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The Earl of Erroll: The Minister referred to giving reputable traders a market edge. I attended a meeting
this morning where concern was expressed about the monopolistic position occupied by a very large company in the field of IT and software which could leave the Government and many traders vulnerable. Representations have been made to the current OFT—which it has not taken up—that it should do something about this abuse of a monopolistic position. I hope that the new OFT will, in this particular case, ensure that open sources and open standards for software are adopted. This would give people a competitive edge and ensure that one person does not dominate the market place. I agree that reputable traders should get a market edge, but we have to be careful not to build-up monopolistic positions which may be abused. This may be happening already.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I cannot comment on a situation when I do not know what it is. Clearly the Bill is directed towards ensuring, above all, that small companies are not put in an adverse position because of monopolistic companies in the market place. That is one of the main purposes of the Bill.
As to the point I made about reputable traders having a marketing edge, I simply meant that companies which sign up to codes of practice should have an advantage when it is known to their customers that they have done so.
The Earl of Erroll: In the case I have referred to it will be large companies and the Government which will be most disadvantaged. I shall tell the Minister about it later.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: If the noble Earl writes to me I shall certainly look into the situation.
Lord Kingsland: I thank the Minister for his reply. The Minister will recall that, in the opening phases of my moving of the amendment, I drew his attention to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Section 2(3)(e) of that Act mirrors paragraph (a) of the first subsection of my amendment. My amendment refers to,
- "the desirability of maintaining the competitive position of the UK".
Section 2(3)(e) of the Financial Services and Markets Act states:
- "In discharging its general functions the Authority must have regard to . . . the international character of financial services and markets and the desirability of maintaining the competitive position of the United Kingdom".
Section 2(3)(f) of the Financial Services and Market Act refers to,
- "the need to minimise the adverse effects on competition that may arise from anything done in the discharge of those functions".
- "the need to minimise the adverse effects on competition that may arise from anything done in the discharge of those functions".
I mean no disrespect to the Minister when I say that he made a rather disparaging remark about the commitment of myself and my colleagues on these Benches to central planning. I must say that I find that a bit rich coming from the Government Benches. But that aside, it was quite clear that the Government were prepared to adopt this formula in the Financial Services Act. So to the extent that the Minister's remark is a criticism of me, it must be a criticism also of the Government.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: We are talking about organisations which are constituted to do radically different things. This is a body which is constituted specifically to deal with issues relating to competition. The Financial Services Act clearly has a different remit; namely, to control the financial services industry in this country. That is clearly completely different. There is no reason why every organisation should have the same set of objectives when they are doing completely different things.
Lord Kingsland: With respect to the noble Lord, surely that strengthens my point. If the specific responsibilities of the OFT are exclusively about the management of competition, then the requirement that they address the international competitive context is all the more important.
I am most grateful to the Minister for his opening remarks and subsequent comments. I shall look at them closely in Hansard. I suspect that I shall wish to return to them on Report. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Education Spending
3.33 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. The Statement is as follows:
-
"Yesterday, my right honourable friend the Chancellor confirmed that education is this Government's number one priority. Since 1997, we
- have broken the cycle of under-funding in education. But we have done more than that. We have demonstrated that our policies of resources for reform work.
"In 1997, we took the tough decision to focus our extra resources and reforms on early years and primary schools because we know that we have to get the basics right. The results are there to see: more nursery places; 500 Sure Start areas; and the biggest ever expansion in childcare. Every primary teacher has been re-trained in the teaching of literacy and numeracy and the result has been a huge leap in the performance of our 11 year-olds.
"We also laid the foundations for raising standards in secondary education. Again, where we committed resources for reform, we delivered results. The number of specialist schools increased from 181 in 1997 to 982 by September this year; and in these schools GCSE results are rising more swiftly. In our Excellence in Cities areas results are increasing faster than elsewhere. Our record is one of investment and reform, and thousands of pupils and parents have benefited from it.
"Because we know it works, it is now time to step up the pace of investment, matched by a step up in the pace of reform. England will now see education spending rise by an average of 6 per cent a year over the next three years. That is a £12.8 billion increase, a total investment of nearly £58 billion a year in 2005-06—more than £1,000 per pupil more in real terms than we inherited in 1997.
"In the time available to me today, I cannot do justice to every issue covered by my responsibilities as Secretary of State. Today I intend to focus on the reform of secondary education. But when we have completed our consultation on our reform document for further education, I will make further announcements. I can confirm that, subject to agreement to this reform, core unit funding in further education will increase by 1 per cent per annum in real terms over the next three years.
"We will publish in the autumn a 10-year strategy for our universities, setting out how we will deliver the twin goals of excellence in teaching and research and widening access and participation. But I can announce today, as part of the Government's commitment to research excellence, that we will substantially increase recurrent funding for research, raising the additional investment by over £200 million by 2005-06. Alongside the investment in the science budget announced by the Chancellor yesterday, this will enable our research to be truly world class.
"To carry on now to raise standards in our secondary schools, we need to make a decisive break with those parts of the existing comprehensive system that hold us back.
"In saying this, I want to be clear about one thing. This is not a return to the old, failed two-tier system. The comprehensive principle was right and remains right. Every child is of equal worth; where ability is not determined by the family or background you are
- born into; and where every child has a right to an education that meets their highest aspirations and helps them to achieve their individual potential. That is as true now as it has ever been.
"Without doubt, the move to comprehensive education brought progress. It has given more people the qualifications for higher education, and more children are gaining good GCSEs. It has led to an entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum for all children; huge progress in the achievement of girls; and more life chances for many young people.
"But progress at secondary level has not been fast enough, and no one can say that what we have now is good enough. Too many pupils still go backwards between 11 and 14. Pupil behaviour too often deteriorates at secondary school. Half of 16 year-olds do not get five or more GCSEs at A to C. The UK still has one of the greatest class divides in education. Too many schools are failing or coasting along without stretching all their pupils.
"It has not achieved all we hoped for. So we need to be bolder and change our secondary system if we are deliver high standards for all our children. We need radical reform in four areas: school structures; school leadership; teaching and learning; and the link between rights and responsibilities both within schools and between schools and the broader community.
"First, the reform of school structures. In the past, the comprehensive system has been too uniform. There have been insufficient incentives for schools to improve. Excellence has been isolated and has not been used to raise standards across the school system as a whole.
"So we need a secondary system which, instead, promotes specialism and diversity; where every school is honest about its strengths and weaknesses and has clear incentives to improve; and where our best schools are rewarded for levering up standards in the rest.
"The new secondary system must have schools that are in some respects the same as each other. They must have high aspirations, a broad and balanced curriculum, good-quality teaching and leadership, fair admissions and clear routes of progression.
"But every school should be different as well. That is why specialist schools are central to our school reform. Their specialism is in addition to the national curriculum and encourages them to develop their own ethos and mission. Let me be clear: our aim is that, over time, every school which wants to be, and can be, a specialist school will be able to do so. I can announce today that we will increase the number of specialist schools to 2000 by 2006. More than half of our secondary schools will be specialist within four years.
"But it is not just specialist schools. We will create at least 33 new academies by 2006, and new extended schools—each school with its own mission, each school with its own strengths, all contributing to raising standards.
"We need to build a ladder of achievement to make sure that every school has clear incentives to improve, a system in which every school knows where it stands, is challenged to raise its level, is incentivised and is supported when it does so. Rather than "one size fits all", we need an acknowledgement of the truth: that different schools are at different stages in school improvement and need different levels of challenge and support, freedoms and responsibilities.
"On this ladder of improvement, weak and failing schools will have extra resources, but matched to tough improvement programmes. And if schools do not improve, there will be quicker action to close them down, re-open them as academies, replace their leadership or let them be taken over by more successful schools. For coasting schools there will be incentives to develop school improvement plans and work towards the specialist status. For good schools, such as our specialist schools, training schools, and extended schools, there will be extra resources matched to the development of real centres of excellence in each school, whether in curriculum, teaching, inclusion, or partnerships for improvement. For our best schools there will be new resources and new freedom, but matched to new responsibilities to improve the school system as a whole.
"As a result of this ladder of improvement, a vital new principle for our new secondary system will be that for the first time we will be using our best schools and head teachers to lever up the rest. That is why we will encourage our best schools to expand. That is why we will promote our best schools taking over and running weak and failing schools. That is why we will provide incentives for our best schools to federate and improve standards in our weaker and coasting schools. That is why we will reward our best heads for taking on new roles as chief executives of clusters of schools.
"Today we are announcing that we will designate 300 advanced schools over the next four years. These schools will be charged with helping to lever up standards in our weaker schools and will have the resources to do so.
"But it is not only school structures we need to reform. Leadership is essential to the success of any school. We have already established the National College for School Leadership as the world's first institution dedicated to identifying and training excellent leaders in the school system. The college will ensure that every new head is properly qualified and that existing heads are properly supported and trained, with access to mentors from outside education. The college will take on new roles in developing a new generation of transformational leaders.
"We recognise that it is vital to get the best possible leadership for schools that face the toughest challenges. So from next year we will introduce a leadership incentive grant to make sure excellent leadership is in place in our most challenging secondary schools. The grant of about £125,000 a school will be paid to about 1,400 schools in Excellence in Cities areas, excellence clusters and schools in challenging circumstances outside those areas. Where schools are well led, the grant will be paid directly with no strings attached. Where leadership is weaker, the head and governors will need to agree a development plan with the director of education in their local authority. Where necessary, these plans will include the replacement of the head teacher if this is in the best interests of the school and its pupils.
"The third area for reform is teaching and learning. Every child realising their potential is what every teacher wants for their pupils and what every parent wants for their child. Increasingly, the new specialist secondary school system will be able to tailor education to the needs of each child. But that needs a radical change in how teachers use their expertise and their time, in the professional development they have, in how they use technology—in fact, in how they do their job.
"We have already been discussing with the profession how we can bring about these changes. Now we can back up these discussions with resources.
"The money schools receive through the standard spending assessment will rise 3.5 per cent in real terms for each of the next three years. On top of that record sum, the Chancellor has also announced a substantial increase in the school standards grant, paid direct to schools. The grant will increase by £325 million in 2003-04 and by £375 million in each of the following two years. That means that from next year, direct payments will rise by £50,000 a year to at least £165,000 for a typical secondary school in England. Direct payments to a typical primary school will rise by £10,000 to at least £50,000.
"This, together with the increase in general funding, can be used at head teachers' discretion. But I want to make absolutely clear that the extra school standards grant is conditional on reform of the way schools work. It must be matched by a commitment from across the schools sector to a restructured teaching profession and a reformed school workforce—more flexible, more diverse and focused on raising standards. We need a commitment to new professional roles for teachers. We need a commitment to new roles for school paraprofessionals, taking on new tasks in schools and supporting teachers. We need commitment to an improved pay and performance management regime that rewards excellent teaching and eliminates poor teaching. So we will set out in the autumn our more specific proposals and the process for achieving this agreement.
"We know we need to do more to tackle bureaucracy. We will reduce reporting requirements on the Standards Fund to a single annual return, with schools having additional flexibility on how grants can be spent.
"Finally, we must strengthen dramatically the link between rights and responsibilities. This new system needs to capture not only what schools can do for themselves, but how parents and the wider community can play their part. We must have zero tolerance of indiscipline in schools. Today I can announce a significant expansion of the measures taken earlier this year to tackle poor behaviour and crack down on indiscipline. We have already seen the success of learning support units—on-site centres that can better deal with the small minority of pupils who cannot settle and who disrupt others in the classroom. As part of a national behaviour strategy to be launched in the autumn, we are now able to announce that we will provide learning support units for every school where these are needed. There will be more police on site at our toughest schools. Outside schools, truancy sweeps will be extended.
"But broader than this, I want to break down the walls and do more to help schools become a central part of their communities. We will therefore be developing new extended schools, which will provide a range of services on site.
"Moving to the new comprehensive ideal means higher standards, zero tolerance of bad behaviour and a greater choice of good schools for parents.
"The Government have made their choice. We have chosen to make education our number one priority. We have backed this choice with sustained investment on an unprecedented scale, matched by reform of unprecedented ambition. We have a proven model of reform. We have the best teachers ever in our schools. We have the resources and the ambition to achieve the change. And the prize is worth winning".
3.46 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend in another place. We already know that the Secretary of State is flexible in her use of language. For example, we read in today's papers that the Secretary of State deliberately used different language when negotiating with the Prime Minister from that she used when negotiating with the Chancellor. Nevertheless, she has been very successful and for that we congratulate her. However, the British people are less easily fooled and will make their own judgment over time.
This is a complex Statement and in parts it is a confusing one. The gap between rhetoric and reality haunts the Statement. It makes no mention of special educational needs. Every other part of education is mentioned, but not special educational needs. Reference is made to there being more than £1,000
more per pupil in real terms than was inherited in 1997. However, the Statement does not say that an unprecedented proportion of that money is controlled and allocated from the centre. Indeed, the Statement goes on to exacerbate that problem.
- "But when we have completed our consultation on our reform document for further education I will make further announcements".
- "We will publish in the autumn a 10-year strategy for our universities".
One could be forgiven for being confused by the Secretary of State's Statement, which includes the following:
- "The comprehensive principle was right and remains right. . . . Without doubt the move to comprehensive education brought progress. It has given more people the qualifications for higher education; more children gaining good GCSEs; an entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum for all children; huge progress in the achievement of girls; and more life chances for many young people".
- "Too many pupils still go backwards between 11 and 14. Pupil behaviour too often deteriorates at secondary school. Half of 16 year-olds do not get five or more GCSEs at A to C. The UK still has one of the greatest class divides in education. Too many schools are coasting along without stretching all their pupils. . . . The comprehensive system has been too uniform: insufficient incentives for schools to improve; and excellence has been isolated and not used to raise standards across the school system as a whole".
The noble Baroness referred to the ladder of improvement. She said that weak and failing schools would get extra resources, coasting schools would get extra resources, good schools, such as specialist schools, training schools and extended schools, would get extra resources and our best schools would get new resources and new freedom to match their new responsibilities. How much more money will be held back at the centre, thus denying core funding to all of our schools, in order to provide for the fairly large number of civil servants needed to make judgments on weak and failing schools, coasting schools, good schools such as specialist schools, and the so-called "best schools"? Which are the "best schools"? Are they the beacon schools, the extended schools or the advanced schools? Let us know what they are and who will be making that judgment.
There is only one mention in the Statement of bureaucracy, the one issue that dogs every school in the land. After our consideration of the Education Bill and our discussion of the bureaucracy issue, the noble Baroness now knows that, in every staff room in every school, there is a poster which states, "Please do what
you can to persuade the House of Commons not to overturn the Secretary of State's duty to reduce the amount of regulation and bumf going into schools". All the Statement says is:
- "To free up headteachers and teachers we know we need to do more to tackle bureaucracy. We will reduce reporting requirements on the Standards Fund to a single annual return, with schools having additional flexibility on how grants can be spent".
What we do know is that the Secretary of State is travelling even further down the path of central direction, second guessing from the centre and nit-picking interference in our schools. Today's Statement will not promote any improvement in what parents worry about. It will not help to solve the crisis in discipline, whatever has been said, which has seen 130 teachers seriously injured in violent incidents in schools in the past year alone. It will not help teachers to spend more time teaching rather than dealing with bureaucracy.
The Secretary of State already sends 4,500 pages of guidance and advice to every school annually. One thing that is surely predictable is the extra paperwork that will be generated by the changes announced today. This is not real reform, and it is certainly not reform that our schools need.
The Secretary of State talks tough about closing schools that miss their targets. It is proposed that teachers who miss their targets will probably lose their jobs. But what about government targets such as their truancy target? In 1998, the department set a target to cut truancy. In 2000, that target was strengthened. This year, however, the old target was scrapped and replaced with a new one which aims at a reduction that is 70 per cent less than the original target. Does the noble Baroness accept that this is an appalling example of double standards? If teachers miss a target, the teacher will be sacked. If Ministers miss a target, the target is sacked.
The centrepiece of the Statement is the introduction of new types of school. Will they replace beacon schools and centres of excellence? What will be the criteria to decide whether they should be extended and/or advanced schools? How will they be different from beacon schools and those in the centres of excellence? What will happen when a super head and/or a chief executive of an advanced school is tasked to take over four or five poorly performing schools? Will those poorly performing schools be headless? Will the new chief executive become the head of all of the schools? Or will those head teachers, who have a sovereign responsibility for their own school, find themselves superseded by the new chief executive? How will a chief executive of four to six schools get to know the children and the staff in those schools? These are important practical issues which the Minister will have to address.
What message does the Minister have for the head teacher Janette Smith, from Lealands High School, in Luton? She is quoted today as saying of the Government's spending plans,
- "It's always been tied up, attached to this initiative or that scheme. I need to be trusted to decide what my school needs".
What is the logic behind concentrating on 300 schools, out of 25,000, to solve the crisis? Would it not be better to focus directly on the failing schools, dealing with their problems, rather than proposing yet more gimmickry and interference?
For a Statement that is meant to set the course for education policy in this Parliament, there are several glaring gaps. There is nothing about reducing exam load in secondary schools and nothing about slimming down the national curriculum. As for further education—well, whither further education? Nothing has been said about the universities—where morale among both students and teachers is even lower than it is in the schools sector—other than a promise of more tomorrow. Does the noble Baroness accept that the dithering over student funding, on which we were promised a decision early in the new year, has contributed to this collapse in morale?
This Statement is a sad waste of an opportunity by the Government. Instead of retreating from the path of dictating to schools and too much bureaucracy and intervention, the Government have chosen to go further down that route than ever before. There will be more quangos, more targets and more regulation. When will they ever learn that micro-management from the centre is not the way to create world class schools? The devil as always will be in the detail. We await the details, as will all teachers, governors and parents.
Finally, money without real reform will be wasted, as it has been over the past few years. There is an alternative vision for our schools whereby heads control the discipline policy; teachers are allowed to concentrate on teaching, not form filling; and parents know that the school is concerned with their children's needs and not with the latest initiative from the Government, such as that in regard to running ill thought through companies. The Government have chosen instead the dead hand of central control.
When the euphoria over additional money has settled to an air of reality, it will dawn on everyone that this is not reform but a recipe for continued crisis in our schools, colleges and universities. The Government talk devolution, but I am afraid that they do not understand the meaning of the word.
3.57 p.m.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, given the time constraints, I shall try to be as brief as possible.
We on these Benches welcome the extra money that is going into education. It is long overdue. In 1997, the Government were elected on the back of the slogan
"education, education, education", after which they proceeded to reduce the proportion of resources going into education. They are now, at long last, putting in what is necessary. Average annual spending per pupil in our state secondary schools is about £2,800. Average annual spending in private schools per secondary pupil is £6,000. It is not surprising that private schools do better in achievement as measured by examinations and so forth than state schools. It is long past the time when we needed more resources for our state schools. So we welcome that money.We welcome, too, the leadership initiatives. For too long we have neglected leadership in schools. The training now being given to heads and deputy heads is necessary and long overdue. We also welcome the initiatives to increase the number of in-school learning support units. As far as possible, disruptive pupils must be kept within the school framework rather than expelled.
We have some reservations, however, about the tone of the Statement. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, mentioned the article in The Times today which described the two tones adopted by the Secretary of State. I feel that this Statement very much adopts the "new Labour lexicon", as David Charter put it. The emphasis is very much on centres of excellence, beacons of success and "radical reform" of the comprehensive system. However, I am a little unhappy about language such as,
- "we will promote our best schools taking over and running weak and failing schools. That's why we will provide incentives for our best schools to federate and improve standards in our weaker . . . schools".
Yet, only a month or six weeks ago, in Committee in this House, when we discussed federation, we were assured by the Minister that federations will work only if they are entered into because schools want them and are committed to them. She said that federations will only be in the best interests of schools and that it was vital that the decision to federate must be entirely voluntary. However, we find someone from No. 10 boasting on the front page of the Observer that we will force failing schools into federations. That is not what we want or the way in which we should be running the education system. I hope that that is not the intention. That appears to be the language of No. 10 rather than of No. 11, which is a little more emollient and, as David Charter says, in which the socialist semantics come forward.
We on these Benches are also concerned about the fact that the money will go directly to the schools. It is nice to see money going into the pockets of schools but that is yet another step towards getting rid of or bypassing LEAs because the money is put directly into the hands of the head. It will not be very long before those bodies are completely bypassed. Schools forums have been set up, as primary care trusts have been in the health service, to be shadow administrations and to ensure that there will be a convenient group of professionals and lay members who can take over the running of the schools at a local level when we no
longer need the duly elected and accountable LEAs. We are worried by the moves that appear to be afoot in the Statement.I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and point out that the Statement was billed as a Statement on education. However, it is not about education; it is about secondary schools. There was nothing about further education, although educational maintenance allowances were a big issue in yesterday's review. We are worried about work-based learning, which is a big issue. All the money from education or maintenance allowances will go to those who will continue in education. We had a very useful little debate last night on skills. One of the key issues is to involve those who start in work-based learning. For many who leave school with relatively low GCSE qualifications, work-based learning is a better route. It is important that we discuss further education at some point.
What about higher education? It has lacked resources for a very long time, but we heard absolutely nothing about it in the Statement. The issue has been put off once again until the autumn.
The money that has been routed to schools has gone into recruiting teachers—or the attempt to recruit teachers. One problem is that we have not got the teachers to fill the vacancies that are being created. Do the Government really believe that they can meet the needs for teaching that the funds will generate? How will they cope with that?
Finally, I am glad that extra resources are going into capital spending. We are on the verge of a huge digital revolution in schools. Whiteboards, individual laptops for school kids and so on will become essential within the next five years or so. Will there be enough money in schools to provide the necessary capital equipment that will be needed to keep up with that revolution?
4.3 p.m.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, in view of the time, I shall be brief.
Special educational needs are a fundamental part of our inclusion strategy. In the Statement, I referred to the important issue of inclusion. I was sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch—unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp—was unable to welcome at least in part the announcement of extra money for education.
We have discussed centralisation. The direct contributions to schools that were referred to in the Statement are an important part of ensuring that schools are able to spend the money directly. There will be £50,000 extra at the secondary level and £10,000 at the primary level. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, feels that that involves bypassing LEAs. I somehow feel that we cannot win in that regard. I make it clear to the noble Baroness that LEAs are crucial to the work that we do. We believe that direct payments involve a shared responsibility between central and local government for our
educational system. The great majority of funding will continue through LEAs and the 3.5 per cent real terms increase each year should be welcomed.The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, referred to the comprehensive system and the importance of recognising where we have come from and where we are heading. The difference—it is fundamental to understand this—is that a system that decides, when children are 11, what kind of education they can access is fundamentally wrong. It is wrong in terms of what happens to those children and in terms of economics because it does not enable us to make high-quality education available to all children. We recognise the need to ensure that our education system is fit for its purpose in relation to the young people whom it serves.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, asked about the ways of defining which schools were coasting and which were good schools. We have many measures. We are very pleased with our accountability framework, which enables us—through Ofsted and our "value added" tables, which are coming in—to see which schools perhaps need extra support.
The noble Baroness has previously raised the issue of bureaucracy. We are seeking to do something about that, as she said. It is worth pointing out that DfES administration costs account for less than 1 per cent of its overall budget. The administration costs settlement in the SR 2002 represents a 1.7 per cent reduction in real terms, which will not allow for large increases in the numbers of civil servants.
I turn to the issue of violence in schools. I said in the Statement that we are expanding our learning support units to all schools that feel that they need them. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, welcomed that. Those units, which play a crucial role, are having a dramatic effect dealing with behavioural issues in schools. We want that to expand. We are sticking to the existing truancy targets. It is important to address those issues carefully and rapidly. We recognise that there is still much that we have to do in that regard.
I turn to the role of head teachers who are truly excellent. Noble Lords on all sides of the House will have met many such head teachers in their time. We want to get those skills out into the schools sector. That does not mean that we will seek to make schools headless; rather, we want a more strategic role for those who wish to, are able to and can develop that role. The issue, in a sense, involves asking: where do they go next, having been an excellent head? Noble Lords will be aware of many examples of heads who have moved from one school to another for a short time in order to support the school and other head teachers have come in to continue their work. It is very important to expand that process.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Blatch said that the Statement was in many ways complex and self-contradictory. I want to ask the Minister two general questions. First, how does she justify saying that the Government need to do
more to tackle bureaucracy and, at the same time, making announcements that increase enormously the power of central government over the provision of education throughout the country? That will be the effect of the Government's approach.
Secondly, how does the Minister justify praising the principles of the comprehensive system when at the same time she is effectively scrapping it—rightly so—by recognising the importance of specialist different schools? She goes so far as to take credit for the fact that 50 per cent—I believe that that is the figure that she quoted—of our pupils will in future be in specialist different schools. Is it not unfortunate for the generation that has just left school that the Labour Party did not earlier take a more sensible view of education and recognise the damage that the comprehensive system was doing?
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