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Education Bill
3.38 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 1:
- Before Clause 1, insert the following new clause—
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 1 is grouped with Amendments Nos. 4, 7, 8, 14, 15 and 157, which will, I believe, be spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford. This is the beginning of what will be a lively and lengthy discussion of the Bill. Despite the Written Answers, the policy papers and the endless missives from the department, the Bill is still strong on powers and central control but light on detail. Much of our effort in Committee will be expended in eliciting details from the Government of how they intend the powers to be used.
Few noble Lords will take issue with the Government's ambition that schools should be more proactive in exploring ways to raise standards. One key way to raise standards is to raise our expectations of children; when more is expected of children, more of them will rise to the challenge. However, at the outset of our debate, I must press the Government to spell out the problems experienced by schools that have led the Secretary of State to take such an open-ended power. What is it that a school is inhibited by law from doing in order to raise standards? I can think of examples such as altering term times and the number of days in the year on which attendance at school is required or the use of particular forms of punishment, which, in any case, is governed by European Union law. However, as regards almost any other aspect of running a school, exemption from legislation is not required.
In order to raise standards one could consider teaching boys and girls separately; various forms of streaming by ability or setting by subjects; homework patterns; lunchtime and after-school curricular activities; methods of teaching; mentoring; the use of technology, including inter-active media; team teaching; rote learning; whole-class teaching; group and individual learning; the use of assistants in the
I turn to a different point. Although through letters the Government have indicated the way in which the early clauses will be used, they have still not accepted the need to include certain safeguards in the Bill. For example, in answer to a Written Question (HL 3784) the Government indicated that the Secretary of State would consider the impact of any application to innovate on the breadth of provision available. That provision is not in the Bill.
They also indicated that the Government,
Fundamentally, no protection whatever is written into the Bill for children with special educational needs. The Bill is silent on that. Indeed, if the Government mean that no application would be accepted that disadvantaged any other group of children—including those with special educational needs—why not say so and why not say so on the face of the Bill?
Then there is the perennial issue of bureaucracy. With between 23,000 and 24,000 schools applying individually, or even in co-operative groups, where is the army of civil servants to crawl over each application in order to verify the quality of the bids; to check the impact of the proposals on children and surrounding schools; and to test the depth and effectiveness of any consultation?
During a previous debate on education, I said that civil servants in the DfES must shake with excitement when the Bills come forward because it means at least the sustenance of those in post and perhaps a doubling, trebling or even quadrupling of their army. One can only presume that the DfES has not lost its appetite for controlling from the centre.
My amendment and those tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, aim to achieve the same result: that is, to encourage innovation with the aim of raising standards and to innovate, subject of course to the Secretary of State setting out by order in Parliament any requirement that would not be subject to exemption, relaxation or modification. In that way, if
Most noble Lords who spoke at Second Reading accepted that protection for children with special educational needs was fundamental. That is why it is enshrined in my amendment. If accepted, the amendments would cut out costly and time-consuming bidding processes. Schools would have greater ownership of their programmes and they would be openly accountable to children, to parents and to Ofsted through the inspection system.
Furthermore, there would be no need to time-limit projects. If they were successful, they would continue; if they were not, they would be dropped. They could be self-evaluated by the schools and they could be further externally evaluated by Ofsted. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will accept that a great deal of flexibility to explore ways of raising standards already exists in our schools.
On a more cynical note, I expect that most schools would argue that if there were less central control and bureaucracy and if a greater sum of their core funding arrived in the schools for their budgets, there would be considerably more opportunity, time and money to fund innovative, standard-raising projects.
Finally, there is a legislative tension—even, dare I say, contradiction?—which the Government have not addressed and I am afraid that they will have to do so. Under Section 5 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, LEAs have a duty to raise standards. In this Bill, local education authorities are not even statutory consultees. That matter will have to be addressed. I beg to move.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I rise to support Amendment No. 1 moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and to speak to Amendments Nos. 4, 7, 8 14, 15 and 157. In supporting Amendment No. 1, I noticed its similarities to an amendment moved by my honourable friend Mr Willis, Liberal Democrat spokesman for education in the other place. I congratulate the noble Baroness on making good use of that amendment.
I want to speak more generally about the grouping of amendments because it gets to the heart of the Bill. The Government justify the Bill in terms of promoting innovation and diversification in the education sector. The first chapter of the Bill is all about innovation, but at no point have we had a satisfactory explanation of what "innovation" means. The noble Lord, Lord Peston, and the noble Baroness, Lady David, will try to give us a definition of "innovation" in some of the amendments that they will be moving later, but it is
I have been looking through the further explanations that we have received from the Government, in particular the guidance, about the power to innovate. I do not find in that any further explanation of "innovation". Innovation is therefore about doing something new, but I return to the point which arose again and again at Second Reading; that, surely, any good school has been doing it since kingdom come! We expect good schools to be innovative in any event.
That is at the root of a series of amendments which I and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, have put forward. We believe that all schools should be innovative, not just the good schools. We intensely dislike the concept of earned autonomy and we do not believe that it should relate only to the schools which have time to put their proposals to the Secretary of State.
I know that there is a distinction between innovation and earned autonomy and I know that there is a degree to which those who have earned autonomy can act automatically. However, every school must apply to the Secretary of State. Moreover, Chapter 1 relating to innovation is extremely lengthy. When I read the guidance notes I was hit by the amount of time and energy which will have to be spent on examining and vetting each proposal for innovation.
The Liberal Democrats' starting point—I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, shares my feelings—is that good schools are continually innovating and finding flexibilities within the system. I echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, that within the education system there is little need to legislate to innovate because schools can do most of the things that they want to do.
After talking with head teachers and governors I know that an area in which they might like to innovate is that relating to the curriculum. They would like a little more flexibility. One also knows that many schools with confident heads are already being innovative and finding ways around the national curriculum.
However, some schools are perhaps slightly less innovative, or more diffident, and we want to encourage those. Our Amendment No. 15 is intended to encourage those schools to go forward. We should encourage not only the best schools, but also the average ones. Not only do the best need a push; very often it is actually the average schools that need a little extra encouragement.
Again, we reject the notion of earned autonomy. Head teachers do not necessarily want to be told what to do. For example, with regard to pay and conditions, when talking with school heads and governors, it has been made clear to me that they feel that they already have quite enough flexibility in that area. Many do not want to touch it because they feel that they are walking into an absolute minefield.
On top of all that, it is truly absurd that the Department for Education and Skills should think that every application needs to be vetted by the department itself. It already has something of a reputation for overload. Its staff have far too much to do and thus are not always able to respond as quickly as they might. Perhaps the department has become overburdened with its own bureaucracy. If that is the case, then why take on even more? Again, the notion that even under earned autonomy, schools will have to apply to the department rather than utilising the devolved system already established in local education authorities is quite absurd. At least the LEAs could vet the applications being put forward.
The conclusion we reached was that if anything is needed in this area, it is a broad clause which would give all schools except for those in special measures leeway to deviate from the national curriculum to the tune of something in the order of 20 per cent of their time. The proposal about giving them a degree of flexibility as regards time came from an analogy with planning legislation. If people want to build an extension to their home which amounts to less than 20 per cent of the square footage of the original building, it can be done without having to seek specific planning permission. We thought that the same principle could be applied in the education sector. Thus one day of the school week could be devoted, if you like, to extra-curricular activities.
That principle explains the thrust of the proposed new clause set out in Amendment No. 15. Subsection (1) makes it clear that any proposals would still have to contribute towards raising educational standards. Subsection (2) would ensure a broad and balanced curriculum and limit projects to no more than 20 per cent of time spent away from the subjects specified in the national curriculum. Subsection (3) would allow the Secretary of State, or the National Assembly for Wales, to issue guidance rather than regulations on the general aims in this area. Subsection (4) states that consultation should be carried out with parents and local education authorities. They must be satisfied that the proposals are sound. However, I stress that a school would be required to consult with a local education authority. Ultimately, the authority would not be able to exercise a veto on any proposals.
Subsection (5) covers the procedures for the organisation that would have a veto over the proposals; that is, that they should be subject to the normal inspection procedures carried out by Ofsted. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, said that any good school would monitor its own progress on new innovations, if a verification by Ofsted suggested that the innovations were not contributing to an improvement in school performance, they would have to be dropped. Lastly, subsection (6) specifies that any school in special measures should not be given such a flexibility. For such schools, it would be nose to the grindstone on the national curriculum—although some might argue that those are the very schools which need a degree of flexibility.
Amendments Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 14 are paving amendments for the substantive new clause set out in Amendment No. 15. Amendment No. 4 would change the wording from "qualifying bodies" to "schools". Perhaps we ought to have included in this grouping Amendment No. 3, to which I shall speak later, because we seek to delete the words,
Clause 14 requires a little further explanation. It is needed because at present there is no definition of the concept of a "school term" in education legislation. Amendment No. 157 repeats precisely the same amendment, but I have tabled it at this point because I have been asked by Mr Chris Price, who is leading a commission that is considering the school year for the Local Government Association, to put in two amendments. The second amendment, to which I shall speak in due course, is Amendment No. 139. That would pave the way for a standardisation of the school year to be introduced at some stage if it is decided that we should move in that direction. We would then need to incorporate into education legislation a definition of the concept of a school term. Such a proposal would suit us well because in order to define the use of "one-fifth" of a school's time, we would need to be able to define exactly what would be the total time.
We feel very strongly that every school should have the chance to innovate. This new clause would provide a facility for schools to do so; not unreasonably, but within a considered framework.
"EXEMPTION OF INNOVATIVE PROJECTS
(1) This section has effect notwithstanding anything in Chapter 1 of this Act.
(2) A maintained school governing body may, in consultation with the parents of children at the school, resolve to implement an innovative project which, in the opinion of the governing body, contributes to the raising of educational standards achieved by registered pupils at the school.
(3) Subject to subsection (4), the governing body may resolve to exempt any innovative project from any requirement imposed by education legislation on the governing body.
(4) The Secretary of State shall by order designate any requirement imposed by education legislation on a school governing body as not subject to exemption, relaxation or modification by a governing body, even in the case of an innovative project.
(5) No order may be made under subsection (4), nor may any provision be made in such an order, unless the Secretary of State or the National Assembly for Wales as the case may be is satisfied that such order or provision may be made without detriment to the education at the school of those pupils having special educational needs."
"would not in general regard a proposal to suspend the requirement to teach a compulsory subject as standards-raising unless appropriate arrangements were in place to secure high standards in the basics and a broad and balanced curriculum".—[Official Report, 30/4/02; col. WA93.]
They would not in general, but perhaps they would in particular cases. Again, there is no reference to that on the face of the Bill.
3.45 p.m.
"in the opinion of the Secretary of State".
Thus Amendment No. 7 would make the end of Clause 1(1) read "England and Wales", making obsolete Clause 1(2), as set out in Amendment No. 8.
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