| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. For the purpose of recording statistics for the department, the authorisation is that of the school and not that of the parent.
Lord Dearing: My Lords, the point I make has some value. High attendance must be promoted. My father bequeathed to me his school prizes. There were prizes for attendance. We need to care about attendance because a lot of children just do not turn up at school and that is a disaster for us and for them.
I like a great deal of the policies that the Government put forward but I have concerns—they are shared by others—about the extent to which they will be given effect through regulation from the department. Could not more be given effect by the affirmative resolution procedure? Could not the Government set a framework in which local authorities exercise discretion with powers to intervene if they are used badly? I hope that the Government will respond to the idea that local authorities have something to offer: they are close to schools.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, hoped that the House would not spend too much time on faith schools. To some extent, I am the cause of that subject being an issue. A couple of years ago, I was invited to chair a committee to advise the Church of England on its schools. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn will doubtless have something to say on behalf of the Church. I am unable to do that. However, perhaps I may refer to the meeting I attended with the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, this morning in Barnsley. One of the reasons that my committee suggested more Church schools is because there are seven dioceses without a Church school—I believe that there are 71 LEAs without one—including the diocese of Sheffield. There are 8,000 children attending a Church school but not one is a secondary school. The governors in a former mining village have proposed a secondary Church school. The proposal is being discussed by the diocese and the local authority. The proposal is that the school should serve the existing community but because there is a surplus of places the excess will be offered to Christian families outside. Because there are quite a lot of primary Church schools, some pupils will come from those schools into the secondary school. But there is no question of quotas. The situation is very relaxed. There is no question of doing other than welcome children of all faiths.
In July 2000, long before the riots in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, my committee issued an interim report. We recommended to the Church of England that it should pursue a policy of welcoming children of other faiths. We said that,
- "new Church schools should always have a substantial core of Christian teachers and pupils from Christian families, so that they are in effect a living Christian community, but that they should also serve the whole community of which they are part, welcoming pupils from all backgrounds and faiths".
The Government consulted well by issuing a flotilla of Green Papers before presenting the Bill. I have read five of them and I hope to read the remaining two shortly. I hope equally that the Government will listen to such good counsel as is offered from the Benches around them in this House. I hope that there is the will on the part of the Government to take time to consider the wisdom available to them and to use it well.
4.22 p.m.
Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to listen to and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. I am very happy that he arrived on time from Barnsley to be "a touch wicked". There is much vigour already surrounding the Bill. I look forward to the vigorous progress of the Bill in its various stages.
I, as do we all, wish to ensure high standards in education for all children and young people. Improvements have certainly been made in schools since my own children were pupils and I was a teacher. Many of these improvements I now see as a school governor.
The improvements in schools are due to developments in structures, systems and support for teachers. There has always been good practice and innovation in teaching. There have always been schools with an ethos which supports learning; an ethos built on productive interactions between teachers and teachers, teachers and pupils and pupils and pupils. Many good schools have always been, and always will be, ahead of legislation and have innovated in ways which have benefited children, parents and their communities.
The inner city primary school where I am a governor, and which the Minister visited last week, has many spectacular achievements, including good academic results. Part of its improvement is due to legislation and part is due to talented leadership. Some of what is in the Education Bill is happening already. But the Bill also, as the Minister said, introduces new measures and possibilities and seeks to build on good practice and tighten up legislation.
I want to restrict my contribution today to the issue of school governors and their responsibilities. That is mainly contained in Part 3 of the Bill. I shall also refer to the need for more participation by children and young people in educational systems. I shall not go through Part 3 in detail but I want to speak about school governance because it is my experience that it is important in relation to standards, to local involvement in the management of education, to support for schools, and, where necessary, intervention to improve performance. Indeed, Clause 20(2) of the Bill states:
- "The governing body shall conduct the school with a view to promoting high standards of educational achievement at the school".
An issue raised by the Minister was the power of an LEA or the Secretary of State to provide for governing bodies to consider interim executive members to address serious weaknesses or special measures. That reflects a determination to drive up standards. My reading of Clause 34 of the Bill is that governors certainly play a part in the appointment of staff.
Chapter 1 of Part 3 of the Bill implements the consultation paper The Way Forward—A Modernised Framework for School Governance. It establishes instruments of governance and regulations about the control and occupation of school premises and measures to enable more than one school to federate under a single governing body if they so choose. That could have enormous advantages in relation to links with communities and community involvement and in relation to productive collaboration between different types of school. Nursery schools will be required to have a governing body and could form part of a federation. Primary/secondary liaison could be enhanced. I take on board the concerns of the Special Educational Needs Consortium and recognise that special educational needs must continue to be supported—as they are now—through dedicated special needs governors. But we can discuss that issue at later stages of the Bill.
Chapter 2 of Part 3 refers to new financial arrangements as they apply to school governors. The governors will need training and support to carry that through. Financial management of schools is complex. Indeed, if they are to have the power to form or invest in companies to deliver services they will require even more training. Relevant training for governors is built into the Bill.
Chapter 3 discusses admissions, exclusion and attendance. In my experience, these areas can cause confusion and distress for schools, parents and children. Co-ordination of application processes across LEAs and the involvement of parent governors may help. It is important that exclusion panels will have to consider the interests of the whole school community and not just those of the excluded pupil. The appeal panel may be constituted to reflect that.
I turn to the issue of pupil participation in school systems. In November last year, following the report Schools—achieving success, the Department for Education and Skills together with Save the Children met with young people to talk about secondary education. It was clear from the young people's comments that they felt that they should have a say in the systems of their schools. Such involvement encourages ownership of systems and a commitment to make them work for all pupils. It tells young people that democracy is important and beneficial. It is a
lesson in citizenship. The White Paper and the SEN code of practice support pupil participation. The White Paper states that the Government will,
- "encourage students' active participation in the decisions that affect them, about their learning and more widely".
- "Pupil participation should be the goal for all children and opportunities for participation should expand as pupils develop".
To conclude, a large section of the Bill is devoted to the powers of school governing bodies. It is clear that at a local level the Government take school governors seriously. These issues will require detailed discussion at a local level. That process will be healthy for schools and for their governing bodies as I think that it would be healthy to encourage pupil participation. I look forward to further discussions on these issues in your Lordships' House and in wider contexts.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, I wish to comment on three aspects of the Bill: the 14 to 19 curriculum, exclusions and faith schools. Before doing that, I would say, en passant, that the Bill was treated very shabbily in the Commons. For such a lengthy Bill, with literally hundreds of clauses and schedules, it had 40 hours of debate. The Bill that I introduced in 1988, which was called the "Great" Education Reform Bill—at least, I called it the "Great" Education Reform Bill—had 200 hours of debate in the House of Commons, and was debated for almost the same time in this Chamber. As the Government Chief Whip is present, I would say that the only concessions on that Bill were made as a result of debates in this House, although we had a huge majority in the House of Commons. I hope that that has set a very happy precedent.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page