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Education and Inspections Bill
4.16 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Adonis): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Baroness Buscombe moved Amendment No. 1:
A local education authority shall ensure that their functions relating to the provisions of education to which this section applies-
The noble Baroness said: I speak to Amendments Nos. 1, 8 and 10. Amendment No. 1 attempts to strengthen the commitment made in the Bill to the high standards of education and the promotion of the
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Amendment No. 1 first and foremost reinforces the duty to promote high standards in schools and the fulfilment of potential. While the Bill states that as an intention, I remain wary of its precise wording. My amendment is prompted in part by a letter from the Minister in another place to my honourable friend Nick Gibb MP. The Minister stated that, as the Bill stands, local authorities will have a duty to act “with a view to” promoting high standards, fulfilment of potential and fair access, which I will address in a moment. He added:
“As the duty is to act ‘with a view to’, it will be a ‘target duty’—that is confirmed by Parliamentary Counsel”.
He went on to say that the clause would be the,
- “overarching expression of the Government’s aspiration that improvements in standards should benefit children from all backgrounds and circumstances”.
While that principle is entirely in line with the thinking from these Benches, I believe that we are in danger of expecting aspiration to produce a reality.
The amendment would place a solid duty on local education authorities to promote high standards and the fulfilment of potential. The key word is “promote”. This is not a duty to produce high standards—that is the job of schools, not local authorities. A direct duty, as laid out in my amendment, would instil in every local authority a working function of promoting high standards and the fulfilment of potential.
My amendment also omits the reference to “fair access” added to the Bill in another place. I confirm to the Committee that that omission is in no way an attempt to prevent children from all backgrounds and walks of life having access to whichever school they wish. Rather, I did not see the merit of its inclusion. Clause 1(1)(c) states that local authorities need to ensure,
Paragraph (a) provides that high standards must be promoted. The net effect of those two paragraphs will, if they are successful, be to ensure that each individual child receives an education that fulfills his potential to a high standard.
I should be grateful if the Minister could inform the Committee precisely what the inclusion of “fair access” contributes to those aims and could give me a precise definition of “fair” in this context. I fear that although it may look perfectly harmless in the Bill, the inclusion of a fair access clause without the appropriate definition could encourage local authorities to stifle diversity in favour of the “deadening uniformity” that the Bill is intended to get rid of.
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I want to ensure that the Bill is remembered for its effectiveness, not merely its intention. I look forward to the Minister's response on both those matters and I beg to move.
Lord Judd: I rise to speak to Amendment No. 2 standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Plant and the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. They asked me to make plain that they are very sorry not to be in the House this afternoon. They are members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am also a member, which is paying an important front-line visit in the context of its current inquiry into human trafficking. I have, as it were, leave of absence to be here. In that context, it may be appropriate to mention that our concern arose as a result of our examination of the Bill in the Joint Committee on Human Rights. There has been a great deal of correspondence with the Minister and we very much appreciate his always fulsome replies.
The purpose of my amendment is to make the same provision for a statutory right to education in England and Wales as is made for Scotland in the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc. Act 2000. I know that my noble friend will argue that that right is well established in the first protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights and in Article 28 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. If that right is established in those conventions to which we as a nation have voluntarily put our names, why on earth not spell it out clearly in the Bill? The purpose of the amendment is to state categorically the right of the child in this context from which all else will follow. It also spells out the responsibility of the local education authority to ensure that that right is fulfilled.
The drafting of the Bill, it is fair to say, is a little tentative. It talks about target duties and,
The amendment would provide that the basis of everything in our educational policy was the right of the child to education, established in law, which is paramount, and that that is the fundamental point of reference. We think it would strengthen the Bill. I feel very excited about much of what is in the Bill, but it is a pity that we have not taken the opportunity to spell out in it what we subscribe to in the conventions, and I do hope that my noble friend will feel able seriously to look at this.
Quite apart from his correspondence with the Joint Committee, the Minister has been good enough to have full correspondence with me as well, which I greatly appreciate. I know that he and the Government attach considerable importance to the ruling of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, in the Ali v Lord Grey School case in 2006, which rejected the Court of Appeal’s finding that the article had been breached by an unlawful exclusion and outlined the way in which the law in England and Wales fulfils the convention rights. As the Minister pointed out in his letter to me, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham,
“explained that the responsibility for ensuring education rests on what has been called a ‘fourfold foundation’:
The first element being the duty of parents under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 to cause their children to receive
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The second element is the Secretary of State’s duty under Section 10 of the Education Act 1996 to promote the education of the people of England and Wales;
The third element is that the LEAs are required by Section 13 of the Act to secure that efficient education is available to meet the needs of the population of their area; and
The fourth element is to maintain the schools themselves; each school is under the direction of its governing body, who must conduct the school with a view to promoting higher standards of educational achievement at their school”.
We would all applaud that, but what it simply does not state is that the child has a fundamental legal right to education. We have missed an opportunity to state something that would put everyone in the position of having to ensure that that right is fulfilled.
Lord Rix: I speak to Amendments Nos. 6 and 9, both tabled in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lady Darcy de Knayth.
Amendment No. 6 would correct an anomaly between academies and other publicly funded schools in the admission of pupils with a statement of special educational needs. At present, with an LEA-maintained school, parents can expect that, if the LEA agrees with their expressed preference, it will direct a school to take their child. However, with an academy, the child may not be admitted to the parents’ preferred school even where the LEA agrees with the parents’ stated preference. There follows a convoluted and time-consuming process, with mediation arrangements to resolve the disagreement between the LEA and the academy, followed by an appeal to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal, followed ultimately, if necessary, by a ruling by the Secretary of State. It seems unnecessary to take so many steps and for there to be so many more hurdles to jump through for parents of a statemented child who want their child to go to an academy than for parents who want their child to go to an LEA-maintained school.
The question whether academies take more statemented pupils than do maintained schools is rather different from the question of whether there is an unequal process. The extra hurdles faced by parents who want an academy place for their statemented child are still extra hurdles, however many statemented children there may already be in academies. The Minister said at Second Reading that he and his colleagues are looking to see whether they can make further changes in this area, and I look forward to hearing the result of these deliberations.
Amendment No. 9 is about support services and the impact that good support services can have on ensuring that every disabled child and every child with SEN can achieve their educational potential. No child can achieve their educational potential on their own. For disabled children and children with SEN, support services providing training, support and advice to teachers are crucial to supplement and complement the expertise that exists in any school. As noble Lords will know, training in SEN and disability is not required in initial teacher training, which makes ongoing access to such training all the more crucial
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However, support services are under threat. The practice of delegating funding directly to schools to support disabled pupils and pupils with SEN, while helpful in many ways, means that for some LEAs it is very difficult to maintain support services. In some cases, support services are not being purchased by schools because they do not have enough money to buy the services back. In other cases, it is because teachers are not aware of the support available to them or do not understand the difference it could make. According to Ofsted,
- “delegation of funding to schools reduced the LEA’s capacity to provide targeted support for school improvement where the standards achieved by pupils with SEN were too low”.
That reduction in capacity could have a real effect on pupil outcomes.
Amendment No. 9 places a duty on LEAs to make sure that support services are available. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer some reassurance that the support and expertise, which make such a difference to the progress of disabled children and children with SEN, will continue to be provided.
4.30 pm
Baroness Walmsley: Before I speak to my Amendment No. 7 in this group, perhaps I may make one or two comments about what has been said on the earlier amendments. First, I must express surprise that the Official Opposition want to remove the reference to fair access from the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said that she felt that it might stifle diversity, but on these Benches if we were given a choice between diversity and fair access, we would choose fair access any day.
I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on the need to give every child a right to an education. Our Amendment No. 24 on the education authority being the provider of last resort for children not receiving a suitable education would achieve roughly the same thing. I support the noble Lord’s wish to put this principle, based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, at the beginning of the Bill. We also support the noble Lord, Lord Rix. I feel very sad that the evidence about the activities of some academies means that we need his Amendment No. 6. On his Amendment No. 9, I hope that he will support our Amendment No. 183, which requires SEN training for teachers at every stage of their training.
Amendment No. 7 would tie the highly desirable objective of promoting individual fulfilment to a personalised learning approach and access to the appropriate resources. When a similar amendment was debated in another place, the Minister said that personalised learning was a key part of the Government’s proposition in Clause 1. We agree with that and welcome it. He also pointed out that new funding would be available to support personalised learning. We welcome any new funding, but we
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Our intention in tabling this amendment is to probe the Government on the practicalities of fulfilling their welcome commitment to personalised learning. It is certainly not intended to rule out all other local authority functions that have a bearing on a child’s attainment. Perhaps if we pursue this amendment, we ought to change it to “teaching and learning” and other support.
However, the DfES has stated that personalised learning complements and delivers aspects of the Every Child Matters agenda. The outcomes of this, which focus on giving every child the support they require whatever their needs, abilities, background or circumstances, link closely with the possibilities created by personalised learning to tailor learning and to tackle all the barriers to learning. The 2005 White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools For All, discusses personalised learning in detail. It refers to an education system that focuses on the needs of the individual child. However, the provision of personalised learning outlined in the White Paper focuses on,
- “intensive small-group tuition in literacy and numeracy for those falling behind...and extra stretch for the gifted and talented”.
It seems to focus on outcomes rather than the whole child. While these two aspects are critical, I suggest that the document reflects a narrow view of personalised learning which focuses largely on its provision. For example, too many children struggle with their communication skills, those of listening and speaking. We need a national strategy to help all schools deal with that issue.
A commitment to personalised learning has very wide implications for the workforce and for the curriculum. The school workforce remodelling agenda, with its impact on the role of the teacher, the management of a wider range of professionals and on the organisation of a range of resources, has considerable implications for the way learning is structured in the future, both in and out of school. The NUT document, Bringing Down the Barriers, argues that two conditions need to be established for personalised learning to succeed. It states that a fundamental review of the national curriculum and its assessment arrangements is essential to meeting the aspirations of personalised learning and that young people need to be able to experience and teachers need to be able to provide much more one-to-one teaching. So these are the very broad implications of the Government’s new commitment to personalised learning. Can the Minister assure us that they will be looked at and that there will now be an entitlement for every child to personalised learning so that he or she can fulfil their educational potential, and that schools will have the appropriate resources to actually deliver it?
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Baroness Warnock: I support what has just been said and express my particular support for Amendments Nos. 7 and 9. One of the main aims of the Bill is to enable children to have personalised learning, which would entail local authorities having a statutory duty to ensure that the services are available. I am thinking in particular of services such as speech therapy which cannot be supplied by the regular teacher, however well trained. At the moment it lies in an ambiguous area because local authorities often claim that they cannot ensure the provision of speech therapy that children urgently need.
Communication difficulties can be the most terrible obstacle for those children with severe disabilities in this area being educated in mainstream schools. Without learning the skills of communication, they really cannot possibly fulfil their educational potential. This is an example of where a statutory duty on local authorities to enable a child,
is a matter of crucial importance if the Government’s general policy is to go forward. I strongly support Amendments Nos. 7 and 9.
Lord Lucas: I should like to take this opportunity to explore what the Government currently understand by the words “educational potential”. How broad a definition of “educational” are they intending here? Do ball skills come under education, or is it merely being able to get through the numeracy hour that counts as education? What boundaries do the Government currently set on this? What do the Government mean by “potential” and how is a school or local education authority supposed to assess it? What instruments are to be used and what measure may an LEA apply to say “Yes, we have done this. This child has fulfilled their educational potential”? If we are putting a duty on authorities, we must give them some ability to know that they have fulfilled it. However, I do not really see how it can be done.
Lord Northbourne: I am confused and should like some guidance from the Minister. My first point concerns Amendment No. 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, on primary duties. I am not entirely clear what a primary duty is. The Education Reform Act 1998, which I regard as an important anchor point indeed for the education system, states that the Secretary of State, the local education authority and/or the governing body have to,
- “exercise their functions...with a view to securing that the curriculum for the school...promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society; and...prepares such pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life”.
I think that that is a supremely good definition of education. Would Amendment No. 1 in any way change the emphasis? Would that definition remain in place if Amendment No. 1 were accepted?
Secondly, I entirely support the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, in asking the Minister whether he
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How will that be secured? In very large schools, it may be possible to secure it by having forms of streaming and dividing into different sectors within the school. However, we have at home, in a house belonging to my family, a small school. At the moment it has 12 pupils and is thinking of increasing the number to 18. These children have a very special need and cannot cope in a big school. They have failed in a big school—they have been a disaster in a big school—whereas they are doing very well in this small school. Small schools cannot provide for a huge range of academic ability.
What about ability in subjects that are outside the academic curriculum? I know of two children who have quite exceptional musical ability. What is fair access to schooling for a child who has quite exceptional musical ability? These are the kinds of question that have to be answered, and I think we need to know the kind of answers that the Government are going to give.
Baroness David: I should very much like to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. It seems strange that we do not have such legislation already. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to support it and put it into the Bill.
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