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9.45 pm
The noble Baroness talked about misconceptions. I fear that there are a lot of misconceptions about trust schools and what they are seeking to do. As they are met, I believe that we can overcome some of the prejudice that has been so evident in our debates.
The amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, would forbid local authorities to promote new community schools. Our approach to this issue is fairly well rehearsed. We strongly support diversity, greater self-governance and the role that foundation and trust schools can play in bringing those about. However, we also recognise that there may be a case for a new community school in a particular instance; we have listened to concerns in another place and have defined the circumstances in which that might take place.
The illustrative regulations in Clause 8, which I have made available to the Committee, set out criteria for the circumstances in which a local authority may publish proposals for a community school without the need for explicit consents; they also set out when the Secretary of State’s consent would be required and when a local authority would be disqualified from publishing proposals.
The noble Baroness asked which local authorities would not be able to put forward proposals on the basis of the criteria that we have laid down. A local authority with an APA rating of 1, which is poor, would not be able to publish proposals for a community school. That also applies to the 10 local authorities with an APA rating of 2, with fewer than 15 per cent of foundation or voluntary schools or more than 15 per cent of schools in Ofsted category 4—the category of failure. So the Secretary of State would have discretion with regard to a large number. Equally, there would be no need for explicit consent for the 11 local authorities that have an APA rating of 4, which is excellent. There would be no need for consent for 11 authorities; it would not be possible for 10 local authorities to publish proposals; and the Secretary of State would have discretion in the other cases.
This goes to the heart of
the noble Baroness’s concerns. I know that she would wish us to
go further regarding the requirements to promote diversity. However,
the right to publish a proposal for a community school, which is what
we are talking about in the clause, is very different from meaning that
that new school will be a community school. The right to publish a
proposal is the right of the local authority to enter a community
school into an assessment and competition that will be made, into
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Under Amendment No. 70, local authorities could promote a community school only where the Secretary of State was satisfied that that would lead to higher standards. That is a judgment that needs to be made; it will be made by the adjudicator, who will decide on the proposals on the basis of standards.
Amendment No. 72 would require local authorities to set out their reasons for wanting to promote a community school rather than a foundation school. In practice, a local authority will need to do this. It will need to demonstrate to the adjudicator that the community school that it is proposing will offer an improved quality of education better than any existing or realistic alternative. In practice, the local authority will have to establish a case and, of course, the reasons. If the adjudicator is not satisfied that the local authority has made this case, the guidance that the department will issue will make it clear that the proposal should not proceed, even if there is no alternative proposal immediately before the adjudicator.
Amendment No. 76 would prevent the Secretary of State from giving consent for a new community school outside a competition. The noble Baroness asked for my assurance that this would happen only in exceptional circumstances, and I can give that assurance. But we believe that there are exceptional circumstances. For example, a junior school and an infant school, perhaps sharing a single site, may want to amalgamate to form an all-through primary. The authority might consider in that case that a competition was not necessary—a strong case could be made for that—and apply for consent to bring forward proposals outside a competition. We do not want to disturb existing successful arrangements. That would be quite inappropriate in a Bill that is seeking to promote higher educational standards. We can conceive that there will be exceptional circumstances where it would be appropriate for the power to be used and for there not to be a requirement for competition for changes that are not brought about by reason of failure or because completely new places are required.
Amendment No. 89 to Schedule 2 would place a duty on the adjudicator, in deciding proposals for a new community school, to consider whether it would be desirable to alter the proposals to make the new school a foundation school. The noble Baroness said that it was a probing amendment. We do not think that it is a practical proposition. If promoters were interested in developing a foundation or trust school to meet the needs of the area, they would at the point at which the adjudicator was making the decision already have had the opportunity to bring forward their own proposals in response to the notice inviting proposals for the new school.
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Equally, however, if the community school proposal is not judged by the adjudicator to be satisfactory, the adjudicator can turn it down, as I have described, and other proposals could be entered in a new competition if a decision was taken to proceed with one. We believe that that is the best and most practical procedure, not least because the adjudicator would be in no position to know whether partners might wish to promote a foundation or trust school if he deemed a community school proposal to be unsatisfactory. When he was making that decision, he would have only the one proposal in front of him. I believe that the position that we have reached is satisfactory.
The big point that I would make to the noble Baroness is the need to distinguish between the proposals being promoted for community schools. Where local authorities have a good track record in standards and diversity, we believe that their taking such a course of action is appropriate. I will be quite frank; we have been persuaded of that course by the debate in another place and by the representations made by my right honourable and honourable friends in another place. A strong argument can be made for competition in that respect. If there is to be fairness in competition, local authorities with a good track record should be able on the same basis as other promoters to promote their proposals. However, that is distinct from the process of deciding between alternative proposals, which would in that case be done by the independent schools adjudicator whose only mission under this Bill is the promotion of the highest educational standards.
I end where I began: all the categories of schools that we have been discussing are comprehensive schools. The fact that one is called a community school, a trust school, a foundation school or a voluntary-aided school does not affect that. We are not seeking to change the comprehensive admissions philosophy, which we believe is right for this country, but we want to enable greater diversity in the management, ethos and character of schools within comprehensive bounds, all focused on the enlargement opportunities and the best possible results for pupils.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said that no single international model works. As one who has spent quite a lot of time looking at international models, I agree with that. There is no off-the-shelf model.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: They do not work entirely according to the categories of selection versus comprehensiveness—that is all.
Lord
Adonis: None of them works as a model that we can
emulate, I agree. But international elements are well worth studying,
including the clear trend in developed countries towards greater
diversity in the provision of schools. Equally, we are not seeking in
this Bill only to look at international evidence; we are looking at
successful models in our own country. Any serious analysis of the data
would lead one to believe that that approach is right. There should be
an option to promote schools that have different management structures
from the classic community school. Doing
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Baroness Buscombe: I thank the Minister for his response. I have written lots of notes in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lord, Lord Gould, but much of what I wanted to say has been said for me by the Minister.
I did not expect a great response to my Amendment No. 55. However, I think that it was worth flying a kite, not least to make the point that we are here trying to support the Government to achieve what we and clearly the Government believe is right—which is, as the Minister has just said, to increase diversity and the management ethos and to focus on improving standards in our schools for all our children’s future.
With all due respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I feel that her speech was somewhat predictable. I resent the notion that somehow because I for my part and from these Benches am doing all that I can to help to raise standards in these schools, I and others are somehow running down all that these comprehensive schools have achieved. I went to one myself. All that I will say is that I think that, without streaming, I personally would have sunk without trace.
There is no question but that much has been achieved, but we need to do more. The results that I quoted earlier from some of the schools that have been allowed to flourish speak for themselves. As the noble Lord, Lord Gould, said, this is not about selection. It is a shame in some ways that the Government have felt the need to move away from the White Paper, but of course I understand that that was necessary to get the Bill through in another place and maybe it is necessary to get the Bill through in your Lordships' House. I do not want to do anything to prevent the Bill from getting through in your Lordships' House, because I believe that it is a step in the right direction.
I keep remembering the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, at Second Reading, who said that this is an interim measure. It is actually a step in the right direction. It is not saying that what has been happening hitherto is wrong; it is saying, “Let us be bold and brave and courageous and try to make it better still for our children’s future”. We all want our children to have better than we had; it is a parent’s right to feel that way—and all of us who are parents feel that way. This is not a political football. At Second Reading, I said that if we could only take politics out of education we would all be a lot better off and this country would be better off—but that is probably never going to happen.
The Government
are making a step in the right direction. I have listened with care to
what the Minister said about a number of the amendments that we have
proposed this evening and I accept his reply. I obviously want to read
in Hansard with care the detail of his response to some of my
questions about competition and proposals for
community
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Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 [Invitation for proposals for establishment of new schools]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 56:
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 56, I shall speak to the other amendments in the group. It might be useful if simultaneously I dealt with Clause 8 stand part, which is logically linked to this series of amendments. I pick up where the last debate left off, because this series of amendments seeks to do precisely the opposite to the series proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. From our point of view, rather than prohibiting the establishment of new community schools, these amendments seek to establish what we regard as a level playing field between community schools and others and to leave it open to a local education authority to propose a new community school where that seems sensible and a feasible way forward.
In proposing these amendments, I think that all of us are very concerned about providing the best education possible for the children of this country.
In our debate last week the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, mentioned a fact that I find an indictment of our current education system: 20 per cent of children leave primary school unable properly to read or write. We all know that, once they have left primary school without functional literacy or numeracy, their chances of surviving in secondary school are very small. They are the ones who also have difficulties in the secondary school environment. We also know that that group of children disproportionately comes from disadvantaged homes, and many of them have special educational needs of one sort or another.One feature of the Finnish system that has not been mentioned is that they assess children, as we do, when they enter school, though not through formal tests—in fact, they have very few formal tests until they are 18. Where they find that children have special education needs, they concentrate resources to try and counter those children’s disadvantages and make sure that by the age of 10 or 11 they are as close to their contemporaries’ level as they can be. They know that if they do not succeed at that point, it will be very difficult for those children to make their way further on. It is a question of pouring in extra resources.
I congratulate the Government on their
Sure Start initiatives, which are moving in the right direction.
However, the Minister knows that I do not think we have put the
necessary resources into the primary sector, particularly the early
stages. The failure of the Government to follow through on the Steer
report and get parent and pupil support workers into primary schools is
a great mistake. A concentration of support at that stage is sorely
needed, for pupils and
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I shall talk about my amendments. In response to criticisms in the other place, as we know, the Government conceded the case for community schools to be established in certain circumstances. We shall be looking at those circumstances in more detail a little later on. We have two amendments that deal with this, Amendment No. 68 and the Question whether Clause 8 should stand part. For the record, however, from the point of view of those no these Benches the conditions written into Clause 8 are so circumscribed that they remove all discretion from local authorities.
We do not oppose the idea of competition for new schools, and we are happy to see local education authorities required to compete with other proposals, including those coming forward from parent groups. We are unhappy, however, at the degree to which the balance under the proposals put forward by the Government is tipped against community schools and in favour of other providers, and the degree to which the trust school proposals move away from local accountability.
Many of these amendments deal with Clause 7, which is about proposals to establish new schools, and the subsequent clauses, dealing with how those proposals under Clause 7 are to be published, considered and carried forward. It might be helpful if I quickly run through these amendments. Amendment No. 56 takes out from Clause 7(1) the prohibition on LEAs making proposals for new schools. Amendments Nos. 57 and 62 add community schools to the list of schools falling into subsections (2)(a) and (5)(b)(i).
Amendment No. 57A asks that the knock-on effects of expanded sixth form provision on other schools and colleges in the area be considered. We shall look at that issue when we discuss alterations to schools.
Amendment No. 64 would take out Clause 7(5)(b)(ii), which refers to Clause 8. Amendment No. 68 would add a new clause, to which I shall speak in a moment. Amendments Nos. 74 and 78 would make it clear that the local education authority may proceed to publish its proposals in its own right without having to seek permission from the Secretary of State. Amendment No. 91 applies to alterations to schools under Clause 18 and makes it clear that, should a foundation school wish to reverse the process and become a community school, it can do so, whereas under the Bill it is prohibited from doing so.
In some respects these
clauses about new schools may seem rather irrelevant because over the
next five years we face of drop of half a million in the number of
secondary school pupils in this country. The issue is likely to
be—as it has been with primary schools over the past few
years—one of closing schools, not opening new ones. But this,
and the final amendment in the group to Clause 18 and alterations to
schools, raises the whole question of the link between this Bill and
the programme of building schools for the future.
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Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I am glad to hear that the answer is no.
I wish to elaborate on Amendment No. 68. The proposed new clause defines the grounds on which the Secretary of State can withhold consent to a proposal from a local education authority to establish a community school—it would replace Clause 8—namely, the Secretary of State has to believe that a community school would not improve the quality of education of pupils in the area.
The White Paper had proposed that all new schools would in future be academies, foundation schools or trust schools, and that there would be no new community schools. As we know, this has proved to be highly controversial. The case for local authorities retaining their powers to propose new community schools was well made by the authors of the alternative White Paper, the Members of the Select Committee and many others. In response, the Government have accepted that there may be occasions where a community school may be the best option to meet local needs. Therefore, the Bill now proposes that local authorities will be able to propose a community school, provided that the Secretary of State gives consent. Proposals will be decided by the adjudicator, as the Minister made clear.
In Committee in another place, the Minister said:
- “The regulations
will allow local authorities with an annual performance assessment of
4—the highest score—to enter a community school into a
competition automatically, without the need for the Secretary of
State’s consent. We should trust those high-performing local
authorities to decide what type of school would best serve the needs of
their communities. Currently, there are 11 local authorities with an
APA of 4 ... three groups of local authorities will not be
permitted to propose a community school: local authorities with an APA
of 1, which are those with the poorest performance in children’s
services; local authorities with an APA of 2 and in which less than 15
per cent of schools are foundation or voluntary schools; and local
authorities with an APA of 2 and more than 15 per cent of schools in
Ofsted category 4—in other words, badly-performing authorities
that either have a large proportion of schools that are failing or have
low levels of diversity”.—[Official Report,
Commons, Standing Committee E, 20/4/06; col.
317.]
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It is for those reasons that we question whether Clause 8 should stand part, and we wish to substitute for it our Amendment No. 68. I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel: I rise briefly to follow up on the discussion by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, of different models of education provision. The Minister will recall from our debates on childcare provision my particular concern that the emphasis on moving swiftly to what is now a majority private provision has not necessarily benefited children in terms of staff stability, training and support. I say this as a challenge to the model that the Minister is following. It was not surprising, when he responded to the noble Baroness, that he said that the Finnish model was very interesting but that we should also look at the best models in this country. When we look around the world, we see that increasingly education systems are becoming more diverse in the models of provision that they provide.
The Finnish model is particularly interesting because it is a comprehensive model. Its real emphasis and investment has been first on teachers, in terms of very long and developed teacher training. Another interesting and distinctive aspect is that children do not start their education until the age of seven, and therefore the opportunity for relating with their families is much more important there. Pre-school does not start until the age of six. In the first years of schooling they have shorter school days, so again they have more opportunity to be with their families.
I am putting this forward to challenge what seems to be the prevailing presumption that our model of provision of education is the one that we should be pursuing. It may be the right one; but from my experience of being involved in caring for vulnerable children, what is most striking is the appalling consequences of not having properly trained staff working with children. The most important thing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, made clear on Second Reading, is the need to keep a single-minded focus on supporting and developing those professionals working directly with children and young people, and not to be distracted from that.
I feel moved to say that because to my mind we overlook that in this country. We are a culture that puts particular emphasis on generalism, on being flexible and on taking on a number of different roles. That is an important model for us. The idea of specialism, of a deeply well-educated and focused professionalism, is also very important. For children and particularly for vulnerable children, we need to think much more deeply. I say that in the light of a letter that I received recently from the Minister, saying that children in children’s homes are cared for by staff only 23 per cent of whom have any relevant qualification. Get the education and training of our teachers and support right—I know that it has been improving significantly—and you will be going an awfully long way to delivering improved education for our children.
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10.15 pm
Baroness Williams of Crosby: I very much agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. It is certainly the case that one of the distinguishing features of the Finnish system is that it requires all its teachers to have a postgraduate degree. That seems to be a crucial factor in the quality of the education in that country. I pay tribute to the Government for some of the steps that they have taken in that direction, not least in the training of head teachers and senior management staff, but, as a country, we must press much further with in-service training of teachers to ensure that they keep up with the many demands made on them.
I rise to say a few words about Amendment No. 57A regarding sixth forms. It is a probing amendment. My noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford pointed out that we are confronting a decade of dramatic decline in school rolls. We all know that one of the things that makes a sixth form viable is an adequate number of pupils to maintain a range of choices for young people who are going on to take A-levels, NVQs or whatever the higher qualification may be. If the size of a sixth form falls below a certain point, it simply becomes uneconomic to offer a range of alternative courses, and the sixth form then constricts rather than broadens a youngster’s education.
I make no bones about my worry that if a range of trust schools, in particular, academies, are created in a local authority area—most of them will expect and want to have a sixth form because it is part of the traditional prestige of a secondary school which many people involved very much prize, although the Minister may say that that is not true—that may bite into existing sixth-form provision, which will make it difficult for those secondary school sixth forms to be viable.
I have in mind the more disadvantaged local authorities that have set up sixth-form colleges or, in some cases, tertiary colleges to try to meet the needs of their brightest, most ambitious and aspiring youngsters who want to go on to try to get A-levels and other advanced qualifications. I am frightened that in certain circumstances those sixth-form colleges could be undermined. The Minister will know well that they have a good record in secondary education of achieving outstanding results in parts of the country such as Devon, where it is difficult to sustain a sixth-form among a lot of small towns and villages. There have been notable results in those sixth-form colleges.
I shall not press the Minister now—he may wish to answer the point on a later group of amendments—but the issue has been neglected in our discussions thus far. It is extremely important that every last boy and girl who wants it can get sixth-form or tertiary college provision and I am troubled by the difficulty already experienced by some authorities, where the sixth forms are only just viable, as to what might happen if a number of new ones open.
Lord
Young of Norwood Green: I wish to respond to a
couple of points. It is almost as if some kind of Scandinavian Utopia
exists. We should be comparing like with like. Would that the UK was
identical to Finland—I do not know whether I really do want it
to
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I agree that the international report mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is interesting. I have not looked at the OECD report, but I will do so. The international report states that following the reforms of 1998,
and that many parents in urban areas now exercise choice. That is a really interesting scenario. The report also states:- “Choice is now
exercised by many parents in heavily urbanised areas of
Finland—for example in Helsinki in 2002, approximately 50 per
cent of children entering secondary schools at ages 12 and 13 requested
a school other than the one they were allocated to”.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: We on these Benches are not arguing against choice. We are arguing that in that choice there should be a level playing field to establish new community schools alongside voluntary-aided schools, trust schools and so on.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: Perception is everything. When I listen to the noble Baroness, I cannot help feeling that she worries about choice. I agree we should not denigrate community schools or comprehensive schools. Many of them have achieved startling successes, but neither should we go in the opposite direction and suggest that somehow trust or foundation schools will be totally untrammelled and free of any accountability. I have heard it alleged tonight that they will not be subject to the national curriculum—that is not true. They will be subject to Ofsted inspections.
We are trying to
find a balanced approach. Are choice and diversity wanted by parents? I
believe that they are, not just in the UK system, but also elsewhere in
the world. Has that choice the capacity to benefit children? Again, I
believe it has. It is not the only answer, as the noble Baroness, Lady
Williams, rightly says. We are in a dynamic situation, not a static
one, as I believe the Government have recognised. We are being invited
to go from one end of the spectrum to the other. On the one hand, we
are being invited to suggest that no community schools are allowed to
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