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European Parliamentary Elections Bill [HL]
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg): My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of recommitment be discharged.
Moved, That the order of recommitment be discharged.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Education Bill
3.9 p.m.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now further considered on Report.
Moved, That the Bill be now further considered on Report.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Clause 50 [Attendance targets]:
Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 101:
- Leave out Clause 50.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the Government should have an expectation that pupils will attend school at all times. The attendance target, therefore, for children attending school should be 100 per cent. For the purposes of my amendment, I emphasise the word "target". It is no more and no less than a target. If the Secretary of State does not have a target requiring all children in our country to attend school so far as possible at all times, that would be a pretty poor do. The Government should expect no less.
For schools with poor attendance records, it is a function of the governing body and the head teacher to analyse the problem, to work—where possible—with parents and to develop strategies to improve attendance records. As part of that, and as part of reaching the desired goal of 100 per cent attendance, the school may adopt incremental targets as a management tool to improve the situation.
In the more serious cases of non-attendance, it may be necessary to encourage enforcement of the law, especially where parents wilfully collude with or condone the absence from school of their children. In the case of authorised and unauthorised absences, I refer to the statistics quoted by the Minister in Committee. She said:
- "In the last academic year, 0.7 per cent of half days were missed due to unauthorised absenteeism but 6.5 per cent of half days were missed due to authorised absenteeism".—[Official Report, 23/5/02; col. 982.]
Authorised absences are those days that are taken out of school by a pupil where the school regards the reasons for absence as unavoidable—for example, an accident or illness—or where the reason for the absence is so serious that the school takes the view that time out of school is reasonable and appropriate; I refer, for example, to a death in the family. Unauthorised absences are those where a child does not attend school, with or without parental permission, and where the reason for such an absence is inexcusable. I use the examples given by my noble friend Lord Lucas at col. 983 on 23rd May, which were that a child might be out buying a hamster or taking a skiing holiday. They rank as unauthorised absences. Any school authorising such an absence should be subject to an adverse report from the inspectorate. Information about all school absences must be included in the school's annual report.
The notion that the Secretary of State can set targets for about 24,000 schools in the land is ludicrous. School governors should make a school's policy for authorised and unauthorised absences and they should make it clear to all parents. Local education authorities and the Government should have only one target for schools; that is, that children should attend at all times.
Schools and their governors should of course remain accountable to parents, the community and, more formally, to the inspectorate. I beg to move.
3.15 p.m.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, it is realistic to set targets for improved attendance in LEAs and individual schools, particularly in the most socially deprived areas. However, it is not—here I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch—necessary to spell that out in legislation. The only acceptable attendance record is, as she said, 100 per cent.
My own experience of sitting for 20 years or so as a juvenile court chairman in socially deprived areas leaves me with little belief in the effectiveness of draconian measures to fine or imprison parents of truanting children, although I accept that that may work in some instances. If parents physically or verbally abuse teachers, firm deterrent penalties are required.
By the time a child gets to court, usually as a result of an offence, the truancy pattern is firmly established and parents are bewildered and unable to exert any authority. In other words, the prevailing anti-school culture of that area has taken a firm hold.
One of the facts that emerged from the Minister's reply to my Written Question on 24th April is that across the whole range of LEAs—from those with the worst average attendance figures to those with the best—truancy in the worst schools in each area is about six times as high as that in the best schools in the same area. That is why more imaginative and innovative schemes are so badly needed. One way—my noble friend Lord Northbourne, who is not yet in his place, has been an advocate of this approach for many years—is to start working with and supporting deprived families from the earliest possible age. We shall come to that later, so I shall leave it for now.
An innovative approach for already disaffected older truants came to my notice recently. I believe that it will be debated during the dinner hour tomorrow. It is run by the skills force of the Ministry of Defence and is funded from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's special fund. Apparently, it shows encouraging signs. The young person concerned gets individual expert help with challenging tasks and training but will receive that only if he or she goes regularly to school. I gather that it has been running in some 13 towns and cities for 18 months. Heads are already reporting less truancy and better behaviour.
I remember many years ago a scheme in Lyon, France, where crime statistics rose dramatically during the long summer vacations. A joined-up offensive from the appropriate public services and private companies provided a positive blitz of stimulating alternatives to crime. It worked. Even longer ago in Japan, it was normal practice—now, sadly, discontinued—for business leaders to take on responsibility for those showing early signs of disaffection. It was their duty to provide the guidance
and opportunities that those young people had previously lacked. Again, it worked—crime figures were amazingly low.That kind of thinking, which produces innovative public/private schemes and involves the practical input of successful individuals with high leadership skills, is badly needed. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that many such schemes are indeed under way and are showing signs of equal success.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, we on these Benches have not put a great deal of emphasis on this issue. By and large, we were convinced by what the Minister said last time. The kinds of programme that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, discussed are precisely the efforts that are being put in place in some of the more difficult areas in which there are great problems with attendance. The target of 100 per cent attendance is obviously one at which we should aim—we all have sympathy with that idea—but the achievement of that figure is by no means always possible. The setting of targets has proved to be relatively successful. This is not an issue on which we part company with the Government.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I begin by reassuring noble Lords that our belief is that schools should aspire to 100 per cent attendance. We want to tackle the problem of non-attendance head on. That is why we have put considerable resources into dealing with that issue. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Sharp, said, we try to be as innovative as possible and to support the schemes of other government departments and schemes from schools, voluntary organisations and communities. That is why we have also highlighted truancy sweeps, which identify children who are out of school, as an important part of that effort. We did so not least because they send a message to pupils, parents and the wider community that children should be in school, and they can be used to identify parents who are not taking the attendance of their children seriously. They underline the extent of the problem and our determination to tackle it.
Our position is absolutely clear. Children have a right to education and parents have a duty to ensure that their children are educated. Good school attendance is crucial if our children are to achieve at school. Our objective is that all children should attend school every day unless there is an extremely good reason for not doing so. Absence from schools represents a loss of 7.2 per cent of school time. In some schools the situation is even worse than that average.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, tackling non-attendance at school is a complex and long-term task that requires a number of different solutions. Recently, we have seen that those can extend to the gaoling of a parent. We want to add to the current action that we are taking in this area, and we believe that setting appropriate targets can play a role, both in school improvement and in raising community
awareness of the issue. Such targets can provide realistic milestones for schools to work towards. Of course, many schools are already working hard to improve attendance and already set their own targets for improvement with their local education welfare service.Therefore, through this clause the Secretary of State will be able to set school level targets to reduce all types of absence and not only those which are not authorised by the school, as is presently the case. It is very important that we are clear about this issue. Attendance targets are already in existence, but they relate only to unauthorised absence. We have been in discussion with the Local Government Association and with schools, and believe that it is preferable to widen the focus of these targets in the future and, instead, to have a single target covering all types of absence.
It is, of course, important that schools have the right incentives to take seriously all types of absence. Requiring schools with an above-average level of absence to set targets will ensure that they put their energy into working with parents and with the education welfare service to get children back to school. At present, the targets for unauthorised absence can result in debate within schools as to how each individual absence should be recorded. We believe that that distracts from the real issue. The emphasis should not simply be on why the child is not in school but on ensuring that the child returns to school as soon as possible.
We also recognise that targets can be used to acknowledge improvement and applaud it. I give an example. Ofsted recently said of a secondary school:
- "Attendance levels are very good. The high level of attendance makes a very positive contribution".
Another example would be a school attended by traveller children. Our policies mean that traveller children are registered at one base school and, when they move around the country, they are marked as taking authorised absence. A target of 100 per cent would, of course, be impossible for the base school to achieve. However, that does not mean that it cannot improve attendance in other areas and set itself targets for that improvement.
Statistics have shown that 45 per cent of all children and 83 per cent of primary school children stopped by truancy patrols were with their parents. There may be a variety of reasons why children are not at school, but the important point is to stress that children miss out on their education if they are not in school for whatever reason.
As I said, the targets will not be additional to existing ones; they represent a widening focus that we know will be welcomed by schools and local education authorities. Some 35 local authorities have chosen to have a local public service agreement target on attendance for 2004 and beyond.
The effect of the amendment would not be that there would be no targets for attendance; it would be that the targets could relate only to unauthorised absence, ignoring other forms of absence. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
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