Education Bill

With the leave of the House, I should like to respond to this interesting debate. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), for Bedford (Richard Fuller), for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) for their thoughtful contributions, and I shall respond to as many of their points as possible, in addition to speaking to the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). The hon. Member for Cardiff West asked me to say a little more about Lords amendments 1 to 4, which relate to interim prohibition orders. Since the Bill's introduction, it has included a new power for the Secretary of State to make such orders. Many regulators have a power of that kind for use in the rare cases when it is in the public interest to bar an individual while an investigation is under way, prior to a final decision being made. When the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee scrutinised the Bill, it asked about the safeguards that were going to be put in place. As a matter of policy, we intended the issue of interim suspension orders to be possible only when it was in the public interest, and subject to regular six-monthly reviews when requested. The Committee suggested that those quality safeguards be placed on the face of the Bill. The amendments were debated briefly in Grand Committee before being made in the other place. On extending teacher anonymity, we have to proceed on the basis of evidence in restricting press freedom. I have already cited the findings of our survey. Teachers are much more likely to be the subject of allegations than other staff in schools. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the teachers of 16 to 19-year-olds in further education colleges, but the evidence from the survey shows that just 1% of allegations related to teachers in FE colleges, compared with 23% relating to school teachers. The NASUWT's records show that, in the past 10 complete years, it has provided a solicitor in relation to 1,592 cases of allegations against teachers, of which 1,439 resulted in no further action being taken. The survey related to local authority designated officers—LADOs—and the total number of allegations of abuse that were referred to LADOs in the 116 local authorities that responded to the survey was 12,086, of which 2,827, or 23%, related to teachers. Of those, allegations of abuse related to 0.6% of the teaching profession as a whole. That means that there are 1.5 times as many allegations against teachers as against support staff, which had a figure of 0.4% of the total non-teaching population. On the basis of that survey, I believe that we have got this measure right. I say with all due respect to my hon. Friends that we must not let the best become the enemy of the good. I have heard Members on all sides of the debate today pushing to extend the measure to more staff, and not to extend it to teachers because of the effect that it has on them, but I think that we have got it just about right. The hon. Member for Cardiff West cited the article by the Prime Minister in The Daily Telegraph today. I would like to quote it more fully. My right hon. Friend stated that"““we remain relentless about combating entrenched failure. We will soon have taken over more failing schools with new academies than in the whole eight years of the programme under Labour. But it's just as important to tackle those all over the country content to muddle through—places where respectable results and a decent local reputation mask a failure to meet potential. Children who did well in primary school but who lose momentum. Early promise fades. This is the hidden crisis in our schools—in prosperous shires and market towns just as much as the inner cities.””"