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Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 34:
- Before Clause 18, insert the following new clause—
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, Amendment No. 34 relates to the control of regulation. In reply to the amendment in Committee, the Minister said:
For the second time today, I want to quote the Times Educational Supplement, which in some way or another has managed to unearth a secret government report suggesting that the mountain of paper from the department is growing. It states that the dossier that has been uncovered was produced by the Cabinet Office with the Department for Education and Skills and is marked "restricted". None of us therefore has been privileged to see it as yet. It is based on a survey of 40 secondary schools and is expected to form the basis of renewed attempts to tackle one of the most serious problems facing teachers. I concur with that.
The paper goes on to state that barely an organisation that deals with staff emerges unscathed. Examination boards, local education authorities, the Learning and Skills Council all come under fire. It reveals that in English GCSE course work teachers have to fill in at least seven forms for every pupil. A special needs co-ordinator looking after six pupils each taking 12 subjects has to fill in 72 forms per term. Staff must fill in special eight-page application forms for pay rises and every experienced member of staff must have a one-hour interview for performance pay rises. The intensive nature of AS examinations effectively means that teachers carry out three terms' marking in two terms. Teachers feel submerged in a sea of bureaucracy, most of which is pointless. John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, states:
The Minister was kind enough to write to me in one of the many letters sent after the Committee stage, and again I thank her. In the second paragraph, she stated:
We have made so many suggestions to limit regulation, but I am afraid to no avail. We shall make another attempt in later amendments to try to reduce regulation, but we shall be told that it is necessary. I repeat my amazement that independent schools remain standing and in existence. They get by without a Department for Education and Skills; they get by without guidance, regulations and missives that arrive on a daily basis by the vanload in our schools. Let us put a bonfire to some of this paper and let us take at least a knife to some of the regulations that are to be spawned by the Bill.
In the same letter the noble Baroness remarks:
I shall make a final comment on the letter. The Minister pointed out that:
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I rise briefly to express my support for the amendment. One of greatest disappointments about the Bill so far as concerns Members on these Benches is that there is nothing in it to address the problem of the recruitment and retention of teachers. If the amendment were to be carried by the House, at least it would do something to contribute towards the reduction of the horrendous burden of paperwork and form-filling put on schools and teachers. It is hoped that, by doing so, it would attempt in a small way to address the problem of recruitment and retention.
Of course many other issues are involved with regard to recruitment and retention, but the burden of paperwork is always quoted by teachers when they are questioned about why they are planning to leave the profession or why they have already done so. For that reason, I wish to support the amendment.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, perhaps a good benchmark for the department to adopt would be that every regulation it imposes on a school should be perceived by those who have to fill in the forms and do the work
I have noticed that where good systems of data collection and pupil monitoring are in place, teachers benefit so much from it that they are delighted to spend their time undertaking that work. When data simply disappear into the thin air of the LEA or the Department for Education and Skills, teachers resent it. Finding a local use for the administration makes all the difference in these cases.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I believe that I made it clear in Committee that we are at one with the noble Baronesses, Lady Blatch and Lady Walmsley, in the objective of reducing unnecessary burdens on our schools. I too have seen the report in the TES. Noble Lords will not be surprised if I comment on it. It comprised a fairly raw list of issues. Schools were asked to identify areas of concern. Some of those are important and need to be tackled, some are not accurate and are based on misunderstandings, while some are already being addressed.
We take these issues extremely seriously. None of us has any interest in wasting the time and energy of people working in schools on implementing badly drawn-up regulations or ploughing through paperwork for which there is no real need. At the same time, we must all recognise that there is no magic wand here—we cannot administer our schools system in a vacuum free of all regulation.
The Government fully accept their responsibility for ensuring that the balance of regulation is right and that we must keep a close track of the concerns of schools in this area. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, has made changes to the original drafting of the clause to take account of the practical considerations which cannot be ignored when seeking to strike the right balance.
Noble Lords will be aware that the Government do need to send some materials to schools. For example, in response to the concerns expressed by noble Lords in Committee about the welfare of children, the Government will bring forward amendments to require—rightly—materials to go to schools. The revised special educational needs code of practice had to go to schools. The same applied to details of the teachers' pay settlement, information about new opportunities for schools under this Bill and in other places, and so on. We cannot simply stop giving schools information in the interests of cutting paperwork.
I want to focus on the quality of communication. We need to ensure that schools know what they need to know without being given extraneous material. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made a positive suggestion about the need to consider how we can get good systems and involve those who are recipients in the process. I shall write further to the noble Lord about that. It is very difficult to legislate to ensure that one gets quality communication and that we do so
I need hardly point out that regulations and bureaucracy are intricately woven into the pattern of pressures which comprise the workload of our teachers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, indicated. We know that this is a pressure that has had an impact on teachers. The reason that there are not measures specifically directed to the subject of retention and recruitment is that there are fundamental student loan issues involved. There are many measures in place and under way. The Bill legislates for what we need to legislate for.
At the beginning of the autumn term, the Secretary of State will respond formally. She expects to make specific proposals across a range of areas, including how to tackle regulatory and administrative burdens. I would not wish to pre-empt that. I can assure noble Lords that we share their aim and that we are taking action to achieve it.
At the moment, 32 pathfinder schools of all kinds across England are leading the way to establish new and better approaches to teacher workload. The pathfinder schools, for example, are exploring the opportunities for information technology, which offers help in new ways of communicating within schools, between schools, between local education authorities and with the department. This will help to cut down the time that it takes teachers to deal with repetitive tasks, another important factor in the workload for teachers.
The pathfinder programme will be of key importance in providing all schools with practical examples of the way forward in helping to make our teachers' jobs more manageable while continuing to ensure that we have the educational standards that we want. We want to learn from the pathfinder process; we want to make sure that the Secretary of State's response in the autumn will be based on real information about what practical steps can be taken. For that reason, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment, with the assurance that as we move forward I shall keep the noble Baroness and the House fully informed of developments.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I want desperately to believe the Minister but—a very big but—I am looking at Clauses 18 to 22. Clause 18(2) states:
Regulations defining the number of governors, the persons who should be elected, the eligibility for election, the terms of office, resignation or removal are already on statute. We are sweeping away old regulations and providing yet more. We even have regulations dealing with the clerk to the governing body, for heaven's sake. Are they really necessary? There are regulations making provision for the dissolution of governing bodies, enabling governing bodies of a federation and so on. In Clause 24 regulations may make provision modifying any provision contained in Chapter 4 of Part 1 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. I could go on.
All the way through the Bill there are pages and pages of regulations. Those regulations are accompanied by guidance—they are not regulations on their own—and we shall be talking about more later when we come to other amendments. I want to believe the noble Baroness, but I am afraid that almost as she is talking about ways of reducing regulation, this Bill is piling it on. We shall certainly return to this amendment.
I asked a question at the previous stage of the Bill, and I ask it again. How many sets of regulations and guidelines are being produced as a result of the provisions in the Bill, and what areas do they cover? Perhaps we could have an answer before Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 18 [Governing bodies]:
"CONTROL OF REGULATION
(1) In relation to the conduct of education in schools and nursery schools, the Secretary of State and local education authorities shall have a duty to limit new regulation and to control the amount of material they send to governing bodies and head teachers.
(2) The Secretary of State must publish an annual report to Parliament, setting out any progress he has made in the preceding year in seeking to control or reduce the volume of regulations, circulars and codes of practice that he or his predecessors have published, and reporting any representations he has received from governing bodies, head teachers or teachers' representative bodies about the burden that regulations impose.
(3) Each set of regulations, circular or code of practice issued by the Secretary of State shall include a statement by him of the time he expects it will take for governing bodies or head teachers of schools or nursery schools, as appropriate, to read, consider and implement the regulation, circular or code of practice concerned.
(4) In making his estimate under subsection (3), the Secretary of State shall impose no additional burden on schools or nursery schools to provide him or local authorities with information."
"I understand from parliamentary counsel that the effect of the amendment would be to reduce the level of regulation to nothing".
I accept that because that is what the wording did. I hope that the Minister will realise that I have addressed that in my new amendment. She later said:
"We have set out in the Government's regulatory reform action plan our programme to reduce the burden of regulations on the schools sector".—[Official Report, 7/5/02; col. 1134.]
I understand that the task force is most critical of the Department for Education and Skills and it does not agree with the Minister's assertion that there is a reduction.
"It seems almost as if the Government and its agencies are part of a conspiracy to make life as difficult as possible for our schools".
That comment was responded to by a DfES spokeswoman who said:
"Most of the tasks undertaken by teachers in schools are essential to the education and personal development of the pupils. Reducing bureaucracy is about eliminating unnecessary burdens".
I believe that there should be a bonfire of "unnecessary burdens".
"The Secretary of State then intends, following the outcome of the Spending Review, to make specific proposals across a range of areas in her formal response at the beginning of the Autumn term".
That is a response to the report of the teachers' review body. But that is ludicrous. The Bill before us spawns endless regulations, guidelines and guidance. Therefore, whatever bonfire is being considered in the department is being built up at an even faster rate.
"That is why the Bill includes a series of practical measures to deregulate and give greater autonomy to schools".
Of their own volition, the Government have chosen the most bureaucratic way of introducing innovation and earned autonomy. We have put forward suggestions whereby both of those aims could be achieved, but without the bureaucracy. I am sorry to say it, but the Bill makes a joke of some of the comments that have been made by the department with regard to the reduction in the burden of bureaucracy on our schools.
"What we all want is a change in the mindset and culture that will give school leaders the confidence and freedom to lead the changes needed for higher standards".
It is not a change of mindset in the schools that is required for the reduction of bureaucracy and regulation, it is the mindset in the department and among Ministers. If that were to be achieved, then perhaps we would see a tangible sign that this burdensome chore for schools was being relieved. I beg to move.
10.15 p.m.
"Regulations shall provide for a governing body to consist of—
(a) persons elected or appointed as parent governors,
(b) persons elected or appointed as staff governors".
Clause 18(3) states:
"Regulations may make provision as to"—
and then there is a whole list of items in paragraphs (a) to (l).
"Regulations may—
(a) set out terms of reference for governing bodies of maintained schools,
"(b) define the respective roles".
They have been defined for years.
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