Mr.
Coaker: To be fair, my hon. Friend is right to caution us
against what might happen. He is right to point out that it is
important that a wide range of bodies are consulted. My
intention—I will read it into the record—is that all the
people and bodies listed in the amendment are exactly the sort that I
would expect to be consulted on any pupil and parent guarantee, so I do
not think that the amendment is necessary.
The
hon. Gentleman thinks that there are drafting problems and issues with
which people might disagree, including many of the bodies that he
included on the list. That is the whole purpose of the consultation. It
is a 12-week consultation that started in the middle of January. After
12 weeks, people will come back to us with their views on the
guarantees to ensure that the consultation is meaningful rather than
just being one consultation followed by another. The hon. Gentleman is
right that we should consult with a wide range of bodies. Consultation
improves Government policy. Our current consultation is a real one, so
I do not see any need for his group of amendments. I hope that with
those reassurances he will withdraw his
amendments.
Mr.
Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for his response.
Perhaps I will get half or one third of a point for trying.
Nevertheless, I will make the same point as the hon. Member for
Wolverhampton, North-East, albeit in a different way. There is a great
difference between one Government wanting to consult in a particular
way and future Governments wanting to consult in the same
way.
There is also
a big difference between two phrases that the Minister used in relation
to the consultation. At the start of his reply, he said that the
Government will consult with the list of bodies; later, in response to
the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, he said that he would
expect the Government to consult with the bodies on the list. There can
be a big difference between an expectation and what happens in reality.
However, it has at least been put on record that the Minister accepts
that those bodies—I assume that that includes the departmental
Select Committee—should be consulted.
I regret that
consultation on pupil and parent guarantees will not be re-opened after
the Bill is enacted because the existing guarantees are very deficient
and will be difficult to implement, but I accept that I have not
changed the Minister’s
mind.
Mr.
Coaker: The results of the consultation will be taken into
account and I suspect that there will be changes to the document on the
basis of the representations that we receive. The point of a
consultation exercise is to listen to what people say and to improve
the
documentation.
Mr.
Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification.
Will he inform the Committee of the time scale for completion of the
consultation, when we can expect to know the results and whether they
will become available while we are scrutinising the
Bill?
Mr.
Coaker: Consultation began on 11 January and will run for
a standard 12-week period. It will conclude at the end of March. It is
difficult to say precisely when the results of the consultation will be
published, and what will
happen. 1.15
pm
Mr.
Laws: I am grateful to the Minister, but his answer
underlines the fact that we are debating an important part of a
far-reaching Bill, yet do not understand what the guarantees will
comprise. We shall probably
end up with the results of the consultation not even being supplied to
Parliament before the general election. If Parliament is dissolved by
the time the consultation has finished, presumably the results will not
be announced until after the election. We are being expected to
legislate on the basis of guarantees that we do not understand. That is
regrettable and it broadens our worries about clause 1 and the parent
and pupil guarantees. Having made tiny progress—slightly less
than I had hoped for—I shall not press the amendment to a
Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Clause
2 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
3Complaints
relating to pupil and parent
guarantees Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill. Mr.
Gibb: I have no comments to make other than to request
that the Minister introduce the
clause.
Mr.
Coaker: I apologise to the Committee—I did not
realise it wanted me to say something as a starting point for the
clause. The
clause provides for the system of redress that supports pupil and
parent guarantees by putting the guarantees within the scope of the
parental complaints service created under the ASCL Act 2009. If pupils
at maintained schools or their parents consider that they are not
receiving an element of the pupil and parent guarantee, and have not
been able to resolve the problem with the school and governing body,
they will be able to ask the local government ombudsman to investigate.
As the provisions of pupil and parent guarantees are so important, it
is our expectation that schools and local authorities will take
seriously their legal responsibilities to deliver the guarantees, and
we expect almost all complaints to be resolved at school level, as at
present. By
their very existence, the guarantees will drive improvements and
schools will know what is expected of them. However, when a school or
local authority does not deliver an entitlement to a child or parent, a
guarantee without the possibility of redress is no guarantee at all.
Pupils at maintained schools and their parents will already be able to
complain about an act or omission by the governing body to fulfil a
guarantee requirement by virtue of the ASCL Act complaints system. The
clause will extend the complaints process to allow pupils and parents
to complain about an injustice sustained by a pupil or parent as a
consequence of a head teacher’s failure to comply with a
requirement imposed by the pupil and parent
guarantee. The
clause amends the Local Government Act 1974 so that pupils at
maintained schools and their parents can make complaints about local
authorities in connection with any functions they might have under the
guarantees. As a consequence, a parent or pupil at a maintained school
can make complaints to the local government ombudsman when there is an
injustice to them resulting from a failure by the head teacher,
governing body or local authority to comply with the requirement of the
guarantees. The ombudsman will have the power to investigate complaints
and reports, and make
recommendations. It
is clear from our debates on clause 1 that redress is an important part
of the guarantee
system. Question
put and agreed
to. Clause
3 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
4Home-school
agreements for each
pupil
Mr.
Laws: I beg to move amendment 132, in
clause 4, page 5, line 33, leave
out subsection (3) and
insert— ‘(3) The head
teacher may not provide different parents of the same pupil with
different home-school
agreements.’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment 44, in clause 4, page 5, leave
out lines 33 to
35.
Mr.
Laws: Clause 4 takes us back to the debate on home-school
agreements, which we touched on in Tuesday afternoon’s sitting.
Because we had quite a wide-ranging debate, and because I assumed we
would have a brief stand part debate, I will restrict my comments to
amendment 132 and amendment 44, which was tabled by the hon. Member for
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. The amendments have a similar effect.
They question whether it is really necessary for head teachers to have
the discretion to provide different parents of the same pupil with
different home-school agreements. I accept the spirit of much of what
was said previously—we believe that schools and head teachers
should have as much flexibility and freedom as possible. Our criticism
of home-school agreements concerns central prescription and head
teachers being told to do things even if they do not want
to. Amendment
132 is a probing amendment. It invites the Minister to tell us under
what circumstances he thinks it would be sensible for head teachers to
take the time and energy to provide different parents of the same pupil
with different home-school agreements. It tests out, in the interests
of parents, whether there is a clear benefit in two parents of one
child being required to sign up to different agreements. Depending on
the nature of the differences, parents who expect equality of treatment
might feel aggrieved to discover that there are two separate
home-school agreements. I want to hear from the Minister whether there
is a clear justification for that particular freedom
in the
Bill.
Mr.
Gibb: Clause 4 replaces section 110 of the School
Standards and Framework Act 1998 with new section 109A.
Section 110 is left to apply to Wales only, which is nice for them
because new section 109A changes the whole nature of home-school
agreements, though not in a good way. I have rehearsed the arguments
about the lack of effectiveness of home-school agreements, which is
acknowledged by the Government, and I do not intend to rehearse them
again now. The lack of effectiveness could be remedied by making the
signing of a home-school agreement a condition of admission to the
school. Again, I do not want to go over that argument.
Amendment 44
removes subsection (3) from the Bill. That subsection
says: “Where
the head teacher considers it appropriate to do so, the head teacher
may provide different parents of the same pupil with different
home-school
agreements.” Not
only is clause 4, in the words of the explanatory
note, “intended
to increase the personalisation of home-school
agreements” for
each child in the school, but some pupils may actually have two
home-school agreements—one for each parent. Paragraph 15 of the
policy statement
says: “HSAs
must capture each child’s personalised goals and targets around
learning, and the child’s wider well being. Instead of the whole
school HSAs which currently exist, every child will have their own HSA,
which sets out how schools, parents and children will work together to
achieve both whole school and key personalised goals and targets; and
which is renewed annually to reflect the child’s progress
— from the time they enter reception until they leave secondary
school.” The
subsection goes on to
say: “In
some cases, HSAs will need to be reviewed more
frequently”— that
is, more frequently than annually. Perhaps if a child has a stepfather
or a stepmother, there will be more than two agreements as they will
incorporate all the adults involved in the child’s
upbringing. As
the Association of School and College Leaders says in its
brief, “it
is unrealistic to require home-school agreements to be personalised for
each individual pupil. Such a proposal will be wholly impractical in
secondary schools, which may have over 1,000 pupils, and will consume a
great deal of school
resources.” John
Dunford said in his evidence to our Committee last week:
“A
requirement that the home-school agreement should be personalised seems
to place an impossible task on a secondary school with 1,500
pupils.” The
school is getting bigger, but so is the concern. Mr. Dunford
continues: “Surely
a home-school agreement sets out the ethos of the school to parents,
and to which parents should sign up. It is not a matter of negotiation
between the school and the parent or the school and the
pupil.”——[Official Report, Children,
Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2010; c. 17,
Q25.] Dr.
Daniel Moynihan of the Harris Federation
said: “I
think that home-school agreements are a good idea. The issue for me is
that their personalisation seems completely unnecessary, and far too
much effort and work. Heads should be working with staff to improve the
quality of teaching and learning, not worrying about personalising the
home-school
agreement.” That
is why, no doubt, the Harris Academy at Crystal Palace was recently
graded as perfect by Ofsted—some 99 per cent. of its pupils
achieved GCSEs grade C and above, and the school has 2,000 applications
for just 180 places every year. Dr. Moynihan
continued: “The
thing that you want people to sign up to is the common approach to
discipline, to pastoral care and so on. Those are things that are in
common for the school. I think it is difficult to have home-school
agreements that are personalised, because it is a common ethos that you
want people to sign up to.”——[Official
Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee,
19 January 2010; c. 34,
Q45.] Picking
up the point made by the ASCL about the personalisation of home-school
agreements consuming a great deal of resources, the impact assessment
states that the policy will result in additional, mainly transitional
costs “from
staff training...following implementation; and admin time to amend
HSA templates.”—
all in all, £12.5
million, including just £127,000 to amend all templates in all
17,000 primary schools and 3,400 secondary schools. John Dunford was
asked about the likely costs. His response
was: “I
do not have a figure for the cost because it would largely be the time
of senior staff in the school. As I say, in large schools, that would
be massive.”——[Official Report,
Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January
2010; c. 18,
Q26.] We
need to get away from the idea of bespoke home-school agreements, which
offends against the whole notion of the agreements. The amendment would
take out the even more absurd position of a different home-school
agreement for each parent of a child. The tailored lists of objectives
and targets for a pupil to aim for in their academic work, personal
development and sport should be matters between the pupil and their
tutor or teacher, not a matter for home-school
agreements. Caroline
Flint (Don Valley) (Lab): I would welcome it if the
Minister clarified the meaning behind different parents of a child
being provided with separate home-school agreements. Given our earlier
discussion about whether parents will or will not sign the agreement
and the consequences either way—if they do not sign it, or if
they sign it but do not comply—how will the measure work in
practice? I would have thought that in most circumstances, it is the
resident parent with care who would be ultimately responsible. For
example, if a child was playing truant from school, that would be
followed up by the education and welfare officers and
others. 1.30
pm If
the motivation behind the measure is a recognition that, in
today’s world, unfortunately families break down, but both
parents still want to be involved in and contribute to their
child’s education, I understand it. Where it is appropriate,
providing information about parents’ evenings or school report
cards to the non-resident parent is worth while, with the caveat that
there can be particularly sensitive issues if the non-resident parent
does not have custody, or if there is a protection order for the
resident parent and the children—I have known such cases myself,
and it can create many difficulties. When a non-resident parent asks
for information, there can sometimes be a wider story of concern that
makes it quite difficult, undermining other injunctions against that
non-resident parent.
I would
welcome clarification of the purpose of subsection (3). Will
the Minister say, as he has in earlier debates, that he will consider
the wording and what it might mean? I cannot see the reason anywhere in
the statement or explanatory
notes.
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