Education Bill

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 107 and 119. Given the hour, I will try to be brief. These amendments relate to points I made at Second Reading about the importance of providing a proper learning environment in our schools for children of high ability and high aptitude. Although they all relate to that, they are not consequential, and therefore at subsequent stages of this Bill it may be appropriate to consider them separately. I must also make clear that none of these relates to the admission procedures of schools. In the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, they talk about how best to teach all the children who come through the school door. Amendment 106 puts a duty on schools simply to provide for the needs of high-ability pupils. I use the terms ““high-ability”” and ““high-aptitude”” because I want to make clear that we are talking about latent as well as demonstrated capability. It is clearly important that standards are high for all children and we make all schools excellent, but we must make sure that the most able children are properly catered for. This is an argument about fairness, that these children, like all children, should be able to fulfil their potential. It is also an argument about what is important for the nation because the most able children are those from whom our future leaders in all spheres of activity often come. If we are going to compete on a global stage, we need to make sure that the most able children have the highest possible standards against global competitors. We need that to apply to children in the state sector, not just those children who are able to go through the private sector. The amendment does not prescribe how schools should make educational provision for high-ability children but clearly one of the most common ways of doing that is through streaming or setting. The latest figures from Ofsted are for 2006-07, and suggest that 14 per cent of children in primary schools are setted or streamed, excluding PE. In secondary school that rises to 46 per cent, but that means that 54 per cent are not setted or streamed. Interestingly, in maths 78 per cent are setted or streamed, in contrast to 51 per cent in languages and only 34 per cent for geography. The question that that raises is why standards are considered less important in geography or languages than they are in maths. If streaming or setting are appropriate to deal with high-ability children in maths, are they not equally important for other subjects, particularly for those children who need to get high grades in a number of subjects in order to progress to the best universities? This is not the time for a long debate about this. I recognise that there are counterviews, including the argument that other children benefit from having high-ability children in the same class. The counter to that is that there is evidence that both sets of children can benefit if they have teaching best suited to their aptitude and ability. In any case, it is important for the whole of society that the most able children are allowed to excel. Putting this duty on schools without prescribing how they do it would require them to address the question of how they are providing for the needs of the most able children and allow them to defend whatever method they believe they have to fulfil that requirement. Amendment 107 is a further thought on that subject. It recognises that not every school will have sufficient numbers of high-ability pupils or the resources or skills to provide a high quality set or skill catering to their needs. There is evidence that you need a group of 20 or more high-ability children in order to have peer group pressure and indeed to afford the teaching resources to focus on their learning environment. This amendment would allow a number of schools in an area to group together to provide a high-ability learning environment for children from across those schools, just as now a school in one area may provide Russian A-level because not all schools can provide that. Pupils from other schools go to that one school for their teaching. That method would allow schools to group together to provide a high-ability class, and the amendment recognises the practicality that subsidised transport may be required to enable children to get from one school to another. This is not about admissions criteria, though. These schools would all be mixed-ability admissions, and it would be for teachers within the school to decide which children could benefit from being part of a high-ability group. It would not be set at a specific age. As has often been said, children develop at different ages, so this would allow for children to be moved into the group at any age that was thought appropriate for them to benefit from it. It would be a practical way of allowing that need to be met. Amendment 119 would require Ofsted in its school inspections to inspect how schools were performing the duty of providing a learning environment for high-ability children. It would therefore follow on from Amendment 106 in making that part of the criteria that Ofsted would use in evaluating schools. I hope that these amendments are reasonably straightforward. I am looking for the Minister to indicate the extent to which the Government are sympathetic towards these aims and the extent to which legislation in this form would be helpful so that we can take a view on whether and how they ought to be pursued on Report.