Education (Exemption from School Inspection) (England) Regulations 2012

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I do not have a “pathetic faith” in inspections, as my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark, put it, as may become clear as I progress through my comments. The Explanatory Memorandum is very interesting and raises a number of issues. I am not against exempting outstanding schools and giving them more autonomy, as long as the risk assessment described in the memorandum is rigorous and properly applied. Paragraph 7.1, which my noble friend has just quoted, states that the policy intention,

“is to give the best schools the power to manage their own performance and to be more accountable locally to their communities, rather than to central government”.

Does this mean that the Government plan to restore the link between academies and their local authorities, allowing local authorities to monitor the performance of those schools and giving them the levers to ensure they are serving the community well? If not, that sentence is meaningless.

There is some detail about the risk assessment in the notes. It mentions that inspection will recommence if performance deteriorates significantly. How will that be judged? What is meant by “significantly”? Annexe A is even more interesting. It suggests that the changes will lead to higher quality inspections. Well, we would all like to see that, especially those of us who heard “File on 4” on Radio 4 on 1 July. We are told that Ofsted expects to save around £2.5 million per year through inspecting fewer schools. Can Ofsted plough back the money to improve the standard of inspection and inspectors, or does it have to be returned to the Treasury? In the latter case, how is Ofsted expected to improve the quality of inspections without any money?

Of course, Minsters always say that the quality of schools depends on the quality of teachers and school leadership. That is, of course, quite correct. In the same way, good inspections depend on the quality of the inspectors. There were some very worrying cases in the programme. Broughton Hall school in Liverpool is a case in point. It sends many pupils to Oxbridge and 97% of its pupils get five grade A to C GCSEs, even though it is located in a deprived area. The school was threatened by an Ofsted inspector with special measures, even though it had an award-winning outstanding head. There were 27 errors in the report. Ofsted refused to correct them all but gave the school a “satisfactory” rating. But we all know that, come September, “satisfactory” becomes “unsatisfactory”, so the stakes are getting higher. All the more reason therefore, why we are entitled to ask about the quality and fairness of the inspections.

In the programme Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, said:

“Schools have a right for the inspection to be rigorous, to be fair. If not they have a right to write in and their complaint will be looked at”.

But, “Where is the redress?”, said a head in the programme. He went on to say:

“If I get it wrong I will be held to account. Who holds Ofsted to account?”.

The problem is that Ofsted is not obliged to correct its mistakes. The adjudicator can look only at the way the original complaint was handled, not at the substance of the original judgment. Who does that? It relies on people going to judicial review, and we all know what that means.

All other regulators are held to account for the quality of their regulation by the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. It was clearly the previous Government’s intention that Ofsted, too, should be held to account under this Act. The response to the consultation shows that very clearly. Does Ofsted fall under the LRRA 2006 or not—and, if not, why not? If it does, it should follow the Hampton principles, including transparency. After all, there is evidence that the number of complaints against Ofsted is rising. The department itself admits to one in 12 inspected schools. That is a lot. There is not enough information about the qualifications of those who inspect schools and about whether they are qualified teachers or have recent experience in school leadership or in the specialist subjects on which they are passing judgment. My noble friend Lady Perry, who is uniquely qualified to ask questions on these issues, asked a Written Question about how many were even qualified teachers, but did not get a straight answer. It is not even known how many HMIs have secondary leadership experience, let alone all the freelancers employed by agencies.

In the light of “raising the bar” for schools, will the Government start to collect this data and raise the bar for Ofsted? We all want to bring about improvement in our schools, but we need to have confidence in those who make judgments about school standards. Currently that is in question. It strikes me that the saving implied by the reduction in the number of inspections brought about by these regulations gives us a great opportunity. We need to start asking a lot more questions about the quality of Ofsted inspectors and inspections if they are to concentrate on core areas, as they are, and if the consequences for schools of the judgments that they make are to become more serious, which they are. That is only fair.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend for allowing us to debate this important issue. I declare an interest; my wife is training to be an Ofsted inspector. I expect to learn much more about the process in the years ahead. I was surprised that the suggestion was made that the Committee stage of the Bill would resume at 8.30 pm. This debate is not time limited and I hope that we will not allow ourselves to be restricted in the Minister’s winding-up speech.

I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said. Ofsted inspections are not everything. I also understand the criticisms that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, made about specific Ofsted inspections. However, for parents and children Ofsted none the less provides a key safeguard if things go wrong in an individual school. That is why I am very much opposed to this statutory instrument; why, as noble Lords will recall, we had a vote on this at Report; and why many noble Lords remain concerned about the decision.

If ever one wanted to a reason to put forward to your Lordships’ House for needing this safeguard, it was the quite extraordinary decision of the Minister’s department this week to allow a free school to be opened by a group of creationists. The group behind the plans, known as the Exemplar Newark Business Academy, put forward a revised bid by basically the same people who proposed the Everyday Champions Academy last year, which was formally backed by the Everyday Champions Church. That bid was rejected explicitly because of concerns surrounding the teaching of creationism. In February 2011, while promoting the Everyday Champions Academy bid, the Everyday Champions Church leader, Gareth Morgan, said:

“Creationism will be taught as the belief of the leadership of the school. It will not be taught exclusively in the sciences, for example. At the same time, evolution will be taught as a theory”.

That bid was rejected, but it has resurrected itself—if I may use the term in relation to creationism and that belief. This is now going to be a bid by the Exemplar Academy without the formal backing of the church, but the website for the new academy was initially part of the Everyday Champions Church website, and the plans were launched at the Everyday Champions Church, described as a resubmission of a previous bid.

I use this, first, as an occasion to strongly protest against the decision of the Minister’s department on this matter. I find it outrageous—outrageous—that a school that clearly is going to be tempted down the creationism route has been authorised by the noble Lord. What safeguards are there apart from potential interventions by Ofsted if we find that creationism is being taught? What happens if Ofsted, first time round, makes it an outstanding school? For many parents there will be no recourse whatever. That is why one objects so much to the Government’s decision in this regard.

I recognise that exempt schools may still be subject to inspections as part of the chief inspector’s surveys of general subjects and thematic reviews. I noted what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said. However, what I find quite extraordinary is that this flies in the face of all the other regulatory regimes that are present in relation to public services, as my noble friend said. I thought that the Explanatory Memorandum was disingenuous—to put it kindly—when it stated in paragraph 7.3:

“Of the schools judged outstanding and inspected more than once since 2005, over 90% have remained either outstanding or good at their latest inspection”.

The reality at that time, as we discussed last year, was that, out of 1,155 schools that had been judged outstanding in that period, on subsequent inspection more than 30% had a reduced grading, including 58 that went from grade 1 to grade 3. What we see quite clearly is that outstanding schools do not remain outstanding. That is why this policy is so fatally flawed. I also refer the noble Lord to the college sector. I understand that in the inspections undertaken between January 2012 and May 2012, two outstanding colleges fell by one grade, two fell by two grades and one fell by three grades. Indeed, my understanding is that none maintained the outstanding grade.

I have seen no coherent, intellectual argument that would justify exemption for outstanding schools. There is no evidence that all outstanding schools remain outstanding. We hear about the risk assessment approach —the desktop approach—but I do not believe that there is confidence that that approach can get in to the school and actually see what is happening.

I will ask a number of questions of the Minister. First, we have heard that Ofsted will pay particular attention to a school or college where a new head teacher has been appointed. What about a considerable change in the leadership team? I also note that the consultation in March 2011—this order has not been consulted on but the original policy was consulted on—showed 60% of respondents supported a risk-based approach to determining which school should be inspected. Can the Minister tell me whether parents were brought into this consultation? If parents knew that this was going to happen, I doubt very much that they would have supported the policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

There are some harder judgments to make about some of the children who might typically be in special schools or pupil referrals. That is a fair point. Given the particular sensitivity about those schools we would prefer to proceed cautiously in that respect.

At bottom, this is an argument about trust, not just about trust in schools—and I am not seeking to make a political point—but about whether we feel that we can trust Ofsted to do its job. There is a difference of opinion between us over the meaning of “proportionate”. What the Government have been doing has been made possible by the great increase in information that we have encouraged, as well as by the further strengthening of risk assessment that has been put in place, partly as a result of concerns expressed by Members of this House. It is no more than a logical expansion of developments in recent years. I commend the steps that we have taken to the House.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Since my noble friend appears to be drawing his remarks to a close, will he write to me about the questions that I asked him?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Yes, of course, my Lords.

Education and Training: People with Hidden Disabilities

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Addington on securing this important debate.

When reading the briefing material that came to those of us who had our names down to speak in this debate, there was one particular statistic that jumped out at me. It was that, in a study carried out in 2003, 41% of a sample of 1,000 unemployed people were dyslexic. I do not know whether there has been an update, because that was almost 10 years ago, but it is a pretty damning figure. Therefore, if your Lordships do not mind, I am going to stretch the topic of this debate very slightly beyond education and training into the employment which we hope will result from them and which is an important component of a fulfilled life.

An example from the Dyslexia Foundation about an organisation called Training Plus Merseyside in my city of origin, Liverpool, was instructive. In 2004, it was told that 4% of its clients had a special educational need. It obviously had a hunch that this was a gross underestimate, so it did something about it. It did some staff training, invested in screening tools, paid for psychological assessment and used ICT interventions, and it found that the real figure was nearer to 30%. What that tells me is that, at least at that time, the number of people slipping through the diagnosis net at school was far too large and many of those were landing up as NEET—not in education, employment or training. Indeed, all young people with disabilities are two and a half times more likely to fall into the NEET category than their fully able peers. Of course, there is a large cost, both personal and economic, to this, so we need to get it right at the education stage before the situation becomes entrenched.

The Government understand the importance of early diagnosis and intervention and have announced professional assessments of children’s health and development at the ages of two and five, as well as the phonics check at year one in primary school. I hope one can assume that the two and five year-olds’ checks are done by multidisciplinary, experienced professionals, but the phonics test will be administered by ordinary classroom teachers. That is why it is so essential that all teachers, in their initial training, have a meaningful SEN unit, including information about how to recognise and source appropriate help for children who achieve low scores in the phonics test and who therefore may suffer from dyslexia at some level.

Of course, it is far more likely that the parents will have noticed a problem—particularly with that other hidden disability, ASD—long before the child goes to primary school. It is really sad that so many of them say that they struggle to access appropriate care in therapies. I met a parent recently who noticed something wrong when their child was two and sought medical advice when he was two and a half. The doctors would not intervene until he was three, by which time his fairly normal vocabulary for his age at two had all but disappeared.

For parents with a child with severe ASD, working with their child and supporting him through his therapy and exercises is a full-time job. It is an enormous commitment, often meaning that they have to give up their own career, with the resultant stress on the family budget. However, if the condition is caught early enough and appropriate interventions are provided, the results can allow that disabled young person to be quite functional and lead a pretty normal life. However, adjustments have to be made in the education and work place and the person supported to reach his full educational potential and then become a productive worker. Even NICE says that this is a cost-effective intervention.

In schools, if the condition is not detected, as Charlie Taylor, the Government's behaviour adviser told the education Select Committee this week, it can result in bad behaviour. The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, has given us some graphic examples of that. As he pointed out, this is not the child's fault and should not be treated as such. Sadly, many employers also do not understand the conditions that we are talking about today and make no allowances.

Another thing that struck me in the briefings was the statement from Ambitious about Autism that:

“At 16, young disabled people hold the same aspirations to stay in education and find fulfilling careers as their non disabled peers”.

Well, of course they do; but, sadly, only one child in four with autism continues their education beyond school due to lack of suitable courses and lack of support. However, many do persist and get university degrees. When you think of the struggle that they have had, it is tragic to learn that a quarter of graduates with autism are unemployed. That is much higher for their age group despite the fact that seven out of 10 employers who have autistic employees report a very positive experience and would recommend employing people with autism to other employers. It is a terrible waste of talent after such a struggle. It is no wonder that many of them succumb to mental health problems, welfare dependency, and so on. This must change.

The Government have introduced the Youth Contract to help unemployed young people to get into work, and I think we can safely assume that many of them will have dyslexia or autism, or may be somewhere on either of those spectrums. Can my noble friend the Minister tell me what special provision is being made within the Youth Contract for these young people? If it is not for them, who is it for? It is doubly important that these young people are catered for with appropriate courses and support into work, especially in the light of the impending duty to stay in education or training until the age of 17 and then 18.

I return to education and the much more common condition of dyslexia. The Government have made clear their deep commitment to improving literacy. They are also changing and improving initial teacher training and continuing professional development. These two things go together. In this country we work with teachers to improve their practice. We do not sack head teachers on national television, as Michelle Rhee, the director of education in Washington DC did. We have nothing to learn from a city that let its schools get into such a bad state, where half of 15 year-olds were illiterate and 1,000 teachers were considered incompetent. Things are different here.

Will my noble friend the Minister say whether all the future vehicles for initial teacher training—including the ones in the new training schools—will have a compulsory SEN component, including training in how to recognise dyslexia and how to access the right support? Can he also say what is being done about teaching assistants? Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, mentioned their importance. They are now an indispensible component of the staff of modern schools—especially primary schools—so it is vital that they have opportunities to specialise in supporting teachers with children with disabilities or special needs in their classrooms—which, actually, is most of them—and that they have a clear career path if that is the way they want to go. Can the Minister say something about that?

It surprised me recently to discover that the Open University teaching courses, often used by teaching assistants to move on to be a full teacher, do not have the option to specialise in SEN. One has to do a general teaching degree first. This is a pity as many teaching assistants already have good experience with children with special needs and could do well on a specialist teaching course. If this is not correct, I hope someone will give me the information.

As we have heard, Dyslexia Action is calling for a national dyslexia and literacy strategy. You cannot have a literacy strategy without addressing dyslexia. As the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, has pointed out, there are four simple key elements: whole school ethos; knowledgeable teachers; creative adaptations to classroom practice so that all children can be included; and access to additional learning programmes and sufficient resources. This does not seem too much to ask and I hope the Minister can assure us that this will happen.

Young People: Parenthood

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, while welcoming the Government’s recent statement that they intend to try to ensure that when a family breaks up, both parents have the opportunity to fulfil their parental responsibilities to the child—after all, that is the child’s right—will my noble friend the Minister confirm that in any legislation the safety and best interests of the child will remain upfront and centre?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My noble friend is exactly right in both her points. We should try to have a legislative framework whereby the involvement of both parents in the upbringing of children is made as easy as possible. She is absolutely right that the core and underlying interest in all this legislation is to make sure that the interests of the child are at the heart of whatever arrangements one makes.

Schools: Curriculum

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

First, a number of recommendations made by the expert panel were accepted by the Secretary of State. Secondly, although it is true that there were differences of opinion between some members of the expert panel, and between some of them and Ministers, a difference of opinion between Ministers and expert advisers is scarcely unheard of. However, Ministers ultimately have to take responsibility for their decisions. I think most of us in this House think that that is the way it should be. However, the key point of the proposals that the Government have brought forward is that we are trying to raise ambition and standards in our primary curriculum, particularly as a gap in attainment has opened up between the UK and other international jurisdictions and we are keen to try to narrow it.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, the reference to international comparisons reminds me that in foreign countries children often start learning languages at primary level, something in which the Secretary of State is very interested. Given the difficulties with the lack of teachers and the fact that many secondary schools have dozens of feeder primary schools, all of which might have taught a different language, will my noble friend the Minister look into language appreciation or language taster courses so that children get a foundation in foreign languages but do not study for too long a language which they may not be able to carry over to secondary level?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, as my noble friend will know, one of our proposals for the primary curriculum is to make the teaching of foreign languages compulsory at key stage 2. Those proposals are out for consultation. There is clearly an important question to be addressed about the quality of teachers and how to teach languages, because we have fewer than we need and there has been a drift away from modern languages in recent years. One of the things on which we will welcome views to the consultation over the next few months is how we can make sure that teachers have the support they need to ensure that languages can be taught at primary and secondary school.

Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for introducing this very important debate and for her interesting speech. This Government’s objectives for children are very similar to those of her Government, but there is more than one way to skin a cat and we are skinning it in a slightly different way. I also point out that “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a poem that most three and four year-olds I know can recite perfectly well.

It is a well documented fact that a child who is stressed, ill, emotionally disturbed, hungry or who does not have good general well-being will not be a good learner and is very unlikely to fulfil his or her educational potential. It is also accepted that those who do not fulfil that potential are less likely to lead happy and fulfilled adult lives, and certainly will not contribute as much to the general economy as they might have done. Therefore, I am sure that no one will disagree that we need to focus carefully on how well-being can be achieved.

Parents, of course, are the prime players in ensuring their child’s health and happiness, but schools play a pivotal role, especially where parents do not carry out their role as well as possible, for whatever reason. However, we must not expect too much of schools; I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on that. No school, however caring and professional, can take the place of a loving, caring parent. I congratulate the Government on the measures they are taking to offer support to parents and to extend and improve the quality and flexibility of free nursery education offered to very young children. I welcome the fact that they have brought forward to this September the offer of free nursery education to disadvantaged two year-olds in some areas.

As we all know, children are born with their brains incompletely developed. Some experts have called babies “the external foetus” because of the great amount of development that happens outside the mother’s body in the first three years of life. Good-quality nursery education contributes enormously to a child’s emotional, social, physical and intellectual development. Therefore, when talking about the contribution of schools, we must not forget what has gone before.

The primary purpose of schools is the education of their pupils, but we should educate our children for a life, not just for a job. Schools help to develop citizens, husbands, wives, friends and parents—not just employees, employers or academics. Indeed, employees, employers and academics are all those other things, too. Therefore, I look to schools to get the balance right between fostering the health and well-being of children and developing their intellects. In the search for high academic standards, there is a danger of focusing too much on the child’s intellectual and skills development at the expense of their well-being and emotional maturity. That is a self-defeating strategy.

I heard an interesting interview on Radio 4 the other day with a spokeswoman from the CBI. She criticised schools for not turning out young people who were prepared for today’s workplace. She did not complain about the number of GCSEs or vocational qualifications they had. She asked for life skills. She said that business and industry need young people who have self-confidence, emotional maturity, the ability to work in a team, to negotiate and to compromise, and who are punctual and conscientious, have creativity and flexibility of thought, et cetera. That was not the first time I had heard such a plea from business leaders—it is fairly common. So where are we going wrong?

Noble Lords will know how keen I am on statutory personal, social, health and economic education. My enthusiasm for it is undiminished. I have talked to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, about why I could not support her amendment, and I think that she understands. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that such barbs are self-defeating. We have a duty to deliver this information, and the opportunity to develop skills in these areas, to every child. This should be done by high-quality specialists who are trained to do the job. Only then will we avoid the current postcode lottery in the quality of provision, and raise the standard overall. I have never felt that we should prescribe how schools should do this, preferring to leave it to their professional judgment. Every child should be entitled to have it delivered to a high standard.

There is much good practice. Some schools have PSHE elements as fundamental parts of their ethos and of everything that happens in them. Some have specialised teachers, and work with qualified people from outside the school to deliver elements of their programme. Others use some of the plethora of good-quality materials available to general class teachers. Many ensure that every lesson, throughout the curriculum, fosters these qualities and abilities in their pupils, not just special PSHE lessons. Some schools have adopted UNICEF’s wonderful Rights Respecting Schools programme, which fosters democracy and mutual respect in schools, both of which contribute to well-being. Children who have a meaningful input into decisions that affect them are usually happy.

It is important that the Government should make it clear that they expect schools to do this and that they will measure success not just on the number of A to C grades at GCSE but on the way in which schools foster well-being. Therefore, Ofsted plays a pivotal role. Schools and teachers are only human and will deliver the things on which they are measured. Parents expect schools to be happy places for their children to be, especially in the primary years. However, somehow the expectation often disappears in later years unless parents understand the link between well-being and academic success. Many of them do, of course.

I ask my noble friend the Minister whether schools will be allowed to use their pupil premium to provide the rich experiences that all children need to develop into self-confident young adults, as long as they can demonstrate a link between the use of this money and better performance by the most deprived children. Sometimes it is extra-curricular activities that have the most effect on these qualities. Outdoor pursuits, sport, music and the other arts, and heritage experiences and activities can all contribute. It would be a pity if, when a school is monitored on its use of the pupil premium, the range of activities for which extra money could be paid were too narrow. We rightly leave the decisions to the head and teachers, but they need guidance on the scope of the activities that would be acceptable to achieve the outcomes that we want.

Finally, I will say a word about the Government’s announcement today of a consultation on how we measure and address child poverty, because it is relevant to the debate. There is a clear link between deprivation and poor attainment at school, which must be addressed effectively. Ironically, as general incomes fall, the number of children in relative poverty will decrease, even though not one child’s life will have been improved. The Government do not want to be judged on such an anomaly. We want to do better and we will, despite the financial problems that we face. I hope that all parties will engage constructively with the consultation in the interests of the children we want to help, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will confirm that the Government will welcome such engagement from all who have something useful to say.

Schools: Admissions

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am sorry, my Lords, I thought I had said that in overcoming that divide the Government are extremely keen, as is the Secretary of State, to pursue the goal of bringing the two sectors together in as many ways as we can. As I said, some of that is through sponsorship of academies. The free schools programme, to which I just referred, will welcome high quality independent schools into the maintained sector, providing a good quality of education free for children from all backgrounds. It follows from some of the initiatives that the previous Government took to bring some of those schools into the academy sector.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Will my noble friend reaffirm the Government’s clear statement that they do not want an expansion of selection among schools maintained by the state? In that connection, will he consider clarifying the law on expansion of existing grammar schools and, if necessary, change it if it is not meeting that objective?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Yes, my Lords, the Government’s position on selection is clear and we have no plans to change it. The existing legislation that governs the prohibition on the introduction of new selective schools remains in place. The only change that the Government have made since we came in is the ability of schools of all types to expand their number locally in response to parental demand, if they are popular schools, because we are keen to give parents more ability to get their children into local popular schools.

Schools: Parenting Skills

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

We certainly take those reviews seriously and, as I have said, we have already made some announcements and introduced new policies on the back of the recommendations that we received from Frank Field and Graham Allen. We are in the process of setting up, for example, the Early Intervention Foundation to help provide evidence for some of the policies that we have been discussing. So far as the PSHE review is concerned, I hesitate to raise this again—actually, I have not raised it; the noble Baroness raised it with me but we have been having this exchange for a long time. I know the delay is probably too long, and I know that that is what she feels. As she knows, the sequence is that we want to make our announcements on the national curriculum review, which we expect to do shortly, and then, on the back of that, it seems sensible to bring the PSHE review together with it—so the national curriculum will be first and, after that, the PSHE review.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, does not the recent spate of cases of horrendous sexual exploitation of young girls, many of whom were in care, demonstrate that the lack of good parenting makes them very vulnerable? In which case, does the Minister accept that high-quality PSHE in schools can go a long way towards making up for that? It must be provided for every child in every school because, as we know from recent press coverage, sexual exploitation happens all over the country, not just in Derby.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend’s remarks about those appalling cases, which are shocking. I also agree that good PSHE in schools can help to raise some of those issues, educate children and warn some of those who are most at risk of the kind of behaviours that they ought to avoid. Part of the PSHE review is looking at the question of best practice, the quality of the teaching—which is vital—and the content of PSHE.

Schools: Satellite Sites

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Walmsley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to prevent the expansion of grammar schools on to satellite sites.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

The legislation governing the establishment or expansion of grammar schools has not changed. The Education and Inspections Act 2006 and the Academies Act 2010 effectively mean that there can be no new grammar schools and we have not proposed any changes to that legislation. Any school can seek to expand by opening another site, as has been the case since 1944, but to do so it must be a continuance of the original school.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I thank my noble friend for restating government policy. However, I do not see how that stacks up with the potential for doubling the number of school places for which selection operates in certain areas. As we know, under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, no new grammar schools can open, so can my noble friend tell me the criterion for a new school and why the planned satellite grammar school in Sevenoaks can claim not to be a new school but part of Tonbridge Grammar School many miles away? If the new school is given the go-ahead, what will that do to the catchment area of the original school? Could we see a school stretching right across the county as it extends its catchment area by opening a whole chain of satellite schools?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As I said, my Lords, the fundamental position on opening a satellite school has not changed. There is a process in place if people want to come forward with a proposal to open or expand a satellite school, they can apply to the local authority, and to the Secretary of State in the case of an academy. Those proposals would be looked at on a case-by-case basis. The bar on new provision is absolute and clear, and it is not the case that the Government are seeking to shift that position either by the front or the back door.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the noble Baroness that we need to make sure that the commitment that my honourable friend made in December 2010 is fulfilled. As we prepare for the next legislative Session, part of the way in which we do that is through some of the processes that I outlined. Specific guidance is being prepared by the Cabinet Office, and will go to all departments, on making sure that they take specific account of the UNCRC requirement when considering legislation. There is also a very snappy guide called the Guide to Making Legislation. Therefore, I hope that we will be able to move in the direction in which the noble Baroness wants us to move.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Does the Minister agree that the convention gives children the right to protection from violence in all places of learning, both secular and religious? What is his department doing to ensure that?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The Government are working to ensure that children can be educated in an orderly way in all schools. As for making sure that they are safe from violence in those settings, the noble Baroness will know that we are keen to do that in a number of ways. We are taking new measures on behaviour, and guidance on them is going to schools. All schools will want to make sure that they deliver on that commitment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, the Government believe that the Welfare Reform Bill is compliant with the UNCRC. We know that those issues were debated at length in this House and concerns were expressed about the effect of the benefit cap. The Government said that transitional arrangements would be put in place to deal with some of the concerns that noble Lords expressed, and they have committed to having a report a year on as to the effect of the benefit cap. However, our core position is that if we can help and encourage more people into work, that will be good for those families and for their children.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Will the Minister allow me to clarify my earlier question? I was referring not to bullying by other children but to violence and ill treatment by members of staff. I particularly had in mind certain madrassahs and Christian fundamentalist Sunday schools where the treatment of children is not up to the standard that we would expect in this country.

Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) (Revocation) Regulations 2012

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Grand Committee

That is some of the broader context, but the issue before us today is, as I said, quite narrow. Without ContactPoint, we no longer need the ContactPoint regulations, and I therefore commend these regulations to the Committee.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I very much support the abolition of ContactPoint. Setting up a monumental database to cover every child in the country was a terrible waste of money. It had a danger of setting up a tick-box mentality, and there were safeguarding issues because it was quite widely accessible. We had to set up all kinds of safeguards for the people who had access to it. At least some of the savings should be spent on better training for professionals in the children’s workforce in how to work effectively with other professionals in the children’s workforce. That would be a far better way to spend the money, so I very much support the regulations.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

Briefly, my Lords, as the Minister said, this is a very limited set of regulations in its intent. Given that ContactPoint has gone, I will not say anything about those regulations. I just put a couple of points on record in respect of the wider context that the Minister outlined.

First, as someone involved in the implementation of ContactPoint—sweating blood over it would not be too excessive a statement—it was never intended that it of itself could protect children. However, the recommendations from equally august people as Eileen Munro that we ought to try it came about because every inquiry, from Maria Colwell through to Jasmine Beckford, Victoria Climbié and even, to some extent, Baby Peter, identified to a lesser or greater extent the repeated failure, despite all those inquiries over 30 or 40 years, of professionals to share information properly.

One reason for that is that the local solutions that the Government are now asking local areas to put in place were always variable at best and, in many instances, were totally inadequate. They ran into the buffers of particular agencies—health is an example in many places—which felt that the law did not allow them to share information. It needs decisive government action to make it clear, as we tried to do, that those barriers do not exist. I do not mean this unkindly, but many professionals in local areas take a default position of, “We cannot share information”. That is what has happened and many children have lost their lives because of it.

There is a second, more practical reason, which ContactPoint, cumbersome though it might have been, was designed to address. For example, as a social worker, a referral from a school expressing concern about a child might land on your desk. If it is completely cold, your only contacts at that point are the school and the address of the child and their parents. You do not know, and it is often very difficult to find out, who else has been involved with or might have had concerns about that child in the recent past. It is very hard to get that information and put it together. You cannot call a case conference because you do not know who to call to it.

I must put on record that ContactPoint was never a database of information about children, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, maintained; it was a database of professionals. It was simply a list of the people who were connected to a child, such as their school, their GP and any other professional who had provided a service. If you, as a professional, got a referral about a concern, you could look on the database not for the details of the child—their background, history or circumstances—but for a list of professionals who had been involved in one way or another. That does not transgress that child’s human rights or reveal any information about that child. You would have to go to the professionals and ask for the information in order to get it. The database would never have given it to you.

Therefore, I do not think that local solutions will cut it. We have tried them over decades and they have not worked. Facilitation from government is needed. While I am very much in favour of building up professionals’ capacity to use their judgment more effectively, I disagree profoundly with Eileen Munro’s belief that that will simply happen without central government drive, commitment and clarification—not necessarily prescription. I simply say to the Minister: be very wary. I am not at all sure that what is being put in place instead of ContactPoint will prevent the death of another child through the failure of professionals to share information. We need a stronger system to ensure that that does not happen. Much has been tried over the years and nothing has yet worked. I am sorry that ContactPoint did not have a chance to prove whether it could have been better.