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Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, I realise that the noble Lord is making his case in a very measured way, but I believe that he should reflect further upon the remark that he just made about how admission into Church schools would be sought because they would not, for example, permit the admittance of blacks. If
the noble Lord thinks about it, he will realise that many Church schools were built in order to accommodate immigrants. He will find that large numbers of children in Church schools come from many racially diverse backgrounds.
Lord Peston: Yes, my Lords; they certainly do. However, I am questioning the attitude of parents. I should add that the Church has nothing to apologise for in terms of the history of education in this country. I have forgotten which speaker made the point, but if we are worried about who was involved in education some 100 or 150 years ago, there is little doubt that the Church of England has to apologise to no one for the contribution that it has made. I am not attacking the Church on the matter. However, I will be attacking religion on a completely different basis when we meet again in Committee. I am not attacking the Church: I am talking about what it is that parents are selecting.
It just happens that the best argument that I have heard for the extension of faith schools came from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and was repeated by my noble and right reverend friend Lord Sheppard. It appears that we are to have these restrictively constructive schools. My right honourable friend said—and I believe that my noble friend repeated the argument—that if we are to have them, we would be better off having them within the maintained system rather than in the private sector. That at least seems to be an argument worth reflecting upon, though I have not got much further with it. If my noble friend the Minister takes that view, she ought to generalise it completely to the whole of the private sector and ask why we do not bring in the latter in all its different forms in the same way.
As I said, I shall reserve most of my remarks on this hotchpotch of,
- "city technology colleges, city colleges for the technology of the arts . . . city academies",
I shall conclude my remarks. I am sorry that I have spoken for 14 minutes, but I have two urgent questions for my noble friend the Minister. One is whether she has seen the case of the Cooper's Company School, which appears to use interviewing techniques to achieve academic and social selection in practice. I read her department's statement on the matter and I was not convinced by it. However, the Minister could easily convince me.
More serious is the story that appeared in the Guardian on Saturday about the school in Gateshead that has been taken over by a group of creationists. I stand second to none in my support for freedom of thought and expression, however idiotic it is. The people in this case can believe anything that they like, but I say in terms that such people are not fit to be allowed within a million miles of our schools or the education of our children. What will the department
do about that? Does it have the power to do anything about it? If not, should it not reflect on such matters? Does not the Minister see that, if she and my right honourable friend go down the proposed path, those chickens—to return to today's cliché—will definitely come home to roost?7.31 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, after that marvellous description from the noble Lord, Lord Peston, of how to do one's own warm-up and then pick a fight on one's own ground, even if it does not appear in the Bill, I shall try to be as brief as I can.
Most of my comments are not inspired directly by the Bill either; they are inspired by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. I felt, with that Act, that I might be able to excuse myself from the education debate for the foreseeable future, at least. I thought that we had covered most of the relevant things. There was something in the legislation to cover everything. Now, we have a Bill that says that we can ignore parts of it, in the context of primary education. So, we have a problem: is it the case that certain parts of the Bill do not apply? I cannot find them. If we are handing out awards for lack of ability to read Bills, I may even be ahead of the noble Lord, Lord Peston. However, I cannot find it in the Bill and nor can any of the people who have been advising me. If that is not taken into account, we have wasted a great deal of our time.
The Minister is aware of the issue. She was in at the last stage of that process. She looks fairly comfortable, so I hope that we will get some assurances. However, if we suddenly say that we have something here that makes it possible to suspend activities for 20 per cent of the school population—20 per cent of the adult population, as we always forget, when we discuss education—generally in the schools in which those people will get the best support, there is something fundamentally wrong with the thinking behind the Bill and with the department. It is removing people. It is a fundamental error that that has not been made clearer. I give the Minister every opportunity to correct me and show me what I have missed. If I have missed it, so have many others.
If it is not part of what is going on, there is something wrong with the whole process of education. It means that we cannot deal with any problem without someone in the education system saying that it is inconvenient for us to deal with our social responsibilities, so we shall ignore them. If that applies to the whole system of government—not only education—it is something that should not be happening, especially when it is done in a spirit of innovation, creativity and raising standards. There is something of an intellectual obscenity there.
I hope that the Minister will show me that it is not happening and say whether the Bill says that such things can be done when the regulations come into force. If we come around to the idea that everybody else should have a go at secondary legislation, I will sing, rather badly, a song that has already been gone
through several times. However, there are a couple of issues. First, where does secondary legislation fit into our process and should we be given some warning about it? Secondly, can we simply ignore a fundamental part of the Government's thinking because it is inconvenient?I hope that I will get some answers. If not, I will take up a lot of the Minister's time in Committee.
7.35 p.m.
Lord Rix: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, bemoaned the fact that he had hit the tea-break. I can only bemoan the fact that I seem to have hit the dinner hour.
Having listened to four and a half hours of debate, I have heard a great deal of discussion of faith schools. I realise what a terribly mixed-up childhood I must have had. My prep school in Hornsea in Yorkshire was a Church of England school and my best friend was a Primitive Methodist. I was then sent to Bootham School in York, which is a Quaker school, where my best friend was of the Jewish faith. At the outset of the war, we were evacuated to Ampleforth, which, as noble Lords will know, is a Roman Catholic school. There I made no friends at all. The Roman Catholics made me extremely jealous: after they had been to Mass they could go out and play cricket on Sundays, whereas those of us who were members at that time of the Society of Friends could only stay inside and write letters. Such are my thoughts on faith schools from my experiences of many years ago.
I thank the Minister for her explanation of the Bill and the thinking that lies behind it. As president of Mencap, however, I have, on behalf of the children with disabilities for whom Mencap speaks and also the wider group of children with special educational needs, concerns about the possible unintended consequences of the Bill. The doubts cast on the proposed overarching powers of the Secretary of State by that triumvirate of noble Baronesses, Lady Blatch, Lady Perry of Southwark and Lady Sharp of Guildford, backed by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, induced a quick bout of atrial fibrillation. However, I recovered quickly, and I can comment only that, as the shelf of educational law continues to fill, we must watch carefully for the potential of new provisions for undermining the equal access and equal value provisions that we have secured so very recently.
Last year the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act fulfilled many of our ambitions for children with special needs. The emphasis was on education in mainstream settings, while carefully preserving the special school option for children for whom it is in the shorter or longer term the best option. The combination of education and disability rights legislation gave grounds for optimism that all children would get fair access to good and appropriate education across the range of mainstream and special schools.
If we are to move further away from the broad concept of mainstream schools, through specialism and flexibility, we must look closely at the small print
to see what losses might offset the gains. The right to education in a mainstream school will be rather shallow if large numbers of schools cease to be mainstream. The Education Bill, according to what the Secretary of State in another place said at Second Reading, is,
- "intended to build on the excellent work that schools, governing bodies and all those who serve our children have achieved in the past four years in taking forward the standards agenda".—[Official Report, Commons, 4/12/01; col. 190.]
We have only one childhood, although Master Shakespeare would have it otherwise. They should be golden years, if not necessarily the best of our lives. I hope that we have left behind any notion that standards are only a matter of academic success, leading to economic prosperity. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is in his place. I am sure that he will agree with me that for many of our severely disabled children eye contact with the teacher and the exchange of understanding smiles are success enough.
Since we cannot decry standards, we cannot decry innovation, diversity and schools pooling their resources in federations where they so wish. All those feature of the Bill have something to commend them. However, to put it bluntly, my concern is that those spearheading innovations and diversification and those creating new federations may see catering for special needs as someone else's problem and a distraction from their main task and that the flexibility they enjoy will let them get away with this.
Policy in the field of education is an emotive and challenging subject, as no doubt the debate will show. I hope to secure some measure of agreement on special needs by deliberately not taking sides on selection and specialist schools and by not starting from the perspective that there is no place for special schools. Dogma needs to allow space for reason and eventually for evidence. In education, as in most areas of policy, one size does not fit all—particularly for children with complex needs.
The specialist school programme is central to the policy of quality through diversity. In 1999, 11 per cent of all state secondary schools—some 395 schools—were designated as specialist schools. The Government have set a target of 50 per cent of all secondary schoolchildren being educated in specialist schools by the year 2005. Up to 10 per cent of admissions to those schools can be selected on the basis of ability or the rather more speculative "aptitude".
The Bill provides a framework for specialist schools and encouragement for other schools to join their ranks. While my main concern is that becoming specialist should not be a pretext for becoming exclusive of special needs, I want to acknowledge that for some children with special needs a school's specialism may actually be an attraction.
Two schools in Birmingham, a mainstream and a special school, have jointly earned specialist status as an arts college. They are a model of good practice, where pupils with special needs and non-disabled children have fully integrated sessions and performances. That success in combining specialism and inclusion shows what is possible. It also shows what we should be trying to achieve if we believe in the best for all children and not the best just for some children. Unfortunately, there is evidence that we need to try harder.
Research both from Ofsted and from Sheffield Hallam University indicates that specialist schools are not taking their fair share of pupils with special educational needs. I am not aware of any evidence that they are recruiting support staff to help them work with children who need support in their specialist subjects. Given the doubt that this research casts on selective admissions policies and practices, I would welcome an assurance of better things from the Minister.
Specifically, I would welcome the assurances that children with special educational needs will not be consigned to the non-specialist, less favoured schools, and that schools applying for specialist status will have to demonstrate high SEN standards and commit themselves to improving access and curriculum support for children with special needs.
Across social policy there is a difficult balance to be struck between freedom to innovate on the one hand and caution on the other. I have said that I do not want to stifle innovation; to stifle innovation is to lose possibility. We can combine innovation and caution if we do something about what seem to be largely unaccountable admissions processes and make them more accountable. Writing in attention to special needs as a condition brings in that conditionality.
The concept of federation is an interesting one and no doubt we shall explore the detail at some length in Committee. At this stage my feeling is that federation offers an interesting possibility for alliances, for which I am sure it was not primarily intended. Federation could mean effective alliances between mainstream, specialist and special schools. However, as has been well said, when the elephant dances with the chickens the partnership can be a little unequal. There are real grounds for concern that that sort of federation might be bought at a price—that price being the loss of dedicated special needs governors currently valued by special schools. Beyond that, there is the risk of loss of a separate special needs head teacher. That combined loss would reduce the status of special needs work and diminish SEN expertise.
My request is that the special needs implications of federation should be carefully thought through, clearly expressed and specifically consulted on locally before decisions are taken. Where federation goes forward, there should be a requirement to have dedicated special needs expertise at both governor and leadership level. That will help ensure that special needs work is not reduced to a minor corner of a federation which is looking in other directions.
I turn to the other collective innovation—the admissions forums which local education authorities are required to set up. In my younger days, in that extraordinary mixed-up education of mine, it would have been "fora", but let that be. Collective responsibility for regulating the admissions process makes sense. However, we also need to make sense of the relationship between the new forums and the existing requirement to monitor admissions of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
I hope that the Minister may be able to clarify what will be the impact of regulations on forum responsibilities for special needs policies. It is essential that when schools are working corporately, as well as when they are working separately, they should be helping to develop policies which help ensure the best possible appropriate education for children with special educational needs.
In conclusion, I want to underline my concern for a strategic approach to combining the potentially good things in the Bill with the quite definitely good things already secured through the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. A conflict is not inevitable. A modest degree of specialist selection—accountable, fair and regulated—is compatible with the inclusion of children with special educational needs. However, selective schools creaming off children with obvious talents and no obvious special needs is not so compatible.
We have come a long way since the days before the 1970 Education Act which gave all children a place in our education system and filled the gap left by the 1944 Act. In 1981 and 1993 and in last year's Act we moved further forward. I do not want to see us sliding back, as there is always a risk of so doing when we legislate for children in general and for excellence in particular areas, without specific regard to special educational needs and disability.
I look forward to the Minister's response and to the assurance that the Bill will offer opportunities and not threats for children with special needs. As long ago as the 17th century Francis Bacon commented that:
- "a wise man will make more opportunities than he finds".
7.48 p.m.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, I know that my noble friend Lady Blatch and other noble Lords have already referred to the matter of scrutiny. As I consider it of the utmost importance, I hope noble Lords will forgive its repetition. My point is this. As each Bill reaches your Lordships' House from another place, a most worrying feature is becoming more and more prevalent: the scant scrutiny that it has had.
Amendments have been submitted and rejected without debate. It appears that business managers in another place seem more enthusiastic in getting Bills completed than in allowing Members to perform their legitimate role. Whole sections are not debated at all through the use of the "knife", as it is called, or by use of the guillotine. Thank goodness we are able to do our
duty and, in so doing, can try to improve a Bill so that it leaves this House in a better and more acceptable form.This Education Bill sadly comes into the category of needing extreme care. I believe that it requires very detailed consideration as many of the proposed measures would make it a Bill to end all Education Bills. I say that because it would transfer power to the Secretary of State to do practically anything he or she wished through secondary legislation. That must be bad for democracy as well as, in this case, being bad for the children it is meant to serve.
It is not possible to refer to every issue, so I intend to concentrate on those that give me the most anxiety. The Bill professes to decentralise and give more independence to schools, but in fact the opposite is the case. I want to see real freedom given to head teachers and schools. So many organisations, including the DfES, are like Big Brother breathing down the necks of head teachers. The bureaucratic burden they impose has become intolerable and teachers are voting with their feet and leaving the profession. It is not surprising that the National Association of Head Teachers has stated that:
- "Greater autonomy for successful schools is all spin and no substance".
- "the idea that head teachers have to prove to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State is highly prescriptive and over bureaucratic. As far as the NAHT is concerned all schools other than those in special measures or serious weakness should be self-managed".
I am sure that all noble Lords want to see successful schools that are enthusiastic and innovative. However, should we not only want them to be so, but expect that standard to be the norm? Being a successful school in government terms will qualify a school to be allowed to practise self management, but I should like to see a system in which only weak and failing schools would be denied that facility.
Teacher shortages are frighteningly high, with around 5,000 vacancies. In some areas the number has doubled since last year. One has only to look at the Times Educational Supplement to see how grave is the problem faced by schools. The addition of another tier of bureaucracy with the imposition of school forums and admission forums will only exacerbate the situation.
For myself, one of the most important and worrying issues is the future of sixth forms. My experience as a governor of an independent school has taught me the significant value of a sixth form in staff recruitment terms. Teachers of high calibre relish the extra challenge of more advanced work with pupils preparing for university. I have always believed that senior pupils over 16 years old contribute enormously to the school in their final two years. They become role models for the younger ones and as they take on responsibilities in the school, they also become good ambassadors for the school. I believe that it would be criminal to take measures to reduce the number of
those precious places. My view is that exactly the opposite should apply, with every encouragement given to heads who expand their sixth forms.I turn now to what I consider to be a matter of vital importance and urgency and in consequence to flag up our intention to table amendments in Committee to strengthen the law in respect of child protection.
I am sure that many noble Lords are aware of the haunting and horrifying case of Lauren Wright, whose stepmother and father were convicted of her manslaughter and wilful neglect last October. Lauren, aged six, attended her two-teacher primary school for 16 months before she died. Despite the fact that she lost four stone in weight during that time, and at her death weighed only two stone, and that she regularly appeared with bruising, her tragic plight was not reported to the relevant local authorities either by the head or the assistant teacher. It is difficult to believe that such brutality could be seen and not acted on.
The issues raised by the case are to be presented to the Victoria Climbié inquiry by an all-party group of Norfolk MPs. One of the proposals in their submission will be some changes in the law. The MPs have accepted suggestions from the Norfolk director of education who, rightly concerned about the implications of the case for the management of his LEA, has made two proposals.
The first is that DfES Circular 10/95, which requires schools to have a designated teacher for child protection issues—Lauren's school did not—should be strengthened so that there is a specific requirement for head teachers and governing bodies to have regard to it. The second is that regulations dealing with head teacher appraisal should give the LEA a locus in regard to the advice given to governing bodies so far as child protection is concerned. Currently no day-to-day managerial link is in place between LEAs and head teachers, which is acceptable given the increasing powers of self determination in schools, but which gives LEAs no disciplinary or other powers in this highly sensitive and often multi-disciplinary area.
My right honourable friend Mrs Gillian Shephard has been invited to attend the Climbié inquiry to put these and other points on behalf of the all-party group of Norfolk MPs. I know that she has already approached officials in the DfES who are working on the Bill, and that she has also written to the Secretary of State.
In conclusion, I believe that this important Bill fails to tackle the genuine problems throughout our schools today. It tinkers around the periphery and, at the end of the day, I just cannot see that there will be any improvements. Teacher shortages and a very real crisis of discipline are catastrophic for the education of our children. Local people and parents appear to be locked out of decision making in the future, while in their place added numbers of unelected placemen will be given unfettered powers. There is therefore much serious debate to be had in the later stages of the Bill as it proceeds through this House. I believe that it is our duty to scrutinise all the issues and I look forward to working with the Minister in the weeks ahead.
7.56 p.m.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, it does not surprise me in the least that this is a Bill to which noble Lords have wished to contribute their considerable expertise. What we have all heard so far augurs well for a continuing lively debate in the future. I am not certain that I envy the noble Baroness on the Government Front Bench who has to sum up the debate, but having listened to her introduction, I am more than confident that her remarks will be professional, expert and enthusiastic.
I should like to start by saying that my own contribution will be much more modest. I am very much an amateur, one who over the years has become involved on the fringes of education in a number of different capacities: as a parent, a care committee worker, a governor and manager, a co-opted member of the ILEA and a pre-school playgroup enthusiast.
I should also like to say how refreshing it is to see educationalists and most, but not quite all, politicians concentrating on trying to deliver what is really important; that is, quality in education, education for today's changing needs—they are changing rapidly—and, above all, education that the individual young person recognises as necessary for him or her and relevant to their future role. Clearly noble Lords are not wholly in agreement on all aspects of the Bill, but gone for good, I certainly hope, are those ghastly ideological battles over comprehensive versus selective education. The guiding principle is, as surely it always should have been, parental and, increasingly, individual pupil choice.
It was not all that long ago that educational opportunities were mainly for boys, although not of course for all boys. The Victorians thought that education was far too stressful for girls, so they were among the first group of disadvantaged. One hundred years later, the 1944 Butler Act—I was glad to hear it referred to by at least two noble Lords, because it is referred to in rather disparaging terms in the Green Paper—granted free education for all. That was a major step for both sexes, not least because, well ahead of other organisations, it repealed the requirement for female teachers—not male teachers—to resign on marriage. Where would the teacher shortage be today if that rule had not been abolished?
However, I have to say that it was the 1972 Act which provided the real breakthrough for the 50 per cent of our population that is female. By raising the school leaving age to 16, girls who would have previously left school at the earliest possible moment stayed on long enough to take national examinations and began to be taken seriously in employment.
I mention this because, among the many other areas considered in the Bill, the White and Green Papers and the Bill itself are quite rightly concerned, for all our sakes— and above all for our future competitiveness—to tackle the unequal educational attainment, commensurate with their abilities, of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is on this issue that I wish to concentrate.
This has been a problem for at least as long as I have been alive. Indeed, I remember the famous speech by Keith Joseph in 1974 in which he made us all focus on the "cycle of deprivation". It was howled down, but it was absolutely right.
Today's figures, quoted in the Green Paper, are depressing but instructive. Fewer than 20 per cent of young people from the lower socio-economic groups go to university; 70 per cent from the highest. Only 13 per cent of the same group achieve two A-levels, or equivalent, at 18. So the earlier in a child's schooling potential problems are spotted and resources mobilised the better. Only last week, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, pointed out how much cheaper and more humane it is to spend £5,000 or £6,000 on a child at that stage rather than £25,000 a year when they reach prison.
For me, the most depressing aspect of my time as a juvenile court magistrate in London was to see the first time a child or young person was brought to court for a criminal offence. All too often—I would say 99 times out of 100—a totally unacceptable record of truancy had by then been established which was almost impossible to break. Alongside that would be the problem of disruptive behaviour in school. Often the two problems go together because, as teachers will privately admit, they are often quite thankful when the pupil does not turn up and make teaching impossible and influence other children's behaviour.
Here I rather agree with the points made, perhaps rather obliquely, by the noble Lord, Lord Moser, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on where the money should be spent. Should it really be given to schools that are doing well, doing better, or should it be placed where the job of teaching is double the job it might be in such schools?
One of the most vivid lessons I learnt was as a care committee worker for ILEA in the East End. The head of the brand new Stepney Green comprehensive gave a talk on her role as the head. She was asked how she spent her time. "A very large part", she said, "with the first year, getting to know the 25 per cent or so who have problems. By the end of the first year I've reduced that to 10 per cent, and they are with me for their whole school career". "How on earth can a head possibly justify spending that amount of time?", she was asked. "Easily", she replied. "If I did not do that then the 25 per cent would swiftly become 30 per cent, 40 per cent, and eventually take over the whole ethos of the school".
So, for the sake of the community as well as the individual, exclusion and truancy have to be tackled. We know that the figures in some areas are appalling, so the overall figures may look fairly bland. These same, often very bright, youngsters' energy has to be channelled into far more productive outlets and, equally early, work begun with their families within the community.
Statistics show, alas, that it does not help a child educationally to have been in care. The education attainments of such children are among the lowest.
I shall quote only one more horrendous statistic—that is, that 40 per cent of young prisoners have been in care. It is clear that a different approach is urgent.There are, of course, real concerns about some aspects of the Bill. A number of these concerns have been referred to already by noble Lords and I shall not go into them again. There is a concern about teacher overload and, with a 20 per cent drop-out rate within the training and first year of teaching period, it is a crucial issue.
I have some concern about governing bodies. For many years now I have watched the growing importance of their expanded role. I say "expanded" because at the time when my noble and learned kinsman Lord Howe of Aberavon and I joined the initiative of Tyrrell Burgess and Anne Corbett as founders of NAGM, the National Association of Governors and Managers, governors then had a fairly minimal role and little influence. Now, of course, it is different. NAGM now represents a great many governors and managers and plays a key role in monitoring what goes on.
Surveys undertaken over the past four years reveal that NAGM members, too, are showing increasing signs of overload, even though they enjoy and are very committed to the work that they do. There is a belief that they are being asked to take on inappropriate responsibilities and are being swamped with paperwork and bureaucracy. On the other hand, there is a fear that some of their most valued and useful functions may be reduced or even taken away. I have in mind their crucial role in connection with appointments, above all, of senior staff. I hope that the Minister will give firm reassurances on these points.
But, that said, I am rather attracted by the flexible plans for educating 14 to 19 year-olds—although not in regard to language, which I think is entirely wrong. But I shall leave that aside for the moment. The determination to use today's incredible technology, combined with younger people's more critical approach to the choices before them, to help create personalised packages—spread over time between schools, FE colleges and local businesses—for the most deprived as well as the brightest pupils is admirable. The delivery side will be difficult.
The important decision to introduce citizenship from September is long overdue. We have to do much more to educate people in tolerance and respect for other people, other races, other faiths, other ages and even other interests. That ties in with what many noble Lords have mentioned already about faith schools, to which I shall certainly come back on another day.
Equally, we have to teach the young from an early age about how important for the individual is a democratic system of government, which will survive only if each one of us plays our part in supporting it. We need, of course, to know about our rights as citizens, but even more important are our responsibilities.
It has been good to see that many schools now involve pupils in working for those in need within their own communities. It is also true of many universities.
For example, LSE students—I declare an interest as a governor—go to schools to encourage bright pupils with no background in higher education to raise their sights. But, equally, every student and every pupil could and should experience this kind of voluntary action throughout their educational career, not only for the benefit of the community but for their own benefit.I shall stop there because other noble Lords wish to speak and everyone wishes to end fairly rapidly.
8.9 p.m.
Lord Mitchell: My Lords, I must declare two interests. The first is that I am a trustee of the Learning Foundation, the remit of which is to ensure that every child in this country has his own portable computing device. The second interest is that I am chairman of a company engaged in the financing of computer equipment to schools and institutes of higher education.
I do not want to be over dramatic about this, but, to me, the Bill has a certain 20th-century flavour about it. It is good stuff, of course, and long overdue, but I am aghast that it lacks even a passing reference to the technological onslaught that is about to change education for ever.
I do not know how many words there are in the Education Bill. I would hazard a guess at around 100,000. I scoured the document for three specific words which were important to me, and which would have given me some hope: "IT", "computer" and "laptop". It will come as no surprise that I did not find one. I did the same with the Explanatory Notes, and with the briefing document put out by the Department for Education and Skills. The results were the same. It is all a tad disappointing. Yet my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has said that IT will do for education what penicillin did for medicine and what the combustion engine did for transport. She puts it well. So why is IT omitted from the Bill?
I want to paint a picture of how the classroom of the not-too-distant future will look. Before doing so, perhaps I may correct a common misapprehension. The computer in the classroom is not a replacement of the teacher; nor does the idea seek to diminish teaching skills. We see information technology as a complementary tool, capable of dramatically boosting the effectiveness of our hard-working teaching professionals. In short, used well, the computer ought to make teachers' lives much more productive and mean that their pupils are better taught.
By and large, today's classroom has changed very little since Victorian times. The child sits facing the teacher. In general, he or she learns a subject at the same speed as his or her peers, and at the same level of complexity. Usually, parents are not engaged in the learning process and too often they are actively discouraged from participating. Teaching media today are very much what they were 100 years ago: chalk, textbooks, blackboards and exercise books—hardly the stuff of the 21st century.
A frightening percentage of boys are disengaged from school and a surprisingly high proportion of children do not attend school at all. That may be due to behavioural problems, personal illness or family illness; or it may even be because they are bullied at school or abused at home. The IT revolution will help those children to become re-engaged.
The schoolroom of the future will be different. All children will have a laptop which will be connected to the school's own network through wireless. There will be no cables and no physical restriction where the child works within the school.
The same network will be available from home on the Internet. That means that a child will be able to access the curriculum, continue his homework, check his marks, and go over what he may not have fully grasped at school.
Blackboards will become whiteboards and will be interactive. The teacher will not use chalk but a pointer, or even his own index finger, and very soon just his voice, in order to write, to cut and paste, to colour and to design. Such intelligent whiteboards will appear on the student's screen whether he is in the classroom or 500 miles away.
In rural areas, the secondary school child will not have to journey to school every day, but will be able to "hot desk" in a primary school or community centre, under supervision but remote from his school. In schools which are not able to provide a wide curriculum, video-conferencing will provide an effective alternative. The teacher's own computer will enable him to monitor how each child is doing on a constant real-time basis.
Education content has lagged behind some of the very real IT developments that are happening up and down the country, but now dramatic progress is at hand. The BBC, which has been a leader in distance learning, is close to launching the entire curriculum online. This development will be amazing in its effect. Other companies and institutions are also doing some brilliant work. We in Britain are very good at producing this type of content. Once the equipment is installed and broadband is connected, and once the content has matured, e-learning will really take off. Today, we are on the cusp, and we can expect very rapid change.
Having painted one picture (of the classroom of the future), I should now like to paint another, and that is of the school leaver of the future. Every child will be, and will need to be, computer literate. That does not mean that they will have learnt about IT as they might learn about history, but that they are familiar with using IT for their lessons and in their lives both at school and at home. By 2010, most jobs will require IT knowledge. Jobs which today are still based on craft skills, very soon will require an in-depth knowledge of IT.
Perhaps I may give just one example. Today, expensive, top-of-the-range cars have more computer processing capability than was on board the "Apollo" spaceship that landed on the moon. Indeed, it is no
exaggeration to say that some modern cars require formidable IT skills. They have GPS navigation, voice-activated phone connections, SMS texting and will soon provide for speech-recognised e-mails—and that is even before the engine is turned on. In consequence, it is no longer acceptable for car mechanics just to be handy with a spanner. Today, and certainly tomorrow, they will need to have in-depth knowledge of automotive IT systems. Lawyers, doctors, soldiers and—yes, my Lords—even parliamentarians are going to need advanced IT skills. These skills are becoming the key to living and working in the new century—and school is the place where they need to be taught.To most children, computers are fun. The computer-games generation is used to screen-based interaction. It is an exciting and interesting medium to learn and it reduces boredom.
So I ask your Lordships to imagine this. Difficult children, or children with domestic problems, or health problems, will soon be able to learn anywhere, at any time, and at their own pace. Children who are unable to come to school for a variety of reasons will now have the freedom to keep up with their studies at home or in a hospital.
We talk endlessly about the knowledge-based economy. We hear politicians telling us till they are blue in the face that Britain in the 21st century needs modern skills if we are to compete in this new world. We know that the new technologies are the key to our future success. But so often we forget what is happening out there in the real world.
What I should like to have seen in the Bill is a statement of the vision of e-learning and a requirement for every child eventually to have his or her own portable computing device. I should like to have seen that enshrined in legislation. There are, I believe, 9 million schoolchildren in this country. I am told that in English schools there are approximately 100,000 laptops. That makes it about a 1 per cent penetration. It is clear that we still have a long way to go.
8.17 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I listened with interest to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. He may be aware of the Care Zone project run by the Who Cares? Trust, an innovative Internet access for looked-after children, with high levels of security.
I warmly welcome the clear and emphatic commitment to inclusion given by the Minister in her opening remarks. I noted that my noble friend Lord Dearing gave the Bill a warm reception, and he is the expert in this area.
However, I am very concerned that the guidance on exclusions has been all but removed from this Bill. After a near quadrupling of exclusions in the 1990s, the report by the Social Exclusion Unit on truancy and exclusion published in May 1998 recommended:
- "Clearer guidance, with legal force, to cut down on inappropriate exclusions".
I am particularly concerned about what might be taken to be a weakening of resolve towards looked-after children. They are 10 times more likely to be excluded than other children. The outcomes for these children have been unacceptable. They grow up to represent about a third of rough sleepers and 32 per cent of male young offenders. The prison population stands at an all-time high, of approximately 70,000. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, referred to this. It is second in size, in relation to population, only to that of Portugal in the European Union. Without the socialisation offered by mainstream education, without the benefit of educational qualifications, a care leaver is likely to be nigh unemployable, illiterate and qualified only for the prison system. Yet only 5 per cent of children enter care after any involvement with the criminal justice system. On the continent they do far better. In Germany, 50 per cent achieve the Abitur, which is the German equivalent of A-levels.
An important finding of the Social Exclusion Unit report on teenage pregnancies was that early pregnancy was closely related to a lack of hope for the future. Without education and the prospect of employment, there is little motive to postpone beginning a family. This may be one important factor in the sad fact that an exceptionally high rate of teenage pregnancy is experienced by children in care and those leaving care.
Exclusion from education puts tremendous pressure on foster and residential placements for looked-after children. There is a far greater risk that a placement may break down. If such children have experienced neglect or other abuse in the past, this is a retraumatisation. They experience the rejection that they received from their parents once again. Anyone involved in the field knows how damaging repeated breakdown of placements is and how regrettably common their collapse is.
Some years ago I assisted in workshops for children who had been excluded from mainstream schooling for unacceptable behaviour. Nothing that I have done before or since has been as stressful. There are increasing numbers of children with conduct disorders. Children are increasingly growing up with a father who is largely absent in their early years. That can lead to children who are particularly challenging, especially if the mother is struggling with poverty, ill health or isolation. For some children, mainstream education is inappropriate. There need to be effective assessments of children to ensure that they are capable of regular schools. Schools need to be resourced so that children with particular needs are noticed early, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, requested, and that those needs are met before the child becomes too powerful and disruptive to staff and to fellow pupils.
The second key recommendation of the Social Exclusion Unit report on truancy and exclusion is that by 2002 all excluded pupils should receive a full-time education. Even if there were now adequate numbers
of places in pupil referral units of high quality to receive increased numbers of excluded pupils, an increase in inappropriate exclusions would still be a seriously retrograde step. If a child can cope, or can be helped to cope, mainstream education is by far the best option. Integration is greatly to be desired for that child, as long as he does not disrupt the education of other children. Furthermore, there are doubts that there will be sufficient pupil referral unit places. Other provision is patchy.I know from my current experience with children and young people how easy it is to turn away from the challenging ones, unwittingly. I know that I tend to spend my time with the better educated children with a background more similar to my own. How many head teachers have, for instance, experienced life in the care system or are of Afro-Caribbean origin? I strongly suspect—and anecdotal evidence supports this—that a few head teachers, perhaps unknowingly, have little time for such alien and sometimes problematic children. Perhaps I am giving my own faults to others.
More importantly, there is the ever-increasing pressure on schools for better academic results and success in academic league tables. Many teachers recognise that that affects exclusions. That factor is heightened by the Bill. It is all too easy to envisage children being excluded inappropriately or failing to be admitted, their parents being encouraged to withdraw them or the children being made to feel unwelcome because of their threat to the school's examination record.
The Government have already achieved a great deal. The 2001 Ofsted study, Raising Achievement of Children in Public Care, states:
- "The raising of awareness of the needs of children in foster care or children's homes has led to the development of strategies to avoid confrontation and subsequent exclusion in all but the most extreme cases. This has resulted in an overall reduction of exclusions by up to 70 per cent in some areas, and this is reflected in the retention in school of children in care who may well otherwise have been excluded".
I am concerned that the removal of most of the guidance on exclusions from primary legislation may send the wrong signal to schools. A loosening of the legislative framework may be perceived as an easing of the commitment to retain challenging children in mainstream schools, provided they do not disrupt the learning of others. I look to the Minister for an assurance that that will not happen and that the process of exclusion will remain fair to all, rigorous and allowing proper appeal.
8.26 p.m.
Lord Hattersley: My Lords, when my noble friend Lord Peston set out the advantages and disadvantages of speaking at different times of the day, he did not say that speaking very late in the day enables one to cannibalise other people's good points and, perhaps more importantly, to avoid their errors. I shall not say under which heading it comes, but I do not propose to say how enthusiastic I am for improving educational standards. I take it for granted that that unites us all. The argument concerns how best that should be
done—whether by a system of secondary education that aims to meet the needs of all our school students, or by a system of secondary education that is geared to the needs of a minority and therefore neglects many others.I fear that that involves me in what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, described as that ghastly ideological debate about comprehensive education—described by other people as the democratic process. In my experience, people who reject and resent ideological debate normally assume that everybody should share the ideology that they prefer. I hope that she will forgive me for pursuing the line to which she so strongly objects and saying how encouraged I was, on that point of the success of the system that I prefer, to read the first paragraph of the Secretary of State's speech when she introduced the Bill for Second Reading in the other place. The first paragraph rejoiced that the OECD had just congratulated Great Britain—no, England, as distinct from Great Britain, which is very important in this context—on the improvement in and quality of its secondary education. She gave some other statistics about how well secondary schools were doing. I can only assume that it is because she overlooked a line in her prepared text that she did not go on to say that that was the achievement of the comprehensive system, which has dominated secondary education in this country since the 1970s, when the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, achieved the all-time record for creating the most comprehensive schools in one year.
When we receive congratulations on how much our education has improved and how well it is doing, it is down to that system. Indeed, the explosion in higher education—which has made the Robbins principle no longer possible under the old financing schemes and has put the Government in such a quandary about how to finance higher education—is the achievement of the comprehensive system in this country.
It is therefore very much to my regret that the Government have spent so much time in the recent past denigrating the comprehensive system—examples of which I shall gladly give the Parliamentary Under-Secretary if she doubts that that has occurred—and now consciously eroding it. They consciously erode the comprehensive system in this Bill under Part 5.
It is no surprise that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, supports Part 5. Mr Willis, the Liberal spokesman in the House of Commons, said that if it had been introduced by a Tory Government, it would have been denounced by the Labour Opposition. He was in part wrong. It was introduced by a Tory Government and it was denounced by a Labour Opposition. We have now taken it over and extended it in a way that I believe is disastrous to the principle of comprehensive education. I hope that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary has noticed that noble Lords on every side of the House have expressed extreme concern about those provisions. Their principal objection is that they encourage informal, surreptitious and—how shall I describe it?—covert selection in secondary education.
That began with the creation of the specialist schools. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said that he—I believe that he used the word "romantically"; a romantic economist is a contradiction in terms but there we are—looked forward to the day when all comprehensive schools were specialist schools. If that could happen, it would be a quite different issue. However, the Government aspire to 50 per cent of schools being specialist schools. Yet the Parliamentary Under-Secretary used the awful cliché in her opening speech—I do not object to the cliché but to the thought—that she wanted there to be a level playing field. What do we mean by a level playing field? Do we mean a level playing field between some comprehensive schools which are specialist and are given a half million pounds bounty and the rest of the comprehensive schools? So far as the Bill is concerned, there is no level playing field between the generality of comprehensive schools and those which are called city colleges, technology colleges or academies. I shall explain to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary why that is.
I know very well that on those occasions when the Government say that they support comprehensive education sometimes they cannot even bring themselves to say those words and they call it inclusive education. That reminds me of one of the great moments of the 1987 general election campaign when the present Secretary of State for Industry sent me an agonised message which stated: "Delete from all speeches the word 'equality' and substitute the word 'fairness'". The two matters are not, of course, the same, nor is inclusive education necessarily the same as comprehensive education. When the Government bring themselves to support it, they say that it is going on even though there are selective schools side by side. They say that Kent is a comprehensive county and there are some comprehensive schools side by side with grammar schools. That is a contradiction in terms. It is like saying that someone is part pregnant or that medical equipment is semi-sterile. You either have non-selective education or selective education. What the Government have to understand is that by encouraging the development of schools which are special in the public mind—whether or not they are special in their literal performance—they are encouraging covert, informal and in many ways the most insidious selection, because that is what happens. Parents see schools which have different names, extra money and which claim to be specialist in one form or another. The articulate, self-confident, determined parents talk their way into those schools which may be outside their normal catchment area. That has been done by a number of notable figures, none of whom I propose to mention this evening, and it encourages selection due to the abilities, determination and the self-confidence of the parents concerned.
In a free society you cannot stop parents doing that, nor would I wish to do so. What I object to is the Government facilitating that and providing what speaker after speaker has called the hierarchy of schools. It is a formal hierarchy of schools which makes informal selection unavoidable. We are also
extending selection in another way. We are extending it by the 10 per cent rule, which is to apply to every specialist school—soon to be 50 per cent of the schools in the country—and to all the city academies and the city technology colleges. From time to time the Government in their more reckless moments say that that is not really selection because selection by aptitude and selection by ability constitute quite different things. No honest person can sensibly believe that. Were the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to attempt to argue that case this evening, I would refer her to a reply given in this House by her predecessor in this Government when I asked her to distinguish between the two things. The reply of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, was a paragraph of gobbledegook which she concluded by saying that it may not satisfy anyone but it was what the previous government asked officials to find out and that was the best that they could do. In my time in politics I have never heard a Minister be so dismissive about her own reply. That was the moment when the idea of a distinction between selection by ability and selection by aptitude went out of the window. The truth of the matter is that this Government are covertly increasing the number of selective opportunities in secondary education. That is deeply detrimental to the education of the whole country.
My noble friend Lord Peston said that he could not detect any philosophy in the Bill. We rarely disagree. When he was my special adviser many years ago—in those days we did not have political advisers but special advisers—
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