Education: Vocational Subjects
Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I know that the noble Lord has worked for a long time to try to overcome the problem that we all see regarding the perception of a two-tier system. I certainly share that objective. Many have strong feelings about the English bacc. I come back to the point that its purpose is not to be discriminatory in the way that the noble Lord suggests—although I know that he did not use that word. The motivation behind it was to tackle the fact that children from poor backgrounds have not had the chance to study certain subjects—such as modern foreign languages, which have declined in number, history or other subjects—as much as one would like. Only 4 per cent of children on free school meals achieve the EBacc. That has a very narrowing and limiting effect on their possible progression to higher education. The measure we are discussing is intended to tackle that situation.
I entirely take the noble Lord’s point that one does not want to entrench a sense of difference in this regard. As he knows very well, alongside things such as the EBacc, which I hope we do not take in isolation, we are committed to university technical colleges and studio schools, which I am very keen to encourage the spread of so that children who are in danger of becoming disengaged get the change to re-engage, learn practical skills and, in the process, pick up some academic ones as well. I understand the noble Lord’s point, but I hope that he and other noble Lords may see the EBacc in the broader context of what we are trying to do across the piece to raise the prestige of academic study, alongside raising the prestige of technical and vocational subjects.
I hope that Professor Wolf’s report, in giving us pointers to how we can give everyone confidence in the quality of vocational qualifications—and I very much welcome the support for that across the House—will be another leg in tackling the problems that the noble Lord identifies.
Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, I warmly welcome the Government’s response to the Wolf report. They are clearly trying to find a solution to a problem that has eluded all previous Governments—namely, to dramatically improve the practical, skilled and high-quality training of technicians and engineers, alongside higher academic education. If we do not resolve that, because there is a desperate shortage in our society of technicians, skilled workers and engineers, the great forecasts of this Government will simply not be met.
I welcome, in particular, one or two specific recommendations. The first is that the difference between qualified trainers in FE colleges and qualified teachers should be removed. That is an absurd class distinction. They should be at the same level and paid the same. I hope that amendments to that effect will be introduced to the Education Bill which will come before this House later this Session. Secondly, I hope that my noble friend will recognise that vocational education below 16 in schools is an expensive option. It requires workshops, equipment and qualified trainers. It cannot be left to two hours’ craft studies on a Friday afternoon. It requires much more than that.
Finally, I thank the Minister warmly for the support that the Government, the department and he personally are showing—as well as the support that the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are showing—to university technical colleges. The Chancellor granted us another £150 million in the Budget to expand them. The purpose of UTCs is to recognise that youngsters at 14 can make their own choices about the courses of study they want to take. The whole idea of bringing under one roof the training of the hand and the education of the mind is already proving to be very successful. One such college is already operating, and even at the end of the second term two things are outstanding. First, there is behavioural change. At 14, they are adults. Truancy and bloody-mindedness have disappeared. Secondly, there has been dramatic improvement in the quality of English and Maths, because students are studying those subjects alongside engineering. I am glad to say that this programme has all-party support. The former Minister is nodding, and I see that this is something that the coalition also supports. Therefore, I hope that there will be a substantial expansion of these colleges over the coming years.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful for my noble friend’s remarks, particularly on the support that we have been able to give to UTCs. I am glad that that commands support from all sides of the House. I note in particular his comments about trying to break down the divide between people working in FE and giving them the chance to work in schools. Like him, I think that that is a sensible way forward. I look forward to working with him on trying to raise and spread UTCs in the way that my noble friend Lord Baker would like—although never as fast as he would like, because he is an extremely hard taskmaster regarding UTCs. I look forward to doing everything we can to spread them as far and as fast as we can.
Education: Pupils and Young People
Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, I declare interests as the chairman of Edge and chairman of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, which are major educational charities, but of course I draw no remuneration from them.
I very much welcome this debate initiated by my noble friend Lady Perry. She touched on a profound malaise in the English education system; that there are hundreds of thousands of 13 and 14 year-olds who are totally bored at school. They do not find that what they are learning has anything to do with the world of work. What do they do? Some bunk off; some turn up but are bored, frustrated and disobedient; and they drop out and hang around on the streets. There are hundreds of thousands of them; therefore, some four years ago, Ron Dearing and I decided that we should do something about it and, in particular, we should re-establish the technical schools. We had them in the 1950s—it was part of the 1944 settlement. They were abolished in the 1950s. English snobbery killed them; everyone wanted to be in the school on the hill and the technical schools were considered to be for dirty jobs and greasy rags.
How did we set about changing this? We went to see the noble Lord, Lord Adonis; he supported us, as did the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. These colleges—we called them university technical colleges—are different in three very important ways. First, they are for 14 to 18 year-olds. I have been quite convinced that the right age of transfer in the education system is 14, not 11. By 14, youngsters can largely make their own decisions. History is on my side; I commissioned some research—I believe in commissioning research only when I know what the outcome will be—from Exeter University to show why, since 1850, technical education in Britain has been so bad, whereas it has been very good in Germany, Sweden and America. One of the reasons is the age of transfer. In 1941, the Board of Education decided that the age of transfer should be 13 to 14. That decision was not reversed by Mr Butler or any Minister; the Permanent Secretary decided—such was then the power of Permanent Secretaries. He said it should be 11 because grammar schools started at 11. That was the decision. It was a huge mistake, and it was huge mistake to finish with technical schools. Germany has kept them. The German education system has a much lower rate of applications to universities than ours, but it has a much higher rate of technical training, technical schools and apprenticeships, which is one of the reasons why Germany is coming out of the recession faster than we are.
Four years ago, we went to the Government and said that we want these schools to be different in three ways: first, they will be for 14 to 18 year-olds; secondly, a university and an FE college will sponsor each one to give it status; and thirdly, the curriculum of these schools will have two specialisms. Nearly all of those that are about to open have chosen engineering as one of the specialisms and then there are property services, IT and medical occupations—not doctors, but the people below doctors who, when you get my age, keep you alive when the doctor leaves the room. These colleges provide practical, hands-on training under the same roof as the academic work—GCSEs in English, maths, science and IT—because if you bring those two sides together under the same roof, you will have a significant improvement in literacy and numeracy. There is no doubt about that.
These colleges are different also because we asked local employers, big and small, to shape the specialist curriculum, so Rolls-Royce wants three, British Aerospace wants one, Guest, Keen and Nettlefold wants one and local companies in Walsall want one. They are immensely popular, and I am glad to say there is traction in that the JCB Academy in Staffordshire, which specialises in engineering, opened this year and is oversubscribed as a start-up school. I hope that five colleges will open next year, provided that the Government give us money. We are not building lavish new schools at £25 million or £30 million a time; we go for empty buildings, refurbished buildings or closed schools. The FE world is now throwing up lots of empty buildings. We can take surplus buildings from the FE world, and one college wants to use an industrial building. We hope to open five colleges next year, and the Government have said that after that we can have 12.
That is just a beginning because we are talking to more than 40 groups of people who want these colleges. They are important people from universities, FE colleges and leading businesses. I hope that we are going to have scores of these colleges in the lifetime of this Government because they are needed. They address the malaise that I talked about. They re-engage the interests of youngsters who want to turn up. These colleges will start at 8.30 in the morning with youngsters with tools in their hands, and they will do academic subjects in the afternoon. If they are late for 8.30, they are sent home. There is no question of them drifting in when they want. That is also one of the aspects of these colleges. There is huge enthusiasm for them, and I commend them to your Lordships.
Academies Bill [HL]
Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I declare that I share the same belief as my noble friend Lady Massey.
I wish to ask some technical questions about employment and equalities law. The right reverend Prelate’s amendments are not innocent and possibly not sympathetic. I was the Minister who helped to take the Equality Bill through your Lordships’ House earlier this year, and I took part in many of the discussions on issues to do with the application of equalities legislation and employment law to religious schools and other establishments. I would like reassurance that the right reverend Prelate’s amendment does not seek to undermine or change what I thought was the agreement about the application of employment and equal opportunities legislation to all establishments and their employment practices. I am not completely happy with the agreement but it is the one that we came to in the course of that legislation,
I also seek reassurance from the Minister and the Government that they do not intend to accept the amendment and change the existing policy and practice, and that these schools—free schools, academies or whatever the Government decide to call them—will be expected to abide by the existing legislation in their employment practices.
This House has sometimes waxed lyrical about the number of guidance missives from what is now the Department for Education to schools on how they should undertake their employment practices. There is no question but that all maintained schools in this country have a clear idea about what their duties are as employers and how they should comply with them. Will the new schools be expected to find out for themselves what they should do? How will we ensure that they also abide by the law on employment practices and equal opportunities?
Lord Baker of Dorking
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, referred to a debate that took place in this House some three years ago. At that time, some of us sought to move amendments to ensure that if new faith schools—not existing ones—were established, 25 per cent of the pupil roll should come from outside the faith or from no faith. For a fleeting moment the Labour Government supported us, as those who took an interest in these matters will remember; but as a result of a campaign by the Catholic Church which was—I cannot use the word “deceitful”—imaginative, shall we say, the Government ran away from that commitment. They sought to extend the threat to all existing Catholic schools and not only to new ones—the Catholic Church had established only two small new primary schools in 30 years—but the debate was about new Catholic schools. Anyway, as a result of that campaign, the Government ran away from that commitment.
However, the Anglican Church made a statement in the House—I see the right reverend Prelate nodding—which I completely support. I went to a Church of England primary school and I am not against church schools as such. There was nothing too emphatic about going to an Anglican primary school; it was not too passionate. It had all the attractive characteristics of the Anglican faith; it did not ask too much but it gave reassurance. The right reverend Prelate who spoke for the Church of England at that time said that, irrespective of the fact that the amendment had not been passed, when the Anglican Church established new faith schools it would ensure that 25 per cent of the intake would come either from outside the faith or from no faith. I would like some assurance that that undertaking is still in place. I do not expect the Minister to reply, because nothing is on the statute book, but reassurance from the right reverend Prelate would be most welcome. I maintain that it is sensible for children of different faiths to sit, play and eat alongside each other in school and to go home on the bus together, but I appreciate that sensitivities still exist. However, I still hope that that undertaking of the Anglican faith survives.
Academies Bill [HL]
Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Adonis
My Lords, I do believe that that is a straight cop-out. Parliament has to be clear on what it means. There are two competing notions of need here and Parliament needs to state, before it charges the Secretary of State with these responsibilities, which one it means. As for judicial reviews and legal challenges being rare, there was one point when I was in the job now being done by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, when I was barely out of the High Court and the Court of Appeal on challenges to academies, most of them with support from the National Union of Teachers and a good number with support, one way or another, from bodies associated with local authorities. So Parliament needs to be clear on what it means.
We come then to “undue detriment”. Again, there are two competing views of what this is. It could be taken to mean making another school or schools totally non viable or it could be taken to mean that it would have a serious, definable or appreciable impact on another school or schools. Again, there is a fundamental difference between those two concepts of detriment—whether the detriment causes a school to become non viable or whether it simply has an impact or an appreciable impact. Again, Parliament needs to be clear which of the two it means.
This goes to the central point about school improvements as well. The noble Lord’s amendment says that the Secretary of State may not allow a new academy to be established if it causes undue detriment. I have to say that in many cases it is the dealing with the undue detriment that should be the duty of the Secretary of State or the responsible local authority using the huge array of school improvement powers available, including those that the Government of whom I was a member provided over 13 years. The idea that parents should not be able to access new or additional school places in areas where the schools are not providing good quality places simply because the provision of those places will cause detriment to other schools fundamentally ignores the interests of parents and their right to have a decent quality school to send their children to. If there is not such a decent quality school and someone is prepared to do something substantive about it, they should be applauded and not put through the legal rigmarole that the noble Lord is proposing, which will work fundamentally against the interests of parents, particularly in places where schools are not of a high enough quality. The imprecision of the language, where it is not clear what the definitions of essential terms such as “detriment” and “need” will be, will ensure that the only people who will gain from this are the lawyers, who will make huge fees while this is fought out in the courts over many years.
Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, I support entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has said. It is a pity that he is not saying it from the Labour Front Bench because he is absolutely right.
On listening to the debates both before and after dinner, I was struck by how similar they were to the debates on the Education Reform Act 1988, when I decided to establish two groups of independent schools—city technology colleges, which were totally independent of government and financed by business people, and grant maintained schools, which were almost independent of government—which we had to get through as a result of an elaborate electoral process which in those days your Lordships tried to hinder, restrict and limit. I was told at the time that these schools would destroy the education system, that the detriment to schools would be overwhelming and that ordinary secondary schools would be undermined and destroyed. That is not what has happened.
In 1988 the Labour Party objected so strongly that it said it would abolish them all; that it would destroy them as soon as it came into power. That did not happen. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was a member of a Government who actually expanded and developed them at the expense of local education authorities, I would remind him. He was a senior member of a Government and a Minister of State who approved all this. The CTCs were not voted down. They became beacon schools which other local schools tried to emulate.
In the early days of city technology colleges, the local education authorities opposed them so strongly that they told the other local authority schools for which they were responsible to have nothing to do with them; not to play games with them. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will remember; he was in the House in those days. The local authorities ostracised them; they said that they were the cuckoos in the nest that would destroy them. Now they tell them to co-operate with them; they are trying to imitate them and to reach the standards that they have established. That is an enormous change, as it was with the grant-maintained schools. I shall allow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to intervene but I want him to listen to me for a moment. Again, the Labour Party spent 10 years totally opposing the grant-maintained schools and then it reinvented them and called them trust schools.
However, let us forget all of that. I do not want to make party points tonight. This provision for alternative types of schools is good for the whole education system; it drives up standards. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, if parents are dissatisfied with a local school and the local authority has tried to improve it—it has thrown resources at it and changed the head three times in two years and done everything it can—and it still has not happened, what does it do? Just let it go on to the detriment of all the pupils? I shall give way to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in a moment, because he is being stirred, but I shall give way to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, first.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am intrigued. Is the noble Lord, Lord Baker, saying that the creation of a new school cannot severely damage an existing good school? If he acknowledges that it can, is he saying that nothing should be done about it?
Lord Baker of Dorking
Very often, if there is a good local school there will not be the creation of another school. If you have got a very good primary school that is satisfying the demands of the parents and children, you will not get another group of parents and teachers wishing to create a new primary school.
The noble Lord does not know how difficult it is to start a school. For the past three years I have been starting new schools—at first with Lord Dearing—the new university technical colleges. It is a hard row to hoe because many people do not want it. These are colleges for 14 to 18 year-olds—which is disruptive for an 11-to-18 system for a start—specialising in technological and academic subjects. When Ron and I started, local authorities were not very interested. They did not like them for all the reasons that the noble Lord gave: they hurt good schools. Now I find that local authorities are coming to my little team, saying, “We’d like one of those, please”. They have seen that it is a new model that they like; it is better. I do not believe for a moment that a good school is threatened—that is rubbish, if I may say so to the noble Lord. He should not get up; he has had his go. Only bad schools are threatened; that is the problem. I can tell the noble Lord that it takes enormous effort to get a school started—to get parents together, to get teachers together. Meetings do not happen. Who is the champion? Can they bring it together? Then we have a divisive curriculum. Then they have to find support and make it viable economically: they have to find a primary school for 150 pupils and a secondary school for 500 to 600 pupils. That is an enormous hurdle. All the hurdles that Members of this Committee have tried to put in the way of the new schools over the past few hours is nothing compared to the task that committed groups will have to take on. That is the reality of life. It requires enormous effort and a tremendous act of corporate activity. We should not try to hobble and hinder that activity too much.
I prefer working with local education authorities. For the schools that I am establishing, we talk first to the local education authorities. If you are creating 14-to-19 colleges, they have to accommodate the 11-to-14 pupils. They also have to accept that it is a very different body in their school organisation. But now I am finding that local authorities like it. It is novel; it is different; and it will be effective. It will be effective, because in every comprehensive at age 12, 13 and 14, you have a vast number of disengaged pupils who do not want to continue in their local comprehensive school. We are providing an alternative which the state system has not yet provided. It provided it back in the 1950s as technical schools, but they failed because they were skill by snobbery. That is why we get a university to sponsor each of our colleges.
I therefore say to Members who are anxious about all this disrupting our education system that the new academies, to the extent that they will exist in the future, will improve our education system. They will improve the standards; they will get the commitment of local people, which will be very energetic. Even the Liberal Party knows how difficult it is to get local people to do anything—even to vote for them occasionally. So let us imagine how difficult it is to get local people committed to establishing a new school. That is why the Government are trying to make it as easy as possible. We should not make it too difficult for them to do so. This is a very imaginative proposal by the Government and it should be welcomed. It will be welcomed first by the Liberal Party—obviously; it will be welcomed reluctantly by the Labour Party, just as it came to welcome the city technology colleges and the grant-maintained schools. It is only a question of time. It is still in the mode of fighting the last election. When it starts fighting the next election, it will begin to realise that what we are saying is really rather attractive, responsive to the needs of people and beneficial to the education of our country. I cannot wait for the day.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I do enjoy this coalition politics, but I think that my noble friends on my left are looking too much at institutions and too little at parents. They should think in terms instead of the interests of parents and the pupils. They are taking too static a view of the schools system. Schools are changing and jostling for places all the time. In a town with three or four secondary schools, the least popular may suddenly get a good new headmistress who makes a great difference and the school becomes popular again. Pupils flow to her away from the other schools. This is a naturally dynamic system which can easily absorb other levels of change. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, the Government have lots of levers to deal with any problems that develop as a result of change—we will come to that when we talk about inspections and how we watch the way which the system is going. We are talking about a change which results in parents being happier, pupils doing better and provision being much more closely aligned with the best interests of pupils and parents. Yes, there may be a few bumps in the road, but if we are careful as a Government, we will make sure that they do not hurt people. That must be the way we should go, rather than sticking with what we all agree is a system with a very large proportion of unsatisfactory, or at least sub-optimal, provision.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand the point that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, makes. I stand corrected. Amendments 119 and 191 propose an assessment of the educational impact of each academy conversion before it can go ahead, and a pilot process to make similar assessments over several years. Academies are not a new phenomenon. We know that that they have achieved great things over the years. They already work in partnership with other local schools. They make sensible and co-operative arrangements with local children’s services. If we were newly introducing academies, these proposals might well be worth considering very carefully, but we are not. We are, therefore, not convinced that they are necessary.
Amendment 177 would require academies to promote community cohesion. That is obviously, in broad terms, a worthy aim. The question is, how do we see this being achieved? As a condition of grant, an academy is already required by its funding agreement to be at the heart of its community, sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community. Future academies will continue to be under this obligation.
I am mindful that somewhere in these amendments was Amendment 137, tabled by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. She asked about the delegation of decisions to an individual governor. We would not expect governing bodies to delegate decision-making in connection with an application for an order to an individual. We would ensure that our system required governing bodies to forward to us a copy of the minutes of the governing body meeting so that we can be satisfied in that connection.
Amendments 76A and 92A deal with post-16 arrangements in academies. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured to hear that where we are being asked to fund an expansion of post-16 provision in an academy we will require the academy to make a strong case for expansion and to show that other local providers have been consulted, but we are not convinced that such a requirement needs to be in the Bill. Recurrent funding in academies, including for sixth-form provision, is formulated to ensure that academies are no better off and no worse off than maintained schools for the provision of similar services. However, as we know, they receive funding to buy in services from a local authority or another provider where these will no longer be provided free of charge to the school. A cap that prevented academies from receiving funding for these services would leave academies worse off than maintained schools.
In light of the general discussion that we have had about the role of the local authority, I urge all noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Baker of Dorking
Before my noble friend sits down, I draw his attention to the point made by my noble friend Lord Bates. However, I am not asking him to make any commitment tonight. My noble friend Lord Bates said that the new schools should provide education if pupils were,
“wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated”.
That may be too narrow. If there is a wider catchment area for the new schools, the effect on the area local schools will be much less. Certainly, we have very wide catchment areas for the university technical colleges; for example, half the Black Country. This is acceptable to local authorities because no individual school is hit too much. Will he consider that before Report, please?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will certainly reflect on that point and see where my reflections take me. In conclusion, I urge all noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Academies Bill [HL]
Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, I must declare two interests: I am the chairman of the Edge Foundation, the largest charity in our country promoting technical, practical and vocational education, and I am chairman of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, which was established to promote and develop the new technical academies, university technical colleges. I draw no remuneration from either charity.
It comes as no surprise that I am in favour of the Bill and of extending academies, in that they are the heirs of the city technology colleges that I established in 1986. They were revolutionary in that they were the first schools that were truly independent of the local education authority. They had distinct advantages. First, they were free from the LEA. Secondly, the head was in charge. Thirdly, they controlled their own budgets, particularly on pay and conditions. Fourthly, they had freedom to introduce changes; for example, they started at 8 o’clock in the morning with breakfast and went on to 8 o’clock at night. Those were revolutionary changes in the 1980s, and most local authorities objected to them for other schools. Fifthly, there was some freedom in the curriculum, although most followed the national curriculum, and there was a big emphasis on computer technology. In those days, there were only two or three computers in every school, but we wanted every child to have access to a computer. Sixthly, there was industrial and commercial support. My Ministers and I raised more than £44 million from industrialists such as my noble friend Lord Harris, who was one of the first to take over a very rundown school in Croydon and who has now sponsored 10 academies. To bring not only the cash but the commitment from industry and commerce—I know my noble friend puts that in—was a breakthrough in educational terms.
At the time, the Labour Party was totally opposed to city technology colleges. They were the cuckoos in the nest and were to be destroyed at the first opportunity. Fortunately, David Blunkett and Tony Blair came to like them—they believed they invented them and I do not complain about that—and developed and expanded them substantially and improved the standard of education in our country enormously.
The big argument is whether city technology colleges hit other schools, as the Minister said. They did not. They became beacon schools that other schools aspired to copy. That was the pattern right across the country, so I believe that the fears that the shadow Minister expressed are groundless. She expressed the view that in future academies may not want to do failing schools. On the contrary, I think there is a big opportunity. For example, the Edge Foundation has sponsored three academies with amounts totalling nearly £5 million. The first was a school in Milton Keynes that was failing appallingly. Only 19 per cent of pupils got five subjects at GCSE and 80 per cent of the children had a reading age that was two years lower than their chronological age. The gifted head teacher, Lorna Caldicott, has already started the teaching of basic reading using phonics, and a catch-up is happening in that school. It has been going on for nearly four terms and has been remarkably successful. That school also provides real vocational courses for youngsters that are very popular.
This school and the other academies have increased teaching hours. The Minister will discover, if he has not discovered it already, that teachers cannot work more than 1,265 hours a year. That is imprinted on my soul because I agreed it with the unions in 1986 to settle the strike. It has not changed; it has survived, remarkably. That means that most teachers teach only 25 hours a week. This school has won an extra hour a day, which means 30 hours’ teaching a week, principally by abolishing many of the meetings that teachers went to and other tasks that they were doing. The advantage of an extra hour’s teaching a day is that on a five-year teaching course you gain a whole year’s extra teaching. I hope that the Government will spread that throughout the whole educational system.
The second academy was in Nottingham in a very depressed area. Again, it has a gifted head, Graham Roberts. Again, only 14 per cent of the school gained GCSEs at 16. It has established very strong business links already. There are various things that these schools can do. This school got all the students to design their own uniform, so uniforms are accepted. They wear uniforms up to 16, and from 16 on they dress smartly, as for the office.
The third academy was in Telford in a very depressed area indeed. Edge put in £500,000 for a skills centre in a separate building in the school. This now has catering equipment, and youngsters of 12 and 13 make their own buffet lunches, help with the canapés and begin to acquire skills. These are the sorts of things that academies can do for failing schools and will continue to do.
What is left for the LEA to do, as my noble friend Lord Low asked? I will be even more ambitious than him about special education, because I think that it is the one role that should be left quite specifically to LEAs. I hope that the Government will look at this very seriously. The first thing that they have said is that they will look at the definition of special education. I find it very difficult to believe that 20 per cent of students and pupils at schools are classified as having special educational needs. I say that from my personal experience, because during the war I went to a Church of England primary school in Lancashire. In those days, I am absolutely certain that one in five of my classmates did not have special educational needs. I do not know whether this was the luck of Lancashire, but it was certainly not the case that one in five had special educational needs. Looking at the definition of special education is therefore the first thing to do.
Having made local authorities responsible for special education, I must say to my noble friend Lord Low that I would encourage them to establish more special schools. He will know that I have for several years been president of a charity that maintains one of the leading blind schools in the country, and I am greatly in favour of more special schools. The policy of inclusion has not worked well. The author of the policy—Lady Plowden—used to be in the Chamber. She is on record as having said that her recommendation was the biggest mistake of her life. It has been a mistake, and special education will be a very real role for local authorities in the years to come.
Finally, I will plug the schools that Ron Dearing and I worked to establish before he unfortunately died: technical academies for 14 to 19 year-olds, not for 11 to 18 year-olds. We believed that 14 is a more natural age at which to transfer. They are really a revival of the old technical schools that went down with comprehensives, but differ in two very important respects. First, they are for 14 to 18 year-olds, because 14 is a better age at which students themselves can select which school they want to go to. Secondly, they are adopted and sponsored by a university. That increases their status in the eyes of the students, of their parents and of business.
We have three such academies on their way. The first is Aston, which will open in two years’ time. The University of Aston wants to tutor and mentor pupils at 14, 15 and 16, and I think it is the first time that a university has ever done this. Twenty are waiting. I will not ask my noble friend for a commitment on these today because he will have to speak to the Secretary of State and his department, but I hope that we will have a network of these colleges across the country in the next few years. They will be of real interest to youngsters, many of whom are pretty disengaged at their local comprehensive schools at 13 and 14 and do not want to continue their studies but want to do something more practical.
In these schools, they will start at 8.30 in the morning with a trowel, hammer, welding machine or spanner in their hands, and in the afternoon they will do English, maths, science and IT under the same roof. I do not suggest that all new academies should be technical academies, but I would like a good share of them to be because they are already proving to be very popular. I therefore warmly support this Bill and the opportunities that it will give to make substantial improvements to the education system of our country.
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to his new task and wish him well with this very welcome Bill. I look forward to it unfolding its various stages.
I come to this debate today out of what the Americans would call “left field”—not a political left field, this side of the House will be pleased to hear. Rather, it is a definition of the direction of the game being changed for a moment by an unexpected move. I hope that I might provide that. I love the idea of these academies. I only wish that I could have gone to one, but that would have been a long time ago and, in any event, I know that I would not have got in; I would have been classified as a special needs child and I would not have got into the system at all. My special need was that I was classified as mentally retarded. I have no argument with that assessment at all. I have made no secret of it since I came to your Lordships’ House. It causes me no grief now and I came to terms with it many years ago. What concerns me are the many children in this country today in a similar category who will also never get to an academy and how they can be motivated to set their eyes on a horizon worth aiming for, for the enrichment of their lives, which is otherwise a difficult issue in the present circumstances. This should engage the political parties of all persuasions in this House and should not be an exclusive issue for one.
We have a problem in this country that is beginning to look to me like a replication of the circumstances that gave rise to the difficulties experienced by my generation during and after the Second World War, when I began my educational progress. I am 73 years old. My first vivid memory is of five minutes past 10 on the morning of 20 May 1940. I was just short of my third birthday at the time and my mother had just cleared away the breakfast—bear with me, this is relevant. She cleared away the breakfast and put the radio on to what should have been “Housewives’ Choice”, or something of that sort. Instead, it was Alvar Liddell in his darkest, most sepulchral tones, announcing that France had capitulated and that we were now on our own. Immediately, the BBC announced that it would suspend services for the rest of the day until the Prime Minister could speak, but that it would repeat the message of the capitulation every five minutes and, meanwhile, between each message, it would play what it said was Purcell’s trumpet voluntary. It was not, but the BBC thought that it was.
Lord James of Blackheath
I did not know it at the time, my Lords, but found out in rather changed circumstances many years later. The BBC ended up playing this damned tune every five minutes the whole day, but my mother would not switch off the wireless because she wanted to hear when the Prime Minister came on. So we listened to it. That has been very much in my mind in the past month, because of the celebrations of the Dunkirk deliverance. However, we knew nothing of that at the time; all we knew was that France had fallen. We did not know that operation Dunkirk was going on at that time or that 380,000 soldiers were coming back to help the defence. My mother was convinced that the Germans would be there for tea, and she did not have any apple strudel. I suspect that they would have wanted something other than that, but that was her problem at the time. We had this terrible phase of two weeks or so of misery before we had an army back; had we but known it, in another four months we would have the victory of the Battle of Britain to announce.
So we got through the war, more or less. We had three times the ritual of the little orange envelope being delivered, starting off with the words, “The War Office regrets to advise”—but that happened in every family. The war ended, really on VJ Day not VE Day. On that day we learnt for the first time the terrible power of the atomic bomb. From that moment on we knew, as a generation, that we were doomed. There was no point in working—why bother with school? We had no hope whatever, which was how we were brought up for many years to come. We also had the threat of the great red horde flooding across Europe. Berlin was going to fall—the Berlin air lift was a waste of time and was never going to succeed. When it did, we had to wait to see whether we could survive the Korean War and the yellow horde coming from the other direction, so we had no hope anywhere. Who was bothering to sit their exams with any serious intent, or to pass anything? We did not, so I got sent to a school for what would today be called special needs. We really were special needs, but we were not quite as stupid as we might have been thought: of the 22 boys in the class that I was sent to, two played for England at chess within 10 years of the class being formed.
In the fullness of time, one went on from there and—hoping for the best—I got an Oxford entrance place. I could not go, because I had to put up a guarantee of £1,500 to get there—to pass “Go”—and I had not got £1,500. But I went to a better university: Ford Motor Company. My 10 years at Ford were better than what any university in the world could have done for me. Ford even paid me to be there. That brings up a big demotivating point that politicians need to think of today: you have to let the young people who succeed receive some of the benefits of their success. There came a day when I got a huge promotion and my salary went up from £8,000 to £10,000. When I went home and worked it out that evening, I realised that thanks to Mr Wilson and his colleagues I was going to receive £160 a year out of my extra £2,000. It was not enough to start a mortgage for a house or anything, but I calculated that at least it would pay for three tickets a month to see Maria Callas, Schwarzkopf and all the rest of them at Covent Garden for £5.25—five guineas, as they called it in those days. The money went to a good purpose, but it did not advance my way of life.
Around me, all sorts of things were happening. The Teddy boys came on the scene. They gave way to the beatniks and the beatniks gave way to the hippies. Why? These were the remnants of my generation, who had no motivation and no thrust for what to do with their lives, all because the education system had failed to do anything with them when it could have done. Now I see a similar pattern emerging. At that time, we were frightened out of our wits by the atomic and nuclear threat and the prospect of communist overrun. We have exactly the same factors today, only all children today believe that there is no point in working on because global warming will destroy everything in their lives—they are frightened out of their wits about it. Also, they believe that the world economy has been destroyed and has no prospect of recovery, so there is no point in them working to take a role in it. We have to get the political sights up. With all due respect, the right reverend Prelates at the end of these Benches have a role to play as well, in reminding children that God has given us everything with which to support ourselves and have a good life, provided that we use it and take God’s strength with us to do it. It is time that the churches all got together behind that with a much bigger voice.
I ask that we do something very positive and think in terms of how we motivate and take with us the people who will not go to the academies and who will have special needs arising not out of being stupid but out of the complete lack of any inspiration or motivation on which they can draw, because of their depression due to the circumstances around them.
As a postscript, I shall pick up on the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, to me about Purcell and the trumpet voluntary. When I was picking the music for my wedding, I chose that my wife should enter the church to the sound of the same piece of music and was informed by the organist at St Paul’s, where we were getting married, that it was not by Purcell, but was Jeremiah Clarke’s march for the Prince of Denmark. Then my wife asked me why I had chosen it. I said, “I wanted to get rid from my mind the association I have between it and the fall of France”. She said, “You think marrying me is comparable to a disaster like the fall of France?”. I said, “Good gracious, no—I just want a happy event to replace the terrible association I have with it”. She said, “I knew about this—I guessed that was the reason—and I’ve got one for you too. When France fell, Hitler had all the cricket fields in every corner of France dug up to make cabbage patches and he banned cricket in all its forms. That is what we should take into our marriage—no cricket matches on television, no test matches, and you are never to wear the tie of that dreadful, miserable cricket club”, by which she meant the MCC. So she naturally got the last word.
This is a splendid Bill. It will do well for the clever ones who get there, but please can we not forget the non-clever ones who have their lives to lead and who will make a big contribution to the economy of this country in time to come if we look after them properly?
Queen’s Speech
Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hall, on his maiden speech. We go back a long way together. He had the unenviable task in the Thatcher years for being responsible for the news services in the BBC when Denis Thatcher felt that the BBC was a bunch of pinkos. When I became Home Secretary, he was the director of news, and I was able to see the scrupulous way in which he ensured a fair balance in the presentation of news. After that, he became the director of Covent Garden. If you think that the BBC is a nest of prima donnas and vipers, the opera world is a swamp. It is due to his calm governance of the opera house over the past few years that it has been very successful not only artistically but financially. He reminded us that having been involved with the BBC and the opera house, he is a master of subsidy. Now that subsidies are to be slashed by this Government—I trust and expect—he will have ample opportunity to speak in our House on these matters in the coming months.
I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Hill. We, too, go back a long way—back before he became the head of John Major’s think tank at No. 10. I am glad to tell your Lordships that he has always been passionately interested in education. Not only was his mother a teacher, he has a daughter at university—this Government are full of Ministers who look much younger than they are—so he is engagé as a parent in education. I am particularly glad that he is attached to a department: he is a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Education; he is not a floater. That means that we will have his full attention on education, which is to be welcomed.
I should declare two interests. I am the chairman of the Edge Foundation, which is the largest charity in the country devoted to practical and vocational education, and of the Baker Dearing Trust, which promotes university technical colleges. I receive, of course, no remuneration from either charity.
I refer the House to the statement made by David Cameron and Nick Clegg on 20 May, which set out the programme for this coalition. It included this sentence:
“We will improve the quality of vocational education, including increasing flexibility to 14-19 year olds and creating new Technical Academies as part of our plans to diversify schools provision”.
I welcome this enormous endorsement for the colleges that Ron Dearing, before he died, and I have been promoting for the past three years: university technical colleges. When we met three years ago, Ron was alive. We decided that the one thing missing from the education system in England was technical schools. We had them in the 1950s and 1960s, but they were closed and became comprehensives. They were closed because people thought they involved dirty jobs and greasy rags and everybody wanted to be the school on the hill, so they fell victim to English snobbery. Germany did not make that mistake; it kept its technical schools and that is one of the reasons why Germany is still a great industrial nation. The latest report states that German technical schools are now more popular than German grammar schools.
We wanted to reinvent them in different ways. Why did we want to reinvent them? The CBI has just produced a report stating that 42 per cent of employers want our education system to provide high quality vocational options. Why do they want that? Because 77 per cent of employers in manufacturing say that they cannot employ people with higher skills. It is our history. Over the weekend, I dipped into Correlli Barnett’s book The Audit of War to remind myself about the history of radar. Radar was invented in the mid-1930s by Watson-Watt and by Professor Cockcroft and Professor Lindermann at the Cavendish and Clarendon laboratories, but we could not put it on enough planes, boats or airfields in the 1940s. HMS “Coventry” was sunk in 1942 for lack of radar. Radar was invented in 1939 for introduction in 1941. There were eventually 200 handmade sets in 1943. We should learn from history—it is the same with Afghanistan. We have not learnt from history. It is the lack of a technical force backing up our engineering graduates and our inventiveness. If you talk to engineering bodies, they say that we are producing enough engineering graduates, but the trouble is that graduates have to deskill in order to do technicians’ jobs because the technicians are not there. If we are going to have nuclear power stations, high-speed rail links, broadband and a green economy producing jobs, we need technicians.
University technical colleges are different from technical schools in two important ways. They are for 14 to 19 year-olds. Fourteen is a much better age to select children for skilled education than 11, which is too early. Ironically, when the Board of Education met in 1941 to decide the pattern of education after the war, it said that 13 or 14 should be the age of selection, but we chose 11, and it was a mistake. At 14, children select themselves. They know what they want to do. That is the first important difference. The second is that universities back university technical colleges, which means that their status is elevated for students and their parents.
We have three off the ground already. Aston will open in 2012, Walsall, in the Black Country, will open next year because it is converting an old school, and Greenwich was approved just before the election. The private JCB Academy will also open this year. It wants to be a UTC with 500 pupils. At these schools, youngsters will start at 8.30 am with a hammer, a saw, a drill or some welding equipment in their hands and acquire skills. In the afternoon, they will do English, maths, Science and IT for GCSE. The important thing is that the mind and the hand are trained under the same roof. The previous Government tried to make diplomas work. They got off to a poor start. In a comprehensive school, youngsters doing diplomas have to do three days in school and then take a bus to the local college. On the fourth day, they go either to school or to college. It is no way to do it. The previous Government were right to identify the 14 to 19 curriculum, but it requires 14 to 19 institutions.
I am glad to say that these schools count as academies. The pattern is this: Balls said he wanted five; Michael Gove, before the election, said 12; the team that I put together is now handling 23 applications, and I hope that in the course of this Parliament at least 100 of them will be established. They will begin to transform education in our country because our comprehensives are full of youngsters who at the age of 14 want to follow not an academic course but a course that gives them high quality skills. These colleges will do that.
They have the support of all parties in the House including, I am glad to say, the members of our coalition—I see the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, is smiling. I persuaded David Laws to support it, so I am sorry he has left the Government, but there we are. I hope that the Government will embrace these colleges. I am due to meet the Minister and the Secretary of State. We want a strong commitment to these colleges and for some of the money that is going to academies to go to these colleges. They will be an enormous contribution to the education system of our country.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as indicated on today’s list, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, will repeat a Statement at a convenient point after 12.30 pm. This may be a convenient point. The debate on the Address will resume after the Statement.