Mr.
Coaker: I want to say a couple of things before I read out
some information to the Committee. On amendment 46 and the idea of
home-school agreements, there is an interesting debate around when a
home-school agreement should finish. The maximum impact of a
home-school agreement and parental involvement comes at compulsory
school age. We have to judge whether a home-school agreement is as
effective and necessary for students of 17 and 18. I draw
the Committee’s attention to the maturity of those 17 and
18-year-olds. Notwithstanding the important parental involvement that
we would expect to continue, part of what we are trying to achieve with
education at that age is individual responsibility rather than parents
always trying to support their
children. The
hon. Member for Yeovil might disagree with me, but at what age is it
appropriate to say that a young person has responsibility for their own
education? We would always want parents to be involved, but is the
correct way of doing so through a home-school agreement when a 17 or
18-year-old is in the sixth form? As for the age of compulsory
education, while of course we want parents to be involved in the
education of young people, part of their education experience is the
individual responsibility that they should take for themselves. I know
that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole always talks about
the importance of listening to what young people say. The voice of
young people is clear at the ages of 17 and 18. Of course, the
involvement of parents is important, but young people always have the
desire to be seen as responsible for
themselves. Annette
Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I thought that
the Minister would have heard my quiet comment that there would be
issues other than the home-school agreement when a student was 18. A
school might want pupils who were not fulfilling expectations in the
sixth form to sign up to something, but such a policy would be
difficult to undertake at about the age of 18, given all the work that
they have to do generally.
2.15
pm
Mr.
Coaker: This is an interesting
discussion—
Mr.
Laws: The amendment that the Minister is talking about is
a Conservative one, not one that we tabled. What I said is that I was
interested in his response. There are some interesting issues that
arise between our expectations of pupils and of parents. We are not
necessarily dealing with one unit. There is no reason why we cannot
regard a young person as having reached adult age at 16 or 18, but we
might still have some expectations of their
parents.
Mr.
Coaker: I know that it is a Conservative amendment.
However, I have just heard the sound of retreat. I made my remarks
because the hon. Gentleman appeared to be supporting the Conservative
position. If I have misrepresented him, I apologise profusely. We are
saying that home-school agreements should be for pupils of compulsory
school age for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman
gave. The
hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked what would be laid
out in home-school agreements. He will no doubt have read new section
109A(4), which lays out the sort of things that one would expect in a
home-school agreement, such as the school’s aims, values and
responsibilities and parents’ responsibilities. Sub-paragraph
(d) mentions the school’s expectations of the pupil. That is the
interesting part of the discussion, where there will be considerable
differences between pupils and personalisation. It is about the
school’s expectations of the pupil—their conduct and
education.
I do not
agree with the view of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton that schools ignore and do not want to teach
knowledge—they want to teach knowledge and skills. Schools are
about both those things, not about one to the exclusion of the other.
They are both important parts of an education for young
people.
Mr.
Gibb: I am not talking about what schools want, but the
general direction of this Government’s policy and of the
education administrators who advise the Government. The general thrust
of policy has been towards an outcomes-based education. The early years
foundation stage and the revisions to the key stage 3 curriculum are
all outcomes-based. When we come to debate clause 10 and go through the
curriculum objectives in lesson plans, we will see that they are all
outcomes-based objectives, and have nothing to do with curriculum
knowledge, skills or development of literacy—they are all to do
with broader outcomes. I think that that is a retrograde step, and the
measure is part and parcel of that
policy.
Mr.
Coaker: That is an interesting point, with which most of
the teachers in the country will disagree. They see that the way in
which the curriculum is laid out ensures that we do things not at the
expense of other equally important
things.
Mr.
Gibb: The Minister misunderstands me. It is not a debate
between skills and knowledge in that sense. Of course, if someone is
learning to read, they have to develop the skills of reading, and in
maths, they learn the skills of maths. However, there is a division in
the profession and in the public about the outcomes-based approach.
That is what is so distressing about the Government’s
centralising approach. They foist the method on the large number of
teachers and head teachers who
do not agree with that philosophical approach to education. That is why
there is such hostility to a centralising approach to education out
there, and what we have before us is part of
that.
Mr.
Coaker: It will be interesting to see what the hon.
Gentleman does if he takes up that position on the teaching of phonics.
I understood that he was very much in favour of central direction in
respect of phonics. If he were schools Minister, it would be
interesting to see how he responded if all the schools in the country
decided not to teach reading by phonics. No doubt he will tell us that
it is up to each individual school, even if they do not do
phonics.
Mr.
Gibb: The schools would be expected to use best practice,
and they simply would not get their
children— [Laughter.] That is the policy.
All the evidence from the States, this country and Scotland shows that
phonics is absolutely the best method of teaching children to read.
Schools will not be able to pass the test that we are proposing unless
they use best practice. If schools can teach children to read within
several months using another method, fine; they are very welcome to do
so. We can learn from that and the children will do well in the tests.
However, if they do not use best practice, they will not get through
the
tests.
Mr.
Coaker: I think that the hon. Gentleman is about to
intervene on me and say something about the interesting comment of the
hon. Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton.
Mr.
Laws: Yes. Does the Minister think that the
counter-proposal in the hon. Gentleman’s policy is that
synthetic phonics should be compulsory or compulsory only if things go
wrong?
Mr.
Coaker: It was unclear exactly what the hon. Member for
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton was saying. I do not intend to be
disrespectful, and I mean it in the nicest possible way, but we all
know that the hon. Gentleman is a fanatic about synthetic phonics. He
believes with a passion that synthetic phonics should be used in all
classrooms in every situation. He was chiding me about central
direction. I hope that it never happens, but if he was Minister I
wonder what his position would be if schools up and down the land
rejected his approach. Would he say that that was fine and tell them to
get on with it? Hopefully, he will not be able to make such a decision,
but it is an interesting
thought. There
will be an annual review of the home-school agreement, but the
agreement will not necessarily be changed as a consequence. It is
reasonable to require schools to review home-school agreement along
with the individualised learning plan, as my right hon. Friend the
Member for Don Valley describes it, once a year to see what progress
has been made and to discuss it with the parent at the parents’
evening or whatever. Most parents sign home-school agreements and, if
individualised learning plans were part of them, most parents would
expect somewhere along the line—if the documents were to mean
anything—to have a discussion about the
progress that their son or daughter had made. It is reasonable to review
the agreement at least annually, which will be the case for the
majority of pupils. I put the caveat to the Committee again: just
because the agreement will be reviewed annually, it does not mean that
it has to be
changed. Mr.
Gibb: Will the individual learning plans in the
home-school agreements have a plan for each curriculum
subject?
Mr.
Coaker: The fact that the learning plan is individualised
will mean that it will be put together in the best interests of the
children in order for them to learn at the school. The priorities might
be in different subjects or they might be behavioural objectives, but
the words “individual” and “personalised”
make it difficult for me to say what would be set out in each plan. The
school would put something in the plan that was appropriate and
relevant to the individual child. It would be discussed and agreed with
the parents, reviewed annually and, as we know from discussions with
parents, it would be popular and make a significant difference. With
those remarks, I ask that the amendment be
withdrawn.
Mr.
Laws: I will move swiftly over amendments 45, 135 and 136
because I do not agree with what the Minister said about the degree of
compulsion, and I might bore the Committee if I repeat my arguments
about that now. We shall have a stand part debate in a
moment. The
Minister was teasing me about amendment 46. I did not say that I
supported it, but that I would be extremely interested to hear his
reply to it. Given that he has tried to divide me from my hon. Friend
the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, from whom I cannot be
divided on any issue, I want to throw back at least a couple of
matters. He said that, when young people reach the age of 16, they
should be treated as adults and have no obligation to be part of the
home-school agreement policy. But, as the hon. Member for Bognor Regis
and Littlehampton pointed out, the participation age will go up to 18
from 16 under the Government’s plans, so I am unclear whether
that changes the Minister’s view.
The Bill
states: “A
home-school agreement lapses when the pupil to whom it
relates...ceases to be of compulsory school
age.” When
the participation age goes up, will the home-school agreements be
extended up to 18 by default, which is what the Minister appeared to
suggest might not be necessary? What are our and the
Government’s expectations of whoever takes responsibility under
a home-school agreement post-16? Is prime responsibility expected to
transfer from the parent to the child? Should the child then be
expected to sign the home-school agreement? We would not want that to
be compulsory. Should they be taking over from the parent? Do the
parents’ rights and responsibilities, as have been stated up
until then in the home-school agreement, simply come to an end because
the pupil happens to be at an age at which they start to acquire adult
rights? Much of what is embedded in the home-school agreements is
presumably about parents accepting the responsibility that they
actually have. Do we really want them to drop all responsibilities
simply because the young person has reached an age beyond 16?
In
spite of the Minister’s teasing, there are questions that the
Government must answer. I hope that there may be an opportunity today
to tease out the solutions to those
questions.
Mr.
Coaker: Perhaps I will come back to that in the clause
stand part debate.
Mr.
Gibb: We have not had satisfactory responses from the
Minister on any of the amendments. It is a huge burden on schools
around the country to require them not only to produce bespoke
agreements but to review each one every year, and potentially more than
once a year if there are changes in the child’s circumstances.
The Minister has not revealed an understanding of the burden that the
clause places on schools already burdened by weekly missives from his
Department, which head teachers and teachers are meant to read, absorb
and apply.
The Minister
has not answered the question about what happens after a child reaches
the end of compulsory schooling. As the hon. Member for Yeovil pointed
out, the ASCL Act 2009 extended the compulsory participation age to 18.
Under that Act, from my memory of it, many responsibilities remain with
the parents. It seems inconsistent for home-school agreement
requirements not to apply until a child leaves school.
However, I do
not intend to press amendment 45. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Laws: This is a terrible clause, as we explained on
Tuesday. It builds on a policy that is already, according to the impact
assessment, and in contrast to what the Minister told us previously, a
complete flop. The home-school agreement is bureaucratic and not worth
the paper it is written on, which is more or less a paraphrase of the
impact assessment. The clause succeeds in making matters much worse. It
imposes an obligation on every head and make agreements compulsory; it
ensures that home-school agreements have to be personalised for every
child; it obliges head teachers to review them annually, even if they
think them a waste of time; it obliges every home-school agreement to
be signed, even if that is considered a waste of time; agreements might
or might not go up to 18—we will find that out shortly; and
there might or might not have to be separate personalised agreements
for different parents. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and a complete
waste of money. The context in which we are debating the Bill is one in
which every political party is considering what cuts it must make to
services that are valued by our constituents. In that new environment,
we should not be legislating for anything that will not make an impact
for the better on the front line.
2.30
pm We
should bear in mind when called to debate measures involving additional
costs, as the clause does, whether those costs are worth bearing in the
current financial environment, considering all the other things that we
want to fund. We should bear in mind the impact assessment and the
Government’s own estimate that the clause will require schools
to spend an additional half
hour on bureaucracy for 7.3 million pupils, for gains that seem highly
debatable. For all those reasons, I will seek to divide the Committee
on the clause. Mr.
Coaker: We have had an interesting debate. I will make a
couple of points before I make my more formal comments. With respect to
the compulsory school age, we are trying to give ourselves a bit of
time. The age of participation does not go up to 17 until 2013 or to 18
until— [Interruption.] It is 2013 for 17 and
2015 for 18; that is what I thought I said. In terms of considering how
the measures relate to that, we will obviously need to
consider—
Mr.
Laws: Having teased me earlier about the issue, saying
that it would not be sensible to extend the home-school agreement duty
beyond 16, is the Minister now saying that that might be
done?
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