Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, we have tabled Amendments 298 and 299 because, as we said in the previous debate, we firmly believe that we should place much more trust in the personal judgment and responsibilities of our teachers. These amendments would mean that neither the searcher nor the witness to the search of a pupil at school has to be of the same gender as the child. We have tabled these amendments for two main reasons. First, it is of vital importance that we trust our teachers. They are professional people who have already been through all the security checks necessary to become a teacher. We must not assume that even after that every teacher has to be restrained in some way and that without the law in place we would see a large number of cases of teachers abusing this power. The Minister may argue that this legislation is in place to help protect teachers from parents and children who are waiting in some way to accuse teachers of misconduct. My experience is that legislation based on the worst-case scenario very rarely becomes good legislation. Secondly, there is a very practical element to these questions. Does the Bill as it stands really mean that four teachers, two of each gender, would be required on every school trip which took girls and boys, and where prohibited items might be present? There is also the problem that, particularly in primary schools, there is an overwhelming lack of male teachers. Figures from 2008 show that, in local authority maintained nursery and primary schools, only 14 per cent of full-time teachers were male and 86 per cent were female. Recent figures from the General Teaching Council for England show that 27 per cent of primary schools in England have no registered male teachers. In that situation, what should female teachers needing to search a male child do? Why should they be put in a position where they cannot do anything because the assumption is that if you search a child of a different sex you must be doing something wrong? This assumption pervades our society at the moment, which is probably one reason why so few male teachers work in primary schools. I found a quotation from Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. He said: ""One of the reasons they are put off is the assumption that, if you’re a male working in a primary school, there is a fair chance you will be accused of something some time or other"." Finally, the Minister must accept that we are talking about a search power which would only ever require a pupil to take off an outer layer of clothing and there would always have to be a witness. It is for those reasons that we have tabled amendments to this clause. We welcome the fact that the Government have taken on board many of the concerns expressed. We are very pleased that they have decided to come back to us with some new thoughts and have tabled their own amendments which would increase the flexibility and would allow the witness to be of a different gender from the child, or the student at an FE college, if it was not "reasonably practicable" to find a witness of the same sex. That is a step in the right direction, but does not go as far as we would like. Nevertheless, I should like to take this opportunity to thank the Minister and her Bill team for the hard work that they have put into this difficult area. We are grateful for the government amendments which we now accept, but we would like the Government to go further. I beg to move.