Clause
60
Inspection
Mr.
Hayes:
I beg to move amendment No. 99, in
clause 60, page 32, line 24, after
‘State’, insert
‘or on request
by at least 50 pupils, students or parents resident in the local
authority
area’.
Clause
60 places a duty on the chief inspector to inspect and report on
Connexions services
“when
requested to do so by the Secretary of
State”.
As the House of
Lords inquiry into the apprenticeship system found last year, Ofsted,
which previously inspected Connexions partnerships, has not had the
power to inspect Connexions since 2004 except as part of a wider joint
area review. In previous debates, I have quoted the report by the House
of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs entitled
“Apprenticeship: a key route to skill”, which
acknowledged that there had been no proper oversight of Connexions by
Ofsted since
2004.
Amendment 99
would ensure that, if local people are concerned about the quality of
the Connexions service in their area, they can trigger an inspection by
the Chief inspector. It would make the process of inspection responsive
to local needs. In responding to the amendment, will the Minister
explain the process which would lead the Secretary of State to insist
on an inspection under the Bill as drafted? Doubts about the inspection
machinery for Connexions underlie the amendment. The Minister has
spoken a great deal about advice and guidance this morning, because
that is the area of the Bill with which we are dealing. Indeed, he has
spoken confidently about the role of Connexions in giving that advice
and guidance. However, if that role is to be assured, an appropriate
inspections regime must be in place, and we are not confident that that
is the case.
Jim
Knight:
The clause provides that Her Majesty’s
chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills
must inspect and report on matters concerning Connexions services if
requested to do so by the Secretary of State or at any other time she
thinks fit. The amendment proposes that if at least 50 pupils, students
or parents resident in a local authority request an investigation, the
chief inspector would be under a duty to conduct one. I reassure the
Committee that individuals or groups are free to petition the Secretary
of State or Her Majesty’s chief inspector to undertake
inspections. Such petitions are taken very seriously by both parties.
Indeed, one complaint that identifies a significant risk to the
well-being of young people is all that is needed under the current
regime.
Moreover, in
performing her functions, Her Majesty’s chief inspector is under
a general duty to encourage user-focused services. She must have regard
to views expressed by service users and parents. It must be for the
benefit of children and employers that services are inspected, and
their levels of satisfaction must be taken into account. Those
provisions are set out in section 119 of the Education Inspections Act
2006. They apply to all of the functions of Her Majesty’s chief
inspector and will therefore apply to inspections under the
clause.
Mr.
Hayes:
Why is the current regime not working? According to
the House of Lords inquiry, an inspection of Connexions has not taken
place since 2004. Is that
right?
Jim
Knight:
Between autumn 2002 and autumn 2004, Ofsted
carried out full inspections of 28 Connexions partnerships. It is worth
saying that of those partnerships, 89 per cent. were rated as
satisfactory or better, and 60 per cent. as good or better. There have
been no further inspections focused solely on Connexions partnerships.
Instead, from September 2005, Ofsted, along with other inspectorates,
has undertaken holistic joint area reviews—known in the trade as
JARs—of services for children and young people in a local
authority area. JARs replace the separate inspections of local
education authorities, social services, Connexions services and the
provision for students aged 14 to
19.
The programme of
JARs will end in late 2008, and from next year, most inspections of
area-level services will be bespoke to an area and triggered by a
multi-inspectorate annual comprehensive area
assessment—CAA—led by the Audit Commission and including
Ofsted. Inspectorates are currently working up arrangements for the
CAA. The first consultation on principles will end this month, and the
inspectorates plan to consult on details in summer 2008. That is the
normal scenario that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings
asked about in respect of how the Secretary of State will instruct the
chief inspector to carry out inspections of Connexions. That will be
rolled into the CAA
process.
The clause
provides for a flexible and responsive system that allows the views of
service users to be taken into account and that can target inspections
to the level of risk. I do not believe that using a fixed number of
requests as a trigger for an inspection is the best way to use
inspection resources. More importantly, that would risk sending the
message that the receipt of fewer than 50 requests, however serious
they are, is not significant. I hope that in the light of that
compelling reasoning, the reasonable hon. Member for South Holland and
The Deepings will withdraw the
amendment.
12.15
pm
Mr.
Hayes:
I am not sure that the Minister’s reasoning
was as compelling as he would have us believe, but I will not press the
amendment. I have no wish to inconvenience the Committee unduly, but we
must get the issue of inspection right. I am not sure that JARs are the
best mechanism for dealing with Connexions inspections, and I hope that
the Minister will reflect again on how we can build a better, more
responsive protocol for the inspection of careers advice and guidance in
particular, as that will be critical to the working of the Bill.
Nevertheless, the Minister’s reasoning was just compelling
enough to encourage me, and I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw
the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Mr.
Hayes:
I beg to move amendment No. 43, in
clause 60, page 32, line 27, at
end insert—
‘(1A) Her
Majesty’s Chief Inspector must, in exercising his functions in
subsection (1), inspect any support services provided and make an
assessment of whether such services facilitate the effective
participation of persons belonging in a local authority area to whom
this Part applies and who have special educational
needs.’.
The
Connexions service plays a vital role in helping young people with
special educational needs to make the transition from education to
employment. I have emphasised how significant we believe the challenge
is. There are certainly problems with how many young people with
special educational needs secure appropriate employment. There are some
great success stories, which need to be championed and trumpeted.
However, as an academic study in 2003 found, there are significant
problems with the service. That report
concluded:
“The
findings from this project are consistent with other studies in
highlighting the unsatisfactory nature of much transition planning for
young people with learning difficulties...we remain concerned
that, despite efforts to stimulate interest, work and employment hardly
featured. Raising expectations and belief in young people and their
families about work must become much more central to the educational
and the Connexions task. This must be matched by close working between
PAs and Careers Advisors in the Connexions service plus the development
links with local supported employment agencies—where they
exist.”
Amendment
No. 43 specifies that inspection of the Connexions service should
include the inspection of facilities and services for young people with
special educational needs. It therefore allows a broader consideration
than my previous amendment, which applied only to people with visual
impairment. That academic report—“Connecting with
Connexions: the role of the Personal Adviser with young people with
special educational and support needs”, by Bob Grove PhD and
Alison Giraud-Saunders—highlighted examples of good practice. My
hon. Friend the Member for Upminster and I have both mentioned the ROSE
project, the supported employment project in her area that does exactly
the job—described as vital in the report I quoted—on the
transition from education to employment with appropriate advice and,
where necessary, support.
The situation that prevails in
my hon. Friend’s area is not, however, universally enjoyed.
There are insufficient high-quality supported employment opportunities
for young people with special educational needs. As that academic study
identified, that is partly because employment is not given sufficient
priority in the guidance that young people with SEN are offered. To
guarantee that it is given greater priority, the Bill must state that
the Connexions inspection should look closely at the service’s
success in providing such advice to people with SEN. This is another
matter about which members on both sides of
the Committee have strong feelings, and I feel particularly strongly
about it. The Minister will know that people with SEN figure largely in
the group he is determined to bring back into learning, and thus
employment, because people with such needs clearly do not always do
best under the system at the moment. At the age of 16, they are often
virtually abandoned as far as their employment opportunities are
concerned. I do not want to exaggerate the difference between us, but I
urge the Minister to pay appropriate attention to this issue by
demonstrating in his response to the amendment that the Government are
determined that SEN young people should have just the same
opportunities as their contemporaries whenever
possible.
Jim
Knight:
I should like to reassure the hon. Member for
South Holland and The Deepings that we, too, take very seriously the
provision of appropriate Connexions services for young people with
learning difficulties and disabilities. The duty on a local education
authority proposed in clause 54 is to make services available to all
young people between 13 and 19, and for young people with special
educational needs between 13 and 24. Young people with special
educational needs are therefore implicitly and explicitly
included.
The quality
standards for information, advice and guidance will be the centrepiece
of the guidance on Connexions services that we will issue to local
education authorities under clause 54(4)(b). They require that
additional and sustained guidance and support is provided to young
people with special needs or learning difficulties or disabilities.
Clause 60 allows Her Majesty’s chief inspector to target an
inspection on the provision of services for a particular part of the
Connexions client group. The clause also allows the Secretary of State
to target a request for an inspection in a similar fashion.
Crucially—I know that the hon. Gentleman would not be satisfied
with the word, “allows”, as he wants something more
concrete than a power and closer to a duty—all assessments and
inspections of children’s services are governed by the statutory
framework for inspection of children’s services, under section
21 of the Children Act
2004.
The framework
sets out 36 judgments which inspectors will seek to make. Five of the
36 judgments relate to children and young people with learning
difficulties or disabilities. The framework will apply to local
authority Connexions services inspected under clause 60. That being the
case, I do not consider that we need to make an additional specific
reference in the clause to make that
possible.
Mr.
Gibb:
The Minister needs to give an assurance to outside
bodies as well as the Committee. For example, TreeHouse has written to
the Committee:
“In order to ensure that
there is effective monitoring of the provisions for those young people
with SEN we would like to see a requirement for Her
Majesty’s...Inspector...to have available SEN
specialist inspectors...We believe that such a focus would help to
drive up standards.”
The
Minister needs to give an assurance to TreeHouse, as well as to
Committee members.
Jim
Knight:
Certainly, in the words that I have just uttered I
sought to reassure organisations such as TreeHouse about the provision.
I take seriously its request that people with specialist skills should
undertake SEN inspections, although I do not think that that is the
subject of the
amendment.
Mr.
Hayes:
Will the Minister offer further reassurance to the
Opposition and interested agencies by providing an assessment of how
many NEETs are people with special educational needs? Will he give us a
feel for the modelling that the Government have done as to how the Bill
will apply specifically to people with SEN? Encouraging people to
participate is one thing, but dealing with their needs is another.
Unless they both happen, we are not going to deal with concerns such as
those that my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
raised.
Jim
Knight:
I do not have to hand or to the forefront of my
mind the proportion of NEETs who learning difficulties or disabilities.
However, if that information comes to me at any point, obviously I will
pass it on to the hon. Gentleman and to the
Committee.
It is
Government policy that inspection activities should be proportionate to
risk. Specifying the focus of an inspection in that way would act
against the policy and against our aims of reducing the regulatory
burden. Clearly, there are circumstances when we might want Ofsted to
carry out a specific inspection, and we have the powers to do that.
Those inspections would be based on risk attached to information or to
concerns about a particular service. However, to have the attitude that
there is a general risk is contrary to the approach of specifying such
matters through the overarching framework, which is the right way
forward. May I tell the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings
that what he proposes in the amendment is already possible, as it is
addressed in the overarching framework of children’s services?
Therefore, while I agree with the sentiment of the amendment, it is not
necessary and I hope that he will withdraw
it.
Mr.
Hayes:
I am not entirely happy with what the Minister told
us. The truth is that Ofsted does not inspect Connexions, or at least
not very often—not since 2004. The notion that the existing
regime is adequate in that regard is, at best, questionable. Similarly,
I am not sure that the Government have given sufficient consideration
in the Bill to people with special educational needs, not just in terms
of inspection, but more generally. The Minister would do the Committee
a service if he came back with an analysis of SEN in relation to NEETs
and another detailed analysis of SEN in relation to the Bill’s
provisions. The challenge is to bring into training and employment a
much greater of proportion of people with special educational needs
than are there at the moment. Such a challenge will only be met if we
put the right advice and support in place. It is out there, in some
places, as I said, but there are massive gaps in
provision.
Jim
Knight:
The hon. Gentleman believes that we have not paid
sufficient attention to people with special educational needs.
Throughout the Committee sittings,
I have said time and again that we want every young person to be able to
participate and that we need to configure services by local authorities
and others to ensure that everyone, regardless of their needs, has the
opportunity to do so. That is precisely what we want to achieve with
the Bill: the galvanising effect to offer appropriate services for
every single young person in this country, regardless of special
educational
needs.
12.30
pm
Mr.
Hayes:
I acknowledge that the Minister has made it
clear that he wants everyone to participate—he would hardly
introduce a Bill that insisted on universal participation if he did not
want everyone to be involved. However, I am arguing that to get
everyone to participate, particularly those with special educational
needs, will be a very big mountain. To climb it, we have to put into
place high-quality advice and support for people with the greatest
needs, including those with learning difficulties and other
disabilities.
Jim
Knight:
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his
generosity in giving way. If he wishes to know how seriously we take
this, it might help him to know that the annual destination survey by
Connexions on the activities of young people on 1 November of the year
in which they completed year 11 shows that in 2005, about 25 per cent.
of young people with special educational needs whose destinations were
known were not in education or training, 9.2 per cent of them being
employed, and 15.2 per cent. being unemployed. Support for transition
was one of the issues highlighted in the “Aiming High for
Disabled Children: Better Support for Families” report of 2006,
and there is a £19 million transition support programme for
those young
people.
Mr.
Hayes:
That is a helpful addition to our considerations. I
will not press the matter to a vote, but I urge the Minister to look
again at the issue of inspection, particularly with regard to special
educational needs. I think that we underestimate at our peril the scale
of the peak that we must surmount. We will short-change people with
special educational needs unless we put the right systems in place to
allow them to achieve their potential, just like other young people. I
am determined to continue to make that case during the passage of the
Bill by defending and advancing those young people’s interests,
but at this juncture I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Mr.
Gibb:
I beg to move amendment No. 101, in
clause 60, page 32, line 34, at
end insert ‘and the quality of such
services.’.
It
is a pleasure to take a full part in the Committee’s
proceedings, having been the bag man for my hon. Friend the Member for
South Holland and The Deepings for the past two hours. Clause 60
requires the inspector to conduct an inspection of Connexions when she
thinks fit and when the Secretary of State requires her to do so.
Subsection (3) states:
“A reference in
subsection (1) to the provision of services includes a reference to the
management and use of resources in providing
services.”
It does not
say anything about the quality of the service, or that the inspector
should inspect the services in relation to quality, so the amendment
would add the phrase,
“and the quality of such
services”,
to the end of
subsection (3). The Government want Connexions to be a high-quality
service, but there are problems, as my hon. Friend the Member for South
Holland and The Deepings has highlighted, given that there has not been
an inspection of Connexions by Ofsted since 2004. “Quality
Standards for Young People’s Information Advice and
Guidance”, which has been published by the Minister’s
Department, states:
“Staff providing
information, advice and guidance services”
should be
“appropriately qualified, work to
relevant professional standards and receive continuing professional
development.”
It states
that staff should have the
“skills, knowledge and
qualifications to deliver a high quality
service”.
They should be
able to
“deliver
information, advice and guidance to diverse client
groups”
and
“know
where to access impartial specialist
advice.”
Guidance has
therefore been published requiring quality services to be provided. It
is important that the legislation require the chief inspector to have
regard to the quality of the service, given the problems that have
arisen in the past, and that there is a specific requirement that she
have regard to the quality of provision set out in the
legislation.
Jim
Knight:
As we have heard, the amendment seeks to include
in the clause the words, “quality of...services”, as
that applies to the scope of inspections. I can understand the concerns
of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, because one does
not see the word, “quality”, when one reads the clause.
However, as I will explain, the amendment is unnecessary because
quality is specified in other pieces of
legislation.
The hon.
Gentleman has repeated the notion that there has been no inspection of
Connexions since 2004. As I think I have set out to the Committee,
there have been inspections of Connexions services since 2004, but not
a specific inspection, as those inspections have been wrapped up in
other local authority inspections. However, it would be wrong for
anyone reading the record to be led into thinking that there has been
no inspection since 2004. Section 118 of the Education and Inspections
Act 2006 provides that the chief inspector has the general duty of
keeping the Secretary of State informed about the quality of services
within her remit, as well as improvements in the quality of such
services. Additionally, section 119 of the 2006 Act sets out that the
chief inspector is to perform her functions for general purposes. That
includes encouraging the improvement of activities within the chief
inspector’s remit, and the carrying on of such
activities in a user-focused fashion, both of which are measures of the
quality of
services. Those
purposes will apply to inspections under clause 60 in the same way that
they do to all the chief inspector’s existing functions. The
amendment could have the undesirable consequence of bringing into
question the issue whether other inspections should focus on the
quality of services being inspected if that function is specified.
Accordingly, I invite the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the
amendment.
Mr.
Gibb:
I am assured by those words, Mr. Bayley.
It is good to have them on record, and I therefore beg to ask leave to
withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Clause
60
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
s
63
and 64
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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