Education Bill

My Lords, this amendment continues with the theme of induction and deals with the rather important issue of who assesses whether the teacher has or has not successfully completed the induction year. The Bill is rather misty on who will do this assessment. New Section 135A(2)(h) simply requires the head teacher , "““to make a recommendation to the appropriate body””." My amendment would allow a person who is independent of the school and the local authority to make the judgment. They will be well qualified to make it because they have successful teaching experience and will not pop in just once to make the assessment but will observe the teacher during the induction period on more than one occasion. We all know that you can have one bad lesson and then one sparkling one that goes terribly well, so it is important to see the teacher on more than one occasion. This is very important, not only because, as we all agreed in the previous debate, induction is a vital part of the training of the teacher, but because it is sometimes very difficult to make an assessment. As I know from long observation and experience, the college or university where the students do their initial training tends to judge them much more on their academic achievement than on their practical performance. Also, it will be very reluctant for all sorts of reasons that I do not need to enumerate to fail many of its students. Now we move on to the school. If it is left to the school and the head, there is also a very real difficulty. The young teacher will have been a colleague for a year, and the school will be very reluctant to make a harsh judgment, even when it has grave reservations about her or his ability to perform well. Therefore, we are left with the crucial option of bringing in a well qualified person who will observe on several occasions. I did not speak in the previous debate but I hope that even those who have not done too well in their first year might nevertheless have their induction period extended, as is suggested by new Clause 135A(2)(g). Like my noble friend Lord Elton, I have seen many teachers flounder in one school and do very well in the next. Crucially, we have heard that only 15 or 16 fail every year. That is simply not enough. We are still letting through a tiny minority of people who are not born to be teachers and who are not very happy in the teaching profession. For their sake, as well as for the sake of the thousands of children whom they may influence in their career, it is important that they are given at the very beginning the chance to say, ““Teaching is not for me, so I will go into another profession””—rather than, out of the kindness of our hearts, just swinging them through. It is pretty miserable to spend the rest of your career doing a job that you are not good at, that you do not particularly enjoy and in which you struggle every day. The red light should come on at a very early stage and I hope the amendment will go some way to making that possible. I beg to move.