Education Bill

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas has spoken persuasively on this occasion of the merits of cyberlearning. We thank him for sharing that range of evidence and experience with the Committee. There is no doubt that this is an area of growing relevance, importance and potential. I am pleased to say that academies already have significant freedom about how they organise the education they deliver to best meet the needs of their students. This includes the use of distance and online learning where that is appropriate. Indeed, I understand that schools in this country increasingly provide services of this kind to deliver greater choice of subjects and teaching methods for pupils. That is clearly a good thing. It can also clearly be valuable for online teaching services to be available for pupils who are unable to attend school regularly, such as those groups which my noble friend Lord Lucas and Lady Walmsley have mentioned, which would, of course, include Gypsy and Traveller pupils, whom we discussed earlier this week, those who have been excluded or those in hospital, young offender institutions or prisons. Again, academies already have the freedom to provide such services for their pupils and maintained schools will have similar freedoms to do so. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that these freedoms will be available for maintained schools as well as academies. We think that the noble Lord’s amendment goes a little too far in providing for the absence of a teacher. We think that the role of the teacher is crucial to the quality of provision to ensure coherence of the overall educational experience for the pupil. There remains an important role for an experienced professional and for a personal relationship between teacher and pupil. In the Government’s view, distance education of the kind described in the amendment, without the presence of a teacher at any time, represents a risk to pupil outcomes and educational experience.