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Lord Northbourne: I do not see any takers in the Chamber. So it must be accepted that teachers must not be left entirely without sanctions.
Corporal punishment has rightly been excluded. But I want to say that I believe that exclusion is a lousy sanction; it is a very bad sanction indeed. It is damaging to the child because it interrupts his or her education; it puts the child at risk on the streets; and it is ineffective because it is, in effect, legalised truanting. The suggestion that the exclusion period should be extended by 45 days in any one year is, I believe, a very grave mistake. Structures should have ensured that damaged and emotionally disturbed children and those with special educational needs were picked up much earlier in their school careers. Indeed, they should have been picked up in the primary schools.
Clause 28 designates a twice excluded child as a "disqualified person". That would be a disaster for children and those words must be struck out of the Bill. In my view--and, indeed, that of the noble Baroness, Lady David, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby--those children should never have been allowed to get that far. The fault lies with the adults concerned. Those children who are emotionally disturbed and those with special educational needs should have been identified at primary school level.
I say to the Government, finally, that it would pay much better to provide resources to achieve the identification of those pupils and give them the help
they need while they are still at primary school than to have to provide very expensive special education for them when things have gone badly wrong in secondary school.7.35 p.m.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I should like to begin by picking up the gist of comments of a number of my noble friends. I had supposed that Mr. Blunkett's pronouncements last week signified that the policy gonks from Walworth Road had undergone a sudden conversion. However, thanks to the honesty of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, and the elucidation from my noble friend Lord Skidelsky, I see that the instincts of the more cynical side in my nature--that the focus groups at Millbank Tower had revealed some advantage in muddying the water a little--are likely to be a little more reliable.
Having got that off my chest, perhaps I may turn to the Bill. Notwithstanding the putative risks of salmonella advanced by noble Lords opposite, I am broadly content with the Bill in all its parts. I recognise that eggs are a dangerous subject in a political sense but I would even go as far as to say that this particular egg is entirely fit to eat. The basis for my reaching that conclusion stems from my firm belief that the role of parents in the upbringing and education of their children is exceptionally important.
My impression is that there is general agreement about this across the political divide, and, as an aside here, I wonder to what extent the American research highlighted in last week's "Panorama" programme, demonstrating the significance of a mother's role in determining the behaviour and academic performance of her children, especially her sons, may in due course impact upon the development of education policy.
This general precept of the importance of proactive parental involvement in their children's schooling has to be juxtaposed, in policy terms, with the part to be played by the education process with respect to preparing children for adult life. Here, I suspect, I echo some of the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and my noble friend Lady Young. As a parent of school-age children, I sometimes despair at the capacity of our education system to appreciate this. Indeed, at the height of the troubles at the Ridings School, I was quite frankly appalled by some of the bland pronouncements that were bandied about, seemingly implying that schools are not and should not be guardians of their charges' morality.
Above all else, education is concerned with people--real parents and children, with their attendant hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future. With that in mind, it is nonsense to suppose that time spent at school should simply be a matter of acquiring knowledge within the framework of the curriculum. The ethos of a school, pastoral care and the learning of lessons for life are in many respects even more important in so far as they equip our children for adulthood and living usefully within society. In reality, it is the interaction of these elements, together with the purely academic, within the upbringing of our children that makes the individual
achievement of our hopes, dreams and aspirations possible. It is just as much nonsense to presume that parents, in sending their children to school, base their judgment on academic criteria alone. Again, the ethos of a school and the ways in which it reflects the values and beliefs of the parent concerned are an equally critical factor.Accordingly, my judgment of the Bill hinges upon the capacity of its provisions to add impetus to the process of empowering parental involvement in the education of their children, which has been such a significant feature of the Government's previous reforms in this area. I turn, first, to the dread subject of selection. I accept that the evidence as to its merits or otherwise remains inconclusive, although many noble Lords have expressed their support for it within rather than between schools. The observation from Christopher Woodhead that,
- "In secondary schools setting by ability, particularly in Years 8 and 9, is leading to more effective teaching and therefore to higher standards",
is of mild relevance here. That said, there is a dichotomy--one that I suspect I share with the noble Lord, Lord Morris--of how best to achieve the aim of driving up standards (no one would dispute the desirability of that) and maintaining choice and diversity without compromising principles of universality and equality of provision.
If I were to analyse the Bill's proposals with respect to selection in an historical vacuum, I could well be drawn towards the reasoning of noble Lords opposite. However, they do not exist in a vacuum. They are underpinned by the Government's previous reforms--league tables and so on--by Ofsted's watch-dog role and by the voluntary nature of the proposals. These mechanisms provide safeguards with respect to the maintenance and improvement of standards among all our schools and the protection and enhancement of parental choice. It seems to me that they go some way towards addressing the concerns of various noble Lords with respect to "sink" schools.
There are more compelling reasons for supporting the Government here. Common sense suggests that disaffection, in an educational sense, is a function of comfort. Any child who is not stretched or engaged by his or her schooling is much less likely to benefit from it than the child who is constantly stimulated by the process. This view is endorsed by Christopher Woodhead who states:
- "The classrooms where children make most progress are those where teachers have high expectations of all pupils and where the bulk of the lesson is taken up by the teacher explaining, questioning, pushing back the frontiers of the children's knowledge".
As a principle, selection accedes to the concept of the child as an individual in ways that the comprehensive system is hard pushed so to do. In our modern age there exists a detectable sense in which our children are growing up very much faster and earlier than was the case, say, in my youth. They are perhaps being required to take on the burdens and responsibilities of adulthood at a much younger age. That being so, selection has the advantage of affording schools a mechanism that lends
credibility to a child's sense of individuality and independence. This is equally important for parents in so far as it encourages their engagement in the education of their children.For many of the same reasons, I am supportive of the Bill's provisions with respect to baseline assessment and target setting. The usefulness of these measures lies in their capacity to identify the differences in the abilities and aptitudes of children as a means of planning their future education on an individual basis. The key word here is "difference". What is important above all else is that our education system should recognise the individuality of our children and the individuality of their talents. I am grateful for the confirmation of my noble friend the Minister that this is the intent of the Bill's provisions here.
Finally, I turn to the Bill's provisions with respect to discipline in our schools. There exists a widespread concern that problem behaviour in our children is on the increase. Although it is difficult to quantify this, the circumstantial evidence of recent events would seem to favour such an interpretation.
In this context we should not lose sight of the fact that the causes of ill-discipline and problem behaviour are exceedingly complex, involving a wide range of influences, from the environmental (to include parenting skills and school ethos) through to the neuro-biological. As the recently released POST technical note entitled Treating Problem Behaviour in Children states,
- "While there is broad agreement on this long list of contributory factors, there is much scope for debate over their relative importance".
However, there is a growing body of evidence, as exemplified by the American research to which I have already referred, that the role of parents in this area is absolutely critical. In this regard, the POST note further states:
- "Home Office studies emphasise the importance of family relationships, parental interest, consistency of discipline, etc. to the behaviour of the children and that deficiencies in these areas predispose towards behavioural problems, delinquency and ultimately crime".
On this basis there is considerable merit in education policy seeking to establish greater levels of partnership between parents and schools in the upbringing of children. I concur with the views of my noble friend Lady Perry here. My interpretation is that the Government's proposals, particularly with respect to the imposition of the duty upon schools to draw up discipline policies and the establishment of home-school agreements, will do much to generate and cement such partnerships.
All in all, the Government's proposals in this Bill are a further step on the road towards establishing a much more parent centred system of education. They add impetus to the principles of enhancing choice and diversity--as in the measures for selection and grant-maintained and grammar schools--at the same time as ensuring that the drive to raise standards yet further (via baseline assessment, the setting of targets and the empowerment of Ofsted to inspect LEAs) will be facilitated. All of these are welcome developments and I am entirely happy to support them.
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, in preparing for this Bill I was not certain whether I was to start the proceedings on behalf of these Benches or end them. I therefore started by asking myself what was not in the Bill. It is interesting to note that a number of other noble Lords have started from the same premise and many of us have reached the same conclusion.
A notable exclusion is any reference to the introduction of a general teaching council, which I should have thought was one of the most obvious measures that the Government could support in order to raise the professional standards of teachers. Many noble Lords have emphasised the important role of the teacher in the classroom as the front end of the education system. I am amazed that that provision is not included in the Bill. I hope that it is not too late for the Government to take this on board, given remarks made recently by other education Ministers.
Also absent from the Bill is any real provision for dealing with some of the disorganising influences which will be let loose. My noble friend referred to the difficulties of local authorities as regards planning school places. That point was emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cordoff.
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