Education Bill

Thank you very much indeed, my Lords. Spare a kindly thought, if you will, for your comparatively new colleague who is speaking to his first amendment to legislation since he had the honour of joining your Lordships' House. This would have been my second amendment, if the nervous novice had not incompetently passed up the chance to move Amendment 65 at the end of proceedings on Monday, when we were caught up in a fascinating session on the GTC. Perhaps I may just mention that Amendment 65 was designed to tighten further the procedures for reporting serious misconduct and I hope that my noble friend will, in his usual benign fashion, be able to write to me about it. I will turn, still as the nervous novice, to Amendment 73. The aim here is to explore the possibility of adding to the Bill a reference to partnership between maintained schools and independent schools. As before, I speak as a former general secretary of the Independent Schools Council. For generations, the best independent schools have reached out to maintained schools and their wider communities. The Independent Schools Council conducts detailed audits of these partnership activities. Nine out of every 10 ISC schools are involved in them. Sport, music and drama are the most widespread partnership activities. Since the Second World War, the state has taken different approaches to the issue of partnership and the wider involvement of the independent sector in our education system. The Fleming scheme and then the assisted places scheme enabled talented children from less well-off families to attend independent schools. These are long gone and will not be repeated, but ambitious new schemes of partnership are in prospect. They include the participation of independent schools in the most important educational reform of our time—the academy movement, which features in a later amendment and in the new system of teaching schools. Many independent schools have already applied for permission to become teaching schools. If they are successful, an increased percentage of the teaching workforce will get an opportunity to train in the independent sector. If this becomes the case, it is even more important that the sector should be able to take advantage of the opportunities that partnerships can bring and should not be unfairly excluded from the opportunities afforded to teachers in maintained schools. One thinks particularly of continual professional development, to which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made reference. Whatever may happen in these exciting new areas, great effort should continue to be directed at ensuring the success of the independent/state school partnerships scheme, which was introduced by the previous Labour Government shortly after they took office in 1997 and made permanent by my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley when she was Secretary of State. Relatively small amounts of public money have brought teachers and pupils together in enthusiastic partnership projects throughout the country. Since its creation, the ISSP programme has funded no fewer than 346 projects and allocated just short of £15 million—not a large sum but one that produces considerable benefits. The average value of a grant has been around £43,000. The largest single grant, of just over £500,000, was to a consortium of 18 London schools to enable them to offer gifted and talented provision in mathematics, science and modern languages over a number of years. I will not go into further detail; the Government produce full reports on the outcomes of partnership schemes. The current round includes 24 excellent projects. It is against this successful background that I bring forward the amendment. Much has been achieved and it may be appropriate, in order to safeguard the partnership in future, to put it on a statutory basis. I therefore beg to move the amendment.