and IT skills among many parents who really want to help their children but do not have the basic skills with which to do so. In my view the role of the school is to reach out and deliver those skills to parents to help them achieve the best for their child, because every parent wants the best for their child. I am sure that is a universal truth. They want the best for their child but often they do not know how to achieve that. Often other things are pressing on their mind which restrict their ability to help their child. The Bede Academy, which is due to open in Blyth this September, will be the first body to employ someone to work specifically with families based in a school. Debt counselling will be provided for parents and training will be given in literacy, numeracy and IT skills. Mother and toddler groups will be set up, as will marriage guidance courses. There will be lots of opportunities to support people and to show parents that a team effort and holistic approach to education is required whereby parents, teachers and children all come together to deliver excellence. As regards my verdict on the Bill, it reminds me very much of the kind of comment that I am sure many people have received on an essay submitted to an examiner; namely, "brilliant and lengthy analysis but you failed to answer the question". Here we have a Bill of 239 pages but I am afraid that it has failed to answer the question: how do we raise the raw scores of numbers and academic achievement to give people confidence in what they are doing and what they are studying for, and how do we support parents to help their children to attain those results?