Mr.
Laws: It would be tempting to breeze past this clause,
particularly at this early hour. However, I would like to ask the
Minister for more information, as the clause is dealt with rather
sketchily. The explanatory notes
state: “The
Local Commissioner will be able to consider complaints relating to the
National Curriculum where it affects an individual pupil. Previously,
local education authorities had a role in the complaints process under
section 409 of the Education Act 1996 and paragraphs 6(3) and (4) of
Schedule 1 of the Education Act
1996”— no
doubt we were all aware of that. Those sections have been repealed so
that complainants are able to approach the local commissioner under the
new scheme. Why has the Minister decided to shift from the existing
mechanism of complaints to the new one, given that in respect of
exclusions, he has said that he does not propose to make any
changes to the existing appeal and complaints mechanism?
I would like
to probe further what the explanatory notes to clause 208 mean when
they state that the local commissioner will be able to consider
complaints that relate to the national curriculum where it affects an
individual pupil. What types of complaints are likely to be acceptable,
and what complaints have been made in respect of this to the Secretary
of State over the past few years? Does the Minister have any indication
of the numbers of complaints that have been
made?
Jim
Knight: It is sensible to align the current complaints
handling system as much as possible when introducing the commissioner.
Under current arrangements, the local authority has a role in
considering complaints about a school’s curriculum, Christian
collective worship, attendance at Sunday school and exemptions from
non-curricular sex education. However, local authorities have no legal
obligation to consider any other type of complaint.
That system
does not always work well. There are up to three stages for parents to
go through from the governing body to the local authority and the
Secretary of State. That process can often be lengthy and frustrating
for all concerned. In exempting local authorities from considering
those types of complaints, the new arrangements will introduce a more
streamlined and coherent system.
Mr.
Laws: I am not entirely convinced by that explanation. In
our view, the right of appeal should be to the local authority, which
would remove the Minister’s concerns about an additional tier of
bureaucracy involving the Secretary of State. The Minister was a little
sketchy about concerns surrounding the national curriculum that relate
to one pupil. He gave us no statistics about the number of complaints
that have been received in that area over the last five years. That
might be another issue on which he would like to write to the
Committee. Question
put and agreed to.
Clause
208, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
209Interpretation
of Chapter
2 Amendment
made: 537, in
clause 209, page 120, line 10, at
end insert— ‘“the
Commission” has the meaning given by section [Parental
complaints: arrangements etc. to be made by
Commission](1);’.—(Jim
Knight.) This
amendment provides for “the Commission” in Chapter 2 of
Part 10 to have the meaning given in new clause
27. Clause
209, as amended, ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
210Interim
statements Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): I beg to
move amendment 79, in clause 210, page 120,
line 28, at end
insert— ‘(2A) The Chief
Inspector may only make an interim statement about a school in England
that has provision for children with special educational needs if it
has been assessed by an inspector who has training and expertise in
special educational needs and has properly engaged with such pupils at
that school.’.
This clause
introduces the new light-touch health check in circumstances in which
Ofsted has decided not to have a more frequent regular inspection of a
school because it is judged by Ofsted to be good or outstanding. Ofsted
published a consultation document in May 2008 that focused on
improvements and proposals for maintained school inspections from
September 2009. The document proposed changes to the way in which
Ofsted conducted inspections of schools and how frequently it conducted
them. It says that
inspections “will
be more tailored to the needs of the school. All schools judged to be
satisfactory or inadequate in their most recent full inspection will be
inspected within 3 years; in general, schools judged good or
outstanding will be inspected within 6 years, although one
‘health check’ report will be published in the
intervening
years.” The
purpose of the clause, therefore, is to change the legislation to
enable Ofsted to conduct a health check only, instead of the regular
three-yearly inspection. The amendment would introduce an additional
provision to ensure that the chief inspector of schools may make an
interim statement about a school that has provision for pupils with
special educational needs only if it has first been assessed by an
inspector who is trained in assessing special educational needs. The
amendment also stipulates that the inspector must have properly engaged
with pupils at the school as part of the
assessment. The
light-touch inspections system raises concerns that inspectors can do a
lot of their inspecting via desktop data, that they will rarely see the
school, and that they will often not sit in classrooms. Inspectors
could, therefore, inspect a school without coming across any children
with special educational needs, particularly if it was a small
specialised unit and the inspectors were there for only a couple of
days and spent much of that time analysing data. Care must be taken so
that schools do not become subject to only the health check, rather
than their three-yearly inspection, in circumstances in which the
inspector has not specifically inspected the SEN provision. The
inspector should be properly trained and experienced in that
provision.
That is the
view of the National Deaf Children’s Society, which said that it
would welcome assurances from the Government that a school with
provision for children with SEN will not be granted an interim
statement or school health check unless provision has been assessed by
an inspector with training and expertise in SEN. It wanted to see that
the inspector had properly engaged with SEN pupils at that
school. I
would like to hear the Minister’s response to this important
amendment that would ensure that we were inspecting the SEN provisions
in schools and not simply doing a high-level inspection that could
often overlook important
details.
Mr.
Laws: I do not need to add much to the comments made by
the hon. Gentleman in relation to the amendment—[ Hon.
Members: “Hurray!”] If I am tempted by the
usual channels, I might speak for slightly
longer. I
would merely like to put on the record our strong support for the
amendment. If a fair evaluation is to be made of such schools, it is
important that the elements of protection and quality assurance
contained in amendment 79 are present.
Jim
Knight: For reasons that I shall explain, the amendment is
not appropriate. It is right that the progress of pupils with special
educational needs is an important consideration in the new school
inspection arrangement, and I can assure hon. Members that it will be.
In fact, a focus on the progress of different groups of
pupils—especially vulnerable pupils—will lie at the heart
of the new arrangements. All inspectors—whether they are those
from Her Majesty’s inspectorate or additional inspectors
employed by Ofsted’s contractors—will receive training in
inspecting SEN under the new arrangements. There will be a specific
judgment on the learning and progress of pupils with SEN in every
school inspection
report. If
a school is judged inadequate in that respect, there will be real
consequences. A school will not be judged as good or outstanding
overall—in fact, it would be highly unlikely that a school would
be judged good overall—if progress for SEN pupils is anything
less than good. That is important because only good and outstanding
schools will be eligible for a health check report at the three-year
point, and only when Ofsted’s annual risk assessment shows that
a school is maintaining or improving its level of performance will a
health check report be issued, as opposed to an inspection being
carried
out. The
annual risk assessment will apply to all schools and will be used to
determine the scheduling of inspections within the cycle. Performance
data on the progress of SEN pupils will form part of that assessment
and a decline in the performance of pupils with SEN could lead to a
school being inspected earlier in the cycle. The fundamental point is
that it is important to remember that the health check report is not an
inspection report. Having an expert on SEN put together the health
check report for a school would not make a material difference to the
outcome because the report will be based on performance and other data,
which all inspectors should be able to interpret. There is no need for
additional expertise for an inspector to analyse data and
produce a
report.
Mr.
Gibb: I am not sure whether the Minister has understood
the amendment correctly. It is not a matter of whether the health check
is carried out by an inspector who is properly qualified in SEN. The
issue is whether the chief inspector is making the decision only to
have an interim health check based on an inspection that has been
carried out by an inspector who is properly trained in dealing with
SEN.
Jim
Knight: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is taking note
of what I have said, which was that where inspectors are making a
judgment, they have to be properly trained in SEN matters. SEN will be
an important part of that. Where they are analysing data, it is clearly
not such an
issue. I
assure the hon. Gentleman that properly engaging with pupils at the
school will be an even more important aspect of the inspection process
than it currently is. In particular, Ofsted is developing a pupil
questionnaire that it will use to seek views from all pupils at the
start of an inspection. Clearly, it would not be appropriate for
inspectors to engage directly with pupils at a school as part of
putting together a health check report—that engagement could
happen only as part of an inspection visit. In the context of a health
check, such a visit would defeat its object, which is to defer
inspection in recognition
of good performance. In light of those clarifications and assurances, I
hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his
amendment. Mr.
Gibb: I am afraid that those assurances do not tally with
the wording of the amendment, which
is: “The
Chief Inspector may only make an interim statement about a school in
England that has provision for children with special educational needs
if it has been assessed by an inspector who has training and expertise
in special educational needs and has properly engaged with such pupils
at that
school.” That
is the point that concerns the National Deaf Children’s Society.
It wants to be sure that when a mainstream school with a unit for
children with special educational needs has been categorised as good or
outstanding, the inspector makes that judgment based on an assessment
that took into account the quality of the SEN provision. I take the
Minister’s point that in coming to that overall conclusion, the
inspector will have assessed the unit, but I am not convinced that the
inspectors carrying out the inspections will always be trained in
dealing with the schools’ specific special educational needs.
Deafness, for instance, is a low-incidence special educational
need.
2
am Given
how inspections are carried out under the light-touch inspection
regime, I suspect that inspectors will engage very little with pupils
in schools. If the number of pupils with special educational needs at a
school is small, it is even less likely that the inspector will engage
with them. In light of that, unless the Minister wants to respond, I
would like to test the Committee’s opinion of amendment
79. Question
put, That the amendment be made.
The
Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes
8.
Division
No.
41] Question
accordingly negatived.
Mr.
Laws: I beg to move amendment 150, in clause 210,
page 121, line 33, after ‘school’,
insert ‘and to the local education
authority.’.
Amendment 150
is another important amendment to clause 210. It is necessary to step
back a moment and to record the significance of the clause, which will
insert three new provisions into the Education Act 2005 relating to the
powers of the chief inspector and associated duties to schools.
Proposed new section 10A of the 2005 Act, as we have
discussed, will enable the chief inspector to publish an interim
statement, commonly known as a health check, when the chief inspector
considers that a school’s performance is such that it is
appropriate to defer a routine inspection of the school for at least a
year. In other words, it is an important statement of oversight in
relation to individual schools’
performance. The statement must set out the chief inspector’s
opinion that inspection can be deferred and the reasons for that
opinion. Mr.
Simon: I just want to give the hon. Gentleman the
opportunity, for the record, to correct the impression that might be
created by his simply reading out the Bill that he is in any way
filibustering or deliberately wasting
time.
The
Chairman: Order. I am the judge of whether people are in
order in this Committee. To suggest that the hon. Member for Yeovil is
filibustering and not being called to book by the Chair is to criticise
the Chair. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not go down that
route.
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