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Baroness Blatch: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the way in which she has responded to the amendment. Certainly I accept with much gratitude the fact that the noble Baroness will look again at the criteria.

I had understood that the target originally set by the Government was to be only 10 per cent of all schools. That is a little disturbing because it presupposes that 90 per cent of our schools are in some way unable to qualify. I cannot think of anything that would disqualify, say, the 20, 30 or 40 per cent below the top decile. We have some high-performing schools in the upper quartile of all schools. The notion that the criteria would disqualify 90 per cent of schools and allow through only 10 per cent strikes me as an extremely cautious approach.

The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, has expressed considerable reservations. To an extent, I understand his words about the national curriculum. In the face of a great deal of opposition, I have always defended the introduction of the national curriculum. I can recall the pre-national curriculum days when some schools were allowing children to leave at 16 years old without ever having studied a science subject. Indeed, in some schools there were children who had never learnt maths and English. Some quite horrifying stories were told at the time. For those reasons, I always thought that the introduction of the national curriculum was right.

However, I would be the first to say that the initial introduction of the national curriculum caused enormous tensions within schools. It was highly prescriptive and it stifled innovation and professional flexibility. I believe that there are a number of schools, mostly the more successful ones, which feel inhibited or even held back by the requirements of the national curriculum. Therefore there is scope for allowing the highest performing schools, those that continue to pass through the inspection system with flying colours, a little more freedom. We ought to be able to trust such schools to deliver the kind of education that not only

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benefits the pupils in their care but which would not go down the road of becoming irresponsible. I understand the noble Lord's thinking on this issue.

However, in response to his point that if successful schools were given such autonomy they would then act as a magnet for the most successful teachers, I have to say that in the real world those schools are already a magnet for the best teachers. The most ambitious and able teachers gravitate towards the schools that give them the greatest professional flexibility and freedom. I am not sure that that is an effective argument against the proposal.

I am glad that the Government will look again at the criteria, although there is some tension in their words. On the one hand they talk about setting criteria that would allow through a certain number of schools, but on the other they refer to an automatic qualification. However, once the criteria have been set then, as I understand it, any school which meets those criteria under an automatic system would automatically qualify for the freedoms set out in the clause. If that is the case, introducing targets would not be appropriate because the number of schools that would qualify would be the number that qualified—because they met the criteria. However, that is a detail.

I await the Government's further thinking on this matter. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5 [Interpretation of Chapter 2]:

Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 27:

Page 4, line 6, leave out "performance" and insert "educational performance including its efficiency"

The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 27 and 28 are technical and have been tabled to seek clarification. The Bill uses the word "performance". The first amendment seeks to find out what the Government mean by that. I suggest the alternative of,

"educational performance including its efficiency".

The first part is obvious. Is the Bill about educational performance rather than any other performance? The second part on efficiency has been included because I understand that if a school performs well, it will get certain benefits. The test of performance is very important and I am sure that almost everyone in the field now uses the expression "value added", an expression that is almost vulgar but one which is central to economics. That concept is the one that matters in this area.

A school that is highly selective, with many good kids, and does well with them is unimpressive, but a school that is not selective, with many difficult children, and does well is fantastically successful. To that end, I want to ask my noble friend on the Front Bench precisely what the Government have in mind in this whole area.

Whatever may be our view of this part of the Bill in general, it is important to ensure that the criteria to be are applied are not biased in what would be an absurd direction; in other words, whatever else we are talking about, we are certainly talking about offering

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incentives to do well educationally with the children in place in any school. The measure required for that is to ascertain what a school adds to the education of those children. Let me add that my concept of educational performance includes life enhancement as an important aspect. That, in summary, sets out my first question to my noble friend.

The second question I wish to put concerns the word "leadership", because there is much more to a school than simply leadership. I have always thought of a school, as I have always thought of a department in a university, as a co-operative enterprise. The people are all in it together. The way to judge the enterprise is not to refer to the great star of a particular department but rather to what do those people do as a joint group of teachers? I wonder whether the Government share that view. Within that, what matters is not only leadership but management more generally. Does my noble friend agree with that?

I wish to raise one other matter, although I am sorry to have to do so at this late hour. I am sure that my noble friend is aware that education is another area which is immensely biased against women. The number of women in senior posts is disproportionately low compared with the number of women who come into education as teachers. Far fewer women than men are promoted to senior positions. I wonder whether people in education wriggle away from this by referring to "leadership" rather than something else. They may say, "Women are not natural leaders. We can see that around your Lordships' House all the time". As someone who has been a great campaigner for the equality of women, I am a little worried about it. We need to find a form of words that will not carry on that bias against women.

Lastly, I raise a minor technical point. I am a little worried about the whole of this proposal in connection with a rather obvious question. Let us assume that a school has been given a special status as a result of a particular "leader", as stated in the Bill. What will happen if that excellent leader leaves the school? If the quality of the school depends entirely on its leadership, will it then lose its status? The idea is ridiculous, but that seems to be what it says in the Bill.

I have put these matters forward through two technical amendments. No doubt my noble friend has easy answers, but at this point I seek elucidation and information. I beg to move.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, has explained that what he meant by the term "efficiency" was in fact "value added". I have to say that in this age of managerialism, the word "efficiency" is too frequently interpreted as cost effectiveness, so I was rather horrified by the use of the term. I entirely endorse his view that we should regard this as a matter of value added and I am only sorry that he did not propose the term in his amendment.

For rather the same reason, I wonder about his use of the word "management" as well as the word "leadership". I believe that one element that stands out

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in our education system is how important is the quality of leadership in a head teacher. To that end, the courses that have been introduced recently to train head teachers in leadership are important innovations. We have not done enough in this area so far.

I understand what the noble Lord means by his use of the words "management" and "leadership", but, as he knows full well, I believe that we may be in danger of introducing the concept of managerialism, of which we have far too much already in the education system.

It is very obvious that in the education system as a whole women are not properly represented in the higher ranks. However, this House demonstrates that women are the workers of the world.

9 p.m.

Baroness Blatch: We are not doing too badly this evening. I have done a head count around the Chamber. Not only are we holding our own in terms of numbers; we are holding our own as effective operators.

I support the introduction of the word "management", but probably for different reasons. This strikes me as an issue where you can have leadership. Leadership is about motivating people and getting the best out of them, but the management of an establishment is also important. If the Government are considering giving freedom to a school, they will expect it to be well run—that means well managed; they would also expect leadership.

I support the amendment in regard to adding the word "educational". "Performance" can mean many things to many people, but we are talking about education—the primary concern so far as concerns the Bill—and about giving schools their freedom to provide effective education, and there is a distinction to be made between good performance and good educational delivery. So we support the amendments which seek to add those two words to the clause.

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