Education Bill

It is with great pleasure that I bring the Education Bill back before the House. It received detailed scrutiny here in the spring, in the course of 22 Committee sittings, before it went off to the other place. Their lordships have given it the full benefit of their diligence and expertise and I am pleased to say that its core content is as it was when it left this House. Before I address the amendments, it might be helpful if I briefly remind the House of the core content. Its main purpose is to give legislative effect to the proposals in the education White Paper, ““The Importance of Teaching””, published last November. It also contains some measures from the Department for Business Innovations and Skills, which my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning will discuss in due course. The Bill has four main themes. First, it seeks to give teachers and head teachers greater freedom and flexibility to use their judgment and expertise to get the best results for their pupils. International evidence shows that greater school autonomy characterises the best performing education systems. The Bill seeks to remove unnecessary legislative duties from schools and extends the benefits of the academies programme to 16 to 19-year-old pupils and vulnerable pupils in need of alternative provision. Secondly, the Bill seeks to strengthen the powers and authority of teachers in relation to classroom discipline. We want all children to be educated in a safe environment that is free from disruption and we want all teachers and prospective teachers to feel confident that they have society's backing in tackling poor behaviour. The Bill will allow same-day after-school detentions and will provide a power to search pupils for any item likely to cause harm or injury. It will also give teachers pre-charge anonymity when faced with an allegation by a pupil that they have committed an offence. Thirdly, the Bill matches the increased autonomy it seeks to introduce with sharpened accountability and seeks to focus Ofsted inspections on the four most important aspects of a school's work. It will require Ofqual, the independent regulator, to secure that the standards of English qualifications are comparable with the best in the world, and it will strengthen the powers of the Secretary of State to intervene in poorly performing schools. It will abolish five arm's length bodies to reduce wasteful duplication and will ensure that there is accountability to Parliament, through the Secretary of State, for functions that need to be carried out nationally. Fourthly, the Bill seeks to promote greater fairness in the context of current fiscal constraints. It will give disadvantaged two-year-olds an entitlement to free early-years provision, and for new higher education students it will enable the new student finance arrangements to come into force. There have been a relatively small number of technical and drafting amendments, but their Lordships have also made a number of substantive amendments to improve the Bill, and I shall now explain them. The first four of the amendments made in the other place were all made at the request of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The Bill gives the Secretary of State a new power to make interim prohibition orders. That power was always intended for use in the very rare cases where it is in the public interest to bar an individual from teaching while investigation into their conduct is under way, prior to a final decision. Lords amendments 1 to 4 insert into the Bill the planned safeguards for the use of this power. Therefore, regulations would require the Secretary of State to make an interim prohibition order only where he or she considers it necessary in the public interest to do so. The regulations would also require the Secretary of State to review the order every six months if the teacher concerned applies for such a review. The teacher anonymity provisions in clause 13 are important and sensitive measures. They give teachers protection against the damage to their lives and careers that can result from pre-charge publicity about allegations made by pupils against them. They are one part of the Government's proposals to back teachers' authority in the classroom.