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It requires a great deal of work on the part of a head teacher to pull what is often a new team together and to get things moving, and a minimum of a year is required before you begin to see any significant improvements. Therefore, as I say, the amendment suggests that there should be a double inspection, but with the qualification that there should be at least a year between the two inspections before the local authority rushes in to intervene.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: I should like to add one last comment on Amendment No. 61 to those already made by my noble friends. Amendment No. 61 concerned the ability to give orders to close a school. Of course, in some circumstances—we have discussed this already when we pressed our amendment on consulting parents about the closure of a school—the closure may have to be made at rather short notice for reasons connected with the particular conditions associated with the school.
This is an area where I particularly feel that to make a distinction between the maintained schools and academies and CTCs is unfortunate. It may be that the Minister will again be able to tell us that this is all caught up with funding agreements but, as we have argued on earlier amendments, to have equality of treatment on the face of the Bill is extremely important in allowing schools to feel that they are subject to the same pressures if they are failing, coasting or otherwise not satisfactorily educating the children within them.
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Baroness Buscombe: I rise to speak to Amendment No. 185 in this group which seeks to remove paragraph (c) of Clause 53(3). The subsection states that the standards of performance of pupils at a school are low if they are low by reference to,
I state at the outset that this is a probing amendment. I do not contest the claim that if pupils were performing poorly compared to pupils at comparable schools, this would be a clear cause for concern. I would, however, appreciate it if the Minister could expand slightly on what is meant by “comparable”.
There are a variety of factors by which a school could be compared. The most obvious of these is the prior attainment of pupils in the school which forms the basis for the value added measure. In addition to prior attainment, one could imagine a number of other factors such as ethnic minority background and the family income. In certain circumstances, there is no reason why each of these factors might not be considered an appropriate measure of comparability.
However, there is a danger here that we risk perpetuating low expectations for certain groups. For example, the new contextual value-added measure that the Government intend to use in future discriminates against some ethnic groups by insisting on higher levels of achievement from these groups to obtain the same value-added score. Similarly, there are schools in deprived areas which achieve very good contextual value-added results while disguising extremely low levels of absolute achievement. For example, the Times Educational Supplement for 9 June reported that in the fourth best school in the country, according to the contextual value-added measure used by Ofsted, only 12 per cent of pupils achieved A* to C in English,13 per cent in maths and none in science. Of the top 20 schools in the contextual value added ratings, 11 had less than one-third of pupils achieving five Cs or better, including English and maths.
Meanwhile, head teachers in prosperous areas can receive below average value-added scores simply because their pupils come from a more affluent background. If one measure of comparability can lead to such wide ranges of absolute attainment, it means that the Government will need to be very explicit about which factors are considered comparable and which are not. It is also very important that the choice of a factor by which the authority gauges comparability does not inadvertently discriminate or imply that the expectations of performance for one group are somehow lower than the other.
Lord Dearing: We seem to touch again and again on academies. I warmly support the whole academy initiative; I believe it is a brave one and that in our areas of greatest need, we should be prepared to be bold and put resources into new initiatives. But there is a concern about the extent to which they should be separate from other schools, perhaps when it comes to poor performance.
My reading is that the academies are going to the areas where schools have failed and where the difficulties of success on behalf of the children are greatest. One must be prepared to accept that it will take time to pull
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: I have two points to make on the amendments; one is in relation to that just raised by my noble friend Lord Dearing. I believe there is a need to ensure that academies are seen to be under the same measures and pressures as all other schools. I am not convinced, however, because of the way in which academies are set up, that going through the local authority would be the most appropriate way to introduce such pressure. An inspection of a particular kind might be a way of raising the issue in the Secretary of State’s judgment.
Secondly, Amendment No. 185 would eliminate Clause 53(3)(c), which refers to,
What does that paragraph add to,
It seems to me that the one ought to be encompassed by the other in any case.
Lord Adonis: We are addressing the very important issue of tackling school failure. We have had a constructive debate on a number of the issues raised, and I should like to respond to them. I think I can allay the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, in respect of Amendment No. 185 on unacceptably low standards by reference to those achieved at comparable schools.
Our concern, of course, is that all schools should not be judged as entirely alike in their intake when it comes to making judgments about the speed at which they can be expected to improve. We have high expectations of all pupils in all schools, but the expectations for rate of improvement, given that the starting point is often very different, need to be tempered by an acceptance that schools have different levels of challenge to address.
We are not talking about arbitrary measures; the main measure involved is the new contextual value-added data currently being developed. This takes into account not only prior attainment, which is the main basis of the value-added tables and judgments at large, but also special educational needs status, first language, mobility, ethnicity, whether a pupil is or has been in care, free school meal status and a rating from the income deprivation affecting children index provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government. I think that the noble Baroness would accept that these are perfectly legitimate factors to take into account in devising an index of contextual value-added data. Precisely how they are weighted has been the subject of an elaborate pilot. While we are taking account of the findings of the pilot in the way in which we introduce the measure, it is a valid measure. However, we are not prepared to see local authorities empowered to make purely arbitrary interventions in schools, as is proposed in the next group of amendments.
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4.15 pm
I understand completely the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who said in respect of Amendments Nos. 185B and 185D that it often takes time to see a turnaround carried through in a school. However, the progress can sometimes be made in a shorter time than a year. Many schools come out of special measures in less than a year. I do not have the figures before me, but a high proportion of schools do so or move into a lesser category of intervention. Our concern is that if there were a statutory requirement for there to be a year between the first and second inspections, it might have the effect of slowing down the rate of improvement in a school, because one of the main things that a school quite rightly seeks to do when it is in special measures is come out of them. If it is told that it cannot come out of special measures for another year because it is not allowed to have another inspection, there would be category of schools over which, as it were, the Sword of Damocles would continue to hang, when they want to move on from their situation and put it behind them. While the noble Baroness raised a legitimate issue, we do not support the solution which the amendments propose.
I am not in any way saying that the regime which will apply to academies and city technology colleges will be less strenuous than it will be for other schools. I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that they are inspected on exactly the same basis as other schools. Their reports are published on the same cycle. School improvement partners are appointed to them. As they are regulated by the department rather than the local authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, recognised, it is the department and not the local authorities which appoints the SIPS, but we act on the reports of Ofsted, as we should do, and will take full account of the advice that is given by the relevant school improvement partners.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, made some sweeping claims about the performance of academies which were not correct. If she reads my remarks in an earlier debate on academies, I hope that they will satisfy her. However, she quite properly mentioned one academy which has had very serious problems, the Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough. That bears out what I said. In the case of Unity, the Secretary of State took radical and early action in response to a critical report by Ofsted, including substantial changes to the governing body and immediate changes to the leadership of the academy.
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Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I said that my remarks were not in any way intended to be anti-academy—they certainly were not. I was trying to understand, and I still do not feel that I have succeeded, how local authorities are to perform their duty under this Bill, the Children Act and Every Child Matters if the concerns arise from the academies, over which they have no purview. I was referring to the relationship between them, rather than academies per se or who is inspecting them and what the outcomes are. Whether I am happy does not matter very much; the issue is that the local authorities which have the statutory duties are clearly unhappy and have grave concerns.
I shall withdraw the amendment today but given the length of time between Committee and Report, I hope that the noble Lord will encourage further dialogue between his department and local authorities to see whether it can allay some of their concerns on their relationship with this Bill and their statutory duties under the Children Act. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 53 [Warning notice by local education authority]:
[Amendments Nos. 184D to 185 not moved.]
Clause 54 [School requiring significant improvement]:
[Amendments Nos. 185A and 185B not moved.]
Clause 55 [School requiring special measures]:
[Amendments Nos. 185C and 185D not moved.]
Clause 56 [Power of LEA to require governing body to enter into arrangements]:
[Amendment No. 185E not moved.]
Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 185F:
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 185F, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 185G, 187C, 188A and 188B. Amendments Nos. 185F and 185G relate to Clause 56, which is about local authorities intervening to inject some life into coasting schools. The draft guidance that has been sent out to chief education officers or directors of children’s services said of the clause:
“In effect clause 50 [now clause 56] provides a spectrum of intervention within one power—so it could be used differentially by authorities, depending on the school’s specific needs, where the governing body of the school are resistant to outside support. For example, it may be particularly helpful for a ‘coasting’ school to receive mentoring or similar support from a quality-assured external consultant or consultant head, whereas federation options will be more appropriate for schools in special measures”.
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Clause 56 offers a range of different possibilities. Both Amendments Nos. 185F and 185G are probing amendments.
Amendment No. 185F asks how far the old model of a local education authority adviser working with a school to help move it forward is still on the cards. Or is it now assumed that these services will be boughtin, often fairly expensively, from organisations such as W S Atkins or Vosper Thorneycroft, even though one might not think that those organisations gave education advice? However, they have both diversified into this area of service provision. The amendment refers to an employee of a local education authority. If a local head acts as an external adviser, that head is employed by the local education authority if he or she is head of a community school. But traditionally a group of people employed by local education authorities have helped schools in special measures. How far is that model to be moved on completely, or is there still some role here for local education authorities to retain within their ranks people who can be used as schools advisers?
Amendment No. 185G suggests that where a local authority makes such proposals it should consult, in addition to those named in Clause 56(2), the head and staff of the school concerned and the head and the governing body of any school or college that it is pushing into a collaborative arrangement. It is probable that the Minister will tell me that this is envisaged, because it seems fairly obvious that if you are going to suggest, for example, that a school should collaborate with another school, you should have discussed it with the heads of both the schools involved before you announce the measures. They are not mentioned as people who should be consulted. Amendment No. 185G is really a probing amendment to see whether that is assumed. I confess that I had not looked at the detailed guidance, and it is possible that it is subsumed in the guidance.
On Amendments Nos. 187C and 188A, we go forward to Clause 60, which concerns the Secretary of State intervening to make additional appointments to the board of governors. The effect of the amendments is to suggest that before doing so the Secretary of State should consult the local education authority and the governing board of the school as well as, in the case of Church or foundation schools, the diocesan board or the foundation governors. Again, if the Secretary of State makes such a move it would seem sensible and practical for him to consult these two sets of people.
Amendment No. 188B seeks to deletesubsection (4). Subsection (4) enables the Secretary of State to pay anyone who he appointed as a governor when he intervened to place someone on the board of governors. The amendment is probing because traditionally governors are unpaid volunteers who give a great deal of time to a local school out of good will. Do we really want to start introducing payments for governors? Might that not create an unfortunate precedent? I beg to move.
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Baroness Buscombe: I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 186, 187, 188 and 189 in this group, which are probing amendments designed to elicit the Minister’s thinking behind the wording of Clauses 57 and 60. The clauses relate to the power of the local education authority and the Secretary of State to appoint additional governors for a school that is eligible for intervention under the Bill. The Bill states that where a local education authority appoints additional governors to the governing body of a voluntary-aided school, the diocesan authority, the Roman Catholic bishop, or the persons who appoint the foundation governors may appoint additional governors equal to the number appointed by the authority. My understanding of this power is that it ensures that the Church or organisation responsible for the school retains its majority on the governing body.
Clause 60 makes slightly different provisions in relation to the Secretary of State. Here, the Secretary of State must first consult the Church or person appointing the foundation governors, and there is no right for the Church or other person to appoint additional governors. My Amendments Nos. 186 to 189 would extend the powers so that the foundation of a trust school, which appoints the majority of the governing body, could enjoy the same powers as a similar body in respect of a voluntary-aided school. I am interested to know why the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church or any other body that appoints foundation governors for voluntary-aided schools deserves this special privilege in relation to their schools, yet the foundation for a trust school does not.
Amendment No. 190 leaves out lines 17 and 18 on page 193. That part of Schedule 7 amends Section 15 of the Education Act 2005, which relates to measures to be taken by local education authorities following a report that a school is in special measures. The local education authority is required to,
- “consider what arrangements to make for the purpose of informing registered parents of the proposed action, ascertaining their views ... and taking account of those views”.
The section goes on to state that the local authority must,
- “consider whether those arrangements are to include the appointment of a specified person for that purpose”.
Therefore, the Bill gives the local authority power to delegate to a third party its responsibility to inform parents of the action it proposes to take. We would question whether such a power is necessary. Surely, the local authority will already have appointed a person to consider these matters. This is implied by the fact that someone employed by the local authority will be carrying out that required action in the first place.
I am sure that local authorities would already have the power to appoint such a person, regardless of whether that was formally permitted by statute. It would be appreciated if the Minister could elaborate on what is envisaged by “specified person” in the schedule.
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4.30 pm
Lord Adonis: In response to the points made on Amendments Nos. 187C and 188A, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, we wish to consider this matter further. The noble Baroness seeks to extend the consultation requirements when the Secretary of State appoints additional governors to a school causing concern to include the foundation, when there is a foundation attached to a school, and the local authority. It would be good practice for the Secretary of State to do both, in any event. Indeed, when we appoint additional governors, we consult the relevant local authority as a matter of course. But I will consider further before Report stage whether we should be explicit about this in the Bill.
Similarly, Amendment No. 185F seeks explicitly to state that a local authority employee is among the partners with whom the local authority may require a school to enter into arrangements. I am glad to say that this is covered by existing law and the Bill. Local authorities are automatically able to offer support to a failing school under existing law. Furthermore, the Bill as drafted does not rule out a local authority employee from acting as the partner. That would precisely include the categories raised by the noble Baroness, such as the head teacher of a community school who would be employed by the local authority. He would be the type of person who might well, in some circumstances, be a partner with whom a local authority would wish a school facing serious difficulties to work.
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