Before the Minister responds, perhaps I may say how pleased I am to be reminded of the weight that the Government are placing on professional judgment. I was pleased to read in the Grand Committee proceedings and in the media that they are introducing this new college for school teachers, which will recruit, train and retain the very best teachers to send out to the schools that need them most. That sort of initiative is very welcome. I also welcome the Government’s drive to build trust in head teachers, recognise their expertise and give them as much authority as possible. My concern is that, because of the way in which the Government have set this up, they are putting huge pressures on head teachers to perform in a certain kind of way—which is to have good academic performance so that one will do well as a head teacher if one jumps through certain hoops, which is what head teachers will try to do. That distorts what they might do.
For instance, yesterday the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, organised a meeting with children from pupil referral units and hospital schools. We learned that a key issue for those young people is reintegration into mainstream education after their healthcare is completed, or whatever else it might be. A disincentive on the part of head teachers to accept them is that they are not likely to do so well academically. A young boy or girl coming out of hospital who has been away from school for quite some time is not likely to perform as well academically and there might be some hesitation on the part of the head teacher to take them back. I warn the Minister that I may well table an amendment at the next stage of the Bill to help us deal with the particular issue of children who have been out of school for some time and suggest that their data should be excluded from the performance statistics. A head teacher should not have to worry that she will be seen as failing because of a child who
has been out of school and is not achieving academically as well as the others. As I say, I may well bring forward an amendment on that.
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I welcome what the Government are doing in terms of respecting and listening to head teachers, but I am worried that there might be a too centralised and too heavy-handed emphasis on academic attainment. On that, I should perhaps clarify something I said earlier, which is the need to allow young people in care to fail and fail and fail again. That seems quite controversial, but what I mean to say—I am thinking of all children, not just children in care but adolescents as well—is that they should be allowed to fail and fail again and they should not feel too badly about it, rather they should be given another opportunity to succeed. I suppose the worry is that one will put too much pressure on them to achieve at a certain age and at a certain time in their development, which may turn them off education. I think a distinction between us and other nations is that we do not easily allow children to retake a year if they are not doing well. But I suspect that we probably should allow children to do as well as they can.
Again, this comes down to the professionalism of our teachers and devolving power down to them. Our teachers should know how hard to push a child in order to help them excel, but know also when to step back and realise when a child is struggling. They should let them do as well as they can at the time and then give them another opportunity the following year. As I say, some young people in care can excel early on but many may do so later. We just have to be sure that we give them chance after chance after chance to do well when they are ready to do so.
I am worried about the further central push on academic attainment which this Bill will put on head teachers. I am grateful to the Minister for his response.