Clause
125
Function
of approving schools transferred to Chief
Inspector
Mr.
Hayes:
I beg to move amendment No. 154, in
clause 125, page 69, line 4, leave
out subsection
(2).
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 155, in clause 127, page 69,
line 33, after ‘Inspector’, insert
‘or the Secretary of
State’.
Mr.
Hayes:
We now have an inordinate length of time to discuss
the amendments. The clock is only at 10 to
3.
The
Chairman:
We have only one hour and eight
minutes.
Mr.
Hayes:
Indeed, Mr. Bayley. I would not want the
whole of it, but an hour or so might be reasonable. The Minister might
feel that that is appropriate when he hears the gist of my
proposal.
Clause 125
amends section 342 of the Education Act 1996 and transfers the function
of approving non-maintained special schools in England from the
Secretary of State to the chief inspector. The amendment would remove
the transfer effected by clause 125(1).
According to the latest
departmental figures that I have, there are 70 non-maintained special
schools in England. According to the Office for National Statistics,
the number of pupils at those schools declined from 5,000 in 2003 to
about 4,720 in
2007.
Jim
Knight:
The hon. Gentleman says that, according to
departmental statistics, there are 70 non-maintained special schools.
In response to an intervention in, I think, the Committee’s
third sitting, I said that there are 74. My aim is to ensure that the
facts are correct, and it may help the Committee to know that I am now
reliably informed—after considerable checking—that the
figure is between the two, at 72. I apologise if the Committee feels
that it was misled at any
point.
Mr.
Hayes:
As that is halfway between the Minister’s
original assertion and my figure, that seems a pretty good deal. It is
a balanced figure, and it is reassuring to know that, with all the
resources available to them,
Ministers can get such figures wrong by two, while my hon. Friend the
Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and I, with limited
resources, were only two out as
well.
Conservative
Members have long had an interest in special educational needs
provision and we have a strong commitment to the principle of special
schools. I first became involved when, as a county councillor in
Nottinghamshire in the 1980s, I was a fierce opponent of the Warnock
report and the Act that followed it—passed by a Conservative
Government I hasten to add. That Act encouraged the wholesale
integration of children with special needs into mainstream schools. I
understand that the present Government remain committed to a policy of
including as many children as possible in mainstream schools. Partly as
a result of that, about 93 special schools have closed since
1997.
Jim
Knight:
I shall not rehearse the statistics that show that
more special schools closed under the previous Government than under
the present one. Such decisions are made by local authorities. It is
not our policy to ensure that as many children as possible are educated
in maintained schools. The hon. Gentleman must understand that we are
opening new special schools all the time and that we want to ensure
that pupils get the provision that is appropriate to their
needs.
Mr.
Hayes:
The Minister might be right to say that there has
been something of a change of heart in recent years. However, when I
held the job of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton as the shadow Schools Minister, I remember fighting a
very fierce battle to ensure that children with special educational
needs were adequately dealt with in the mainstream. Too often, in the
specifics and the quantum of the provision made there, education for
such children is found wanting. I remain concerned that in particular
parts of the country there is an erosion of special educational
provision, which is critical for those children. In some areas there is
a mix of provision and parents can chose between placing their child in
a special school or integrating them into mainstream education; but
that option does not exist in many places in
Britain.
Angela
Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): Something I gleaned from the
many years that I worked in a special school is that there needs to be
flexibility between mainstream schools and special schools. Some pupils
who fail in mainstream schools will flourish in a special school and
there are children in special schools who would like to try to survive
in a mainstream school. There must be flexibility in the system to
provide for those
circumstances.
Mr.
Hayes:
Even mindful of your generosity, Mr.
Bayley, I do not want to stray too far from the specifics before us.
However, my hon. Friend is right because there is often a misconception
that special educational needs are static. In fact, they are dynamic
because of the changing educational circumstances of the child and
because of their difficulties. Their disability may be a dynamic one
and their learning difficulties may change over time. It is therefore
important that there is a lot of fluidity in the system. For some
children, mainstream provision will be more appropriate some of the
time and at other times in their educational life special provision
will be more appropriate. That point is not often made and certainly
not made as well as it was by my hon.
Friend.
I remain
concerned about the erosion of special education. Even Baroness
Warnock, whom I mentioned earlier and whose report in 1978 started the
process of inclusion, said that her policy has backfired, leaving, in
her words, “a disastrous legacy”. According to a survey
for The Times Educational Supplement in 2005, teachers believe
that up to 25,000 children in mainstream education in England and Wales
would be better off in special schools. The survey also found that four
out of five teachers and head teachers favour an end to special school
closures.
That
survey and others also reveal the paucity of training
for most teachers in mainstream schools, although they may well have an
interface with children with special needs. Too frequently, teachers
are ill equipped to deal with the challenges that we offer
them.
3
pm
I have three
excellent special schools in my constituency: the Garth school, the
Priory school and Gosberton House school, of which I am immensely
proud. I make no apologies for, once again, through the amendment,
elevating the importance of special schools and championing the case of
special needs children. I hope that the Minister will say a word to
reassure those of us who believe that the education of children with
special needs must be and deserves to be a high priority for the
Government and this House, and should play a central part in the
provisions of the
Bill.
The
Chairman:
Although, in moving the amendment,
Mr. Hayes made a fairly broad speech, I remind members of
the Committee that the clause relates to the approval of non-maintained
special schools. We cannot have a wide-ranging debate about the
Government’s policy on special schools as a
whole.
Jim
Knight:
I am mindful of your words, Mr. Bayley.
I am mildly frustrated that that constrains me in responding properly
to the hon. Gentleman and reminding him, for example, that funding for
all pupils has increased by £1,440 per pupil since 1997 and that
there has been a real-terms increase in funding for special educational
needs pupils of 66 per cent., or of other such facts such as that
18,000 children are taught in specially resourced provision within or
attached to mainstream schools, and that we have built or re-built more
than 100 new special schools in the past 10 years. However, I shall
address myself to the amendment to stay within the advice that you have
given us, Mr. Bayley, and resist any interventions that
might divert me further into responding generally on special
educational needs
provision.
It may help
to explain to the Committee why we are proposing to
transfer the responsibility for the approval of non-maintained special
schools to the chief inspector. Non-maintained special schools are
inspected on an ongoing basis, under exactly the same arrangements that
apply to maintained special schools. The chief
inspector is responsible for the ongoing inspection of all maintained
and non-maintained special schools. She is also responsible for
determining whether a school meets the required standards for notifying
the Department where intervention action is required, and for
monitoring schools requiring intervention to ensure that improvements
are made and required standards are met. Given the wide and expert role
that Ofsted has built up in relation to special schools, it is entirely
sensible that she should also have responsibility for the approval of
non-maintained special schools under section 342 of the 1996
Act. Our
consultation shows that the main organisation representing
non-maintained special schools agrees with our proposals. The National
Association of Independent and Non-Maintained Special Schools
states:
“Given
that it is current DCSF practice to refer most decisions on
registration and monitoring to Ofsted, the proposal does make logical
sense.”
Amendment
No. 154 would reject the transfer of the general approval function to
the chief inspector, but continue with the transfer of approving
school-specific arrangements. It would split approvals between the
Secretary of State and the chief inspector, creating a much more
complicated system than either that currently in place or that proposed
in this chapter of the Bill. The intention is that the chief inspector
will have responsibility for the general approval where a school meets
the required standards and responsibility for approving the
school-specific arrangements. Those arrangements will put functions
where the expertise exists and ensure that institutions need only deal
with one
body.
Amendment No. 155
would allow regulations made under clause 127 to provide for the
Secretary of State, in addition to the chief inspector, to apply to a
justice of the peace for an order to close a school in an urgent case.
As I have said, the aim of the chapter is to simplify the regulatory
regime, concentrating the powers of intervention, monitoring and
inspection of non-maintained special schools where the expertise
lies.
The amendment
would confuse that process and would be counter-productive for two
reasons. First, a two-tier approach may delay proceedings. The
rationale for having the provision to make emergency orders is to act
quickly. Providing for the Secretary of State to apply for an order
would dilute the clarity of functions that the Bill introduces and
potentially delay an order being made because of confusion as to which
body should act. Secondly, it would be the chief inspector who
possesses the necessary evidence to support an application to the
justice of the peace, and it is therefore logical that she should have
that power on her
own.
Mr.
Hayes:
Clearly, the point of amendment No. 155, which I
did not speak to because I felt it spoke for itself, is that it
provides a degree of parliamentary accountability and scrutiny. How
will that be provided if it is not added to the
Bill?
Jim
Knight:
The chief inspector and Ofsted
are accountable to Parliament through the Select Committee on Children,
Schools and Families. The chief inspector also responds to
parliamentary questions through me, in writing, and I have never
received any complaints,
given that I look at those responses as they go out, as to how that
system operates. I think that there is sufficient accountability for
Her Majesty’s chief inspector, and I hope that the hon.
Gentleman will withdraw the
amendment.
Mr.
Hayes:
The Minister has given a plausible explanation for
the policy, and I was able—with your indulgence, Mr.
Bayley, for which I am grateful—to make another appeal for
special needs education and special schools. With regard to amendment
No. 155, I think that there is an issue about parliamentary
accountability, which the Minister might reflect on and perhaps
consider making some kind of report on to Parliament. On balance, given
what we have heard, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 125 ordered to stand
part of the
Bill.
Clause
126
Right
of sixth-form pupils to opt out of religious
worship
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Hayes:
The explanatory note in relation to clause 126
makes it clear
that
“The 1998
Act as amended by the 2006 Act provides for a sixth-form pupil in a
maintained school to withdraw from religious worship. This clause
obliges the Secretary of State to make regulations to afford the same
rights to sixth-form pupils in non-maintained special
schools.”
Like the
Government, we support the right of someone, post-16, to withdraw from
religious study. After all, it is compatible with other decisions made
by this House on the rights that young people have and are competent to
enjoy at the age of 16.
However, is it not ironic that
the Government believe that a person at 16 or 17 should be empowered to
withdraw from religious study because they are competent to make that
decision, yet do not believe that someone is competent, at that age, to
make a decision on whether they should participate in education per se?
It is the Government’s contention that it is okay for someone at
the age of 16 to say that they do not want to study religion, but not
okay to say that they do not want to study everything else.
That seems to me at best
paradoxical and at worst something altogether less desirable. Surely,
it is a contradiction which strikes at the very heart of the purpose of
the Bill. As the issue of compulsion has informed our discussions from
their beginning until now—almost the end—I could not
resist the temptation to raise the issue again. We all want the ideal
life for young people, do we not? We want a life that is both
“full and reasonable”—
“a life to which the perception and
creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be
felt to be as necessary”
to young people “as their daily
bread.” I finish in those words of William Morris and I am sure
that the Minister will respond in kind.
The
Chairman:
Mr Jim Knight, to respond in his own words or
those of William Morris, as he
pleases.
Jim
Knight:
I think I will use my own words on this occasion
and I apologise to those who were wanting more excerpts from the
“Dictionary of Quotations”, or even the original source,
because we all know that the hon. Gentleman is fond of bringing the
original tomes into Committee and referring to them, as we have seen
throughout our
proceedings.
The
current regulations for non-maintained special schools require
religious worship and religious education to be provided for pupils in
those schools unless their parents express a wish that they not do so.
The Education and Inspections Act 2006 amended legislation for
maintained special schools so that sixth-form pupils in those schools
have the right to withdraw from religious worship. All we are seeking
to do in this clause is to afford those same rights to sixth-form
pupils in non-maintained special schools as exist in maintained special
schools. There is no justification for treating sixth-form pupils
differently just because they attend a different type of special
school.
In making this
change, we are not only achieving consistency but, in respect of the
hon. Gentleman’s point, being consistent in saying that young
people have a duty, that they are of sufficient maturity to be able to
understand and fulfil that duty, and that we therefore similarly
believe that they are of sufficient maturity to make up their own minds
as to whether they want to participate in religious education and
worship. I hope the Committee will support this
clause.
Question put
and agreed to.
Clause 126 ordered to stand
part of the Bill.
Clauses 127 and 128 ordered
to stand part of the Bill.
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