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Lord Hanningfield: The Minister referred to both LEAs and CSAs—the latter is not a terribly good acronym. The idea is that there will be just one body, a children's services authority (CSA). My own authority is moving that way. I would rather that local
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government did everything rather than having a lot of confusing acronyms, which people do not always understand.
Can the Minister comment on the time frame? The Government clearly support the Children Act 2004. It brings together a lot of issues that should have been brought together over the years in order to make certain that agencies work together to support families and children. I have local authority experience and I foresee that there will be a problem in resolving some of the issues in this legislation with the earlier legislation. Will the Minister clarify how the Government envisage the LEAs and CSAs coming together into one body with one policy?
Lord Filkin: The noble Lord, Lord Beresford, has taken me to task with great courtesy for demonstrating my old-fashioned language. I shall expunge the word "LEAs" from my vocabulary henceforth. He is right. We are talking about the children's services authority, which is the relevant local authority—that is, the principal local authority rather than the shire district—giving its leadership through the children's trust, and the children's trust mechanism bringing into place all the other key partners who have a responsibility in contributing towards the children's agenda in that area.
The noble Lord is right: that is what is important and radical about the Children Act. At this time of night, he is besting me at answering exactly how that will work out in practice with all the historical functions. But the core message—and a number of people are clear on this matter—is that this is the biggest offer to local government affirming its local community leadership role that there has been for many a long year.
When I had a meagre sandwich lunch with the chief executive of the LGA recently, there was a sense that that was recognised. This is a major opportunity for local government leadership.
I am wandering off the point. The Children Bill affirmed the policy and this Bill co-ordinates it, partly in the way in which it tries to get out of the detail of telling schools and inspectors how to deliver this and judges them instead on the outcomes. In other words, it is a great agenda for local government, and—through the spirit of self-evaluation—it is a positive agenda for schools as well. I have spoken at length. I will reflect on the challenges that the noble Lord, Lord Beresford, has given and see if I can add further comments later.
Baroness Walmsley: Does the Minister wish to speak?
Lord Filkin: I want to apologise for getting names wrong. When I referred to "the noble Lord, Lord Beresford", I meant to address the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield.
Baroness Walmsley: I am grateful to the Minister for the additional information that he has just given us.
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The information from pilot schemes and the extended schools' prospectus that we expect soon will all be enlightening on how this will work.
Before I withdraw the amendment, I would like to pick the Minister up on one point. Early in his response he suggested that my amendment would prevent schools focusing on their own pupils. I was under the impression that under the new obligations the Government expect schools to have some responsibility for all the children in their area, not only those who choose to come to their schools. For example, there may be facilities that should be made available to other children in the area through partnerships between schools. That is happening more and more. Schools should have some responsibility for children who are not pupils on their register. Can the Minister explain what he meant by that?
Lord Filkin: The noble Baroness is absolutely right. Increasingly, our vision is that schools will recognise that they can add value to what they give to the development of children by working in a co-operative manner with each other. The protocols around admission processes are one specific example, but it goes much wider than that.
As the noble Baroness implied, when considering the concept of extended schools it is implausible that every single school would have all the functions on the school premises that could ideally be placed there. It would not work like that. Therefore a cluster of schools would provide additional facilities that could be shared between them in exactly the way she implied. I apologise if in a sense I have spoken too crudely, but that is precisely the style of behaviour that we believe is necessary. Moreover, the school improvement partner will discuss these issues with the school because such co-operative behaviour best serves the children in the area; a beggar-my-neighbour approach would not.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: Perhaps I may chip in to point out that there is so much going on in this area that is exciting and even somewhat bewildering. Does the Minister intend that the partnerships should cover not only local authority schools, but also independent schools? I do not think that that has been addressed so far. Given the various articles and other publicity that I have read, a great deal is going on almost via the back door—indeed, in some areas it is being described as the back-door nationalisation of schools. Quite honestly, I think I welcome that. The more partnership we have to improve standards throughout the education system, the better. It would be interesting to hear a little more from the Minister.
Lord Filkin: I am unbriefed on this so I shall make a few observations in principle. As noble Lords would expect, the central thrust of our policy focuses on schools that are effectively either directly part of the state system by being maintained or are at one remove in the form of academies and foundation partnerships. They are the primary focus of this process of change. However, while for most children it is crucial that state-supported education fulfils their needs, it should
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be recognised that there are private and other forms of schooling. I do not think that we should not look to co-operative relationships between them where they meet the interests of children on both sides. I do not believe that we would wish to be doctrinal. However, this is the reverse of ex cathedra; it is the Minister giving some personal reflections which no doubt will be contradicted by letters later on.
Baroness Walmsley: I thank the Minister for his clarification of my earlier question and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 11:
"( ) the degree to which schools are developing rigorous internal procedures of self evaluation"
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendment No. 32. It may be useful to refresh our memories. We are still talking about the first subsection of Clause 2 and considering only the functions of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools in England. So far among those functions we have debated the issue of well-being, how it can be measured and how it ties in with the new agenda set out in the Children Act 2004. I turn now to a slightly different theme, one that has been flagged up in the new relationship for schools outlined in the White Paper that underpins this Bill, and set out in the Government's Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners published last July.
The whole concept of schools being able to move from lengthy inspections to short, sharp ones is being introduced because it is felt that the experience of some 12 years of schools inspection means that, in a sense, schools can move on. Part of that is the notion that they can move on because they now know, or should know, how they are measured. They need to learn, if they have not already done so, how to measure their own performance. Self-evaluation is therefore a vital part of the new agenda.
I am very sympathetic to this development and I think that all noble Lords would say that this is the right way forward. Moving away from the heavy interventionist bureaucracy of Ofsted to lighter touch procedures means that schools will monitor internally their performance and keep themselves up to scratch. All that Ofsted will have to do is ensure that each school has in place proper internal evaluation procedures.
The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that schools develop along this route. It would be useful, therefore, to add to the role of inspectors the requirement to look explicitly at the development of self-evaluation procedures. We know that many of our best schools are doing this already, do not need to be told to do it and in fact did not need to be told to do it, which is one of the reasons that we want the light touch.
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However, with the best will in the world, there are always those who do not do something unless they are told to do it—those with whom I got very annoyed when I was a university lecturer who always said to me, "Is there something that we need to study for the examination?" In other words, "If we are not examined in it, we are not going to bother to do it". Therefore, if it is not on the list of matters that the inspector is to inspect, will the schools do it? Although the answer ought perhaps to be that we should not have to measure it, it is nevertheless a useful fallback position to have.
That is the reason behind the tabling of this amendment. If this is part of the agenda as we know it, and to which I believe all sides of the Chamber are very sympathetic, arguably it is something that we need to measure as a fallback. Therefore, we suggest that it is added to the issues that the inspector has to consider. I beg to move.
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