Schools: Arts Subjects
Lord Geddes Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of arts subjects, but we are starting from a very low base. Under the last Government, the number of pupils taking a core academic suite of subjects collapsed from 50% to 22%. Under this Government, the figure is back up to nearly 40%. We hope that with Progress 8 building on our EBacc we will now see an increase in arts subjects—and we have seen an increase in arts GCSEs in 2013 and 2014.
Lord Geddes (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that dance and music, in particular, form part of an all-round education?
Schools: Bullying
Lord Geddes Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Nash
I could not agree more. Suicide is a tragedy whenever it occurs. I am not familiar with Ten Ten but I would like to be; perhaps the noble Lord and I could discuss it later. We are particularly focusing on cyberbullying. Our central thrust is to send a strong message to all schools that bullying is not to be tolerated. We have focused Ofsted much more on four specific categories of which behaviour and well-being—including bullying—is one. We have also recently funded four organisations with £4 million to work with schools specifically on bullying.
Lord Geddes
My Lords, what practical help is being given to schools to prevent bullying?
Lord Nash
My Lords, in addition to the points that I have covered, including the Ofsted framework and the four organisations we have funded—namely BeatBullying, the Diana Award, Kidscape and the NCB—we are working with other innovative provision. In my own school, for instance, we have a programme where, if a child has been bullied and wishes to be out of school for a while, there is a student centre where they can come back in on a temporary basis and gradually engage again with classes until they have the confidence to get back into school life. I am keen to spread this practice elsewhere.
Young People: Personal Finances
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Lord Geddes
Does my noble friend agree that this is vitally important for those embarking for the first time on tertiary education—particularly the requirement to budget their expenses?
Education Bill
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, on a point of order I wonder whether we could have the timing clocks switched on. I am tempted to add wickedly that I am constructing a league table of length of contributions and I have yet to decide whether it will be published anonymously or not.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, there is a technical problem. Unfortunately, the clocks were not switched on at the beginning of this amendment and there is no way of winding them back, even though we all know that we started at 11.57 am. If the noble Lord could do some mental arithmetic, it would satisfy his curiosity.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I shall not trouble the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, with having to time me because I shall be very brief. I always listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, with great respect, but my noble friend Lady Hughes has a point in talking about the “gaping void” and in going back to the Every Child Matters agenda.
I am interested in the later amendment, Amendment 114, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Lexden. This amendment talks about what she calls a “visitor”. I do not want to go into that right now, but this has echoes of what used to be called “school improvement partners”, who were in schools when I was a governor. The school improvement partners were incredibly useful people to have around because they helped with the business plan, the school ethos and the curriculum. I think that if I were a director of children’s services—and I am glad that I am not—I would welcome a local commissioner who would have a responsibility for schools, because a director of children’s services has enough to be getting on with anyway, with the safeguarding role in particular. How would the “visitor” envisaged by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, have some kind of influence on what is going on at that local level without some co-ordination? Perhaps visitors are not like the school improvement partners, but I suspect they might be. As I understand it, they would have responsibility over a number of schools. I think she is saying that they would then report to Ofsted or the skills and children’s services board. Is that right? They have to report to someone.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, we have already discussed in Committee the principles that underline the Government’s education reforms: increasing school autonomy, improving the quality—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, with great respect to the Minister, another Division has been called. The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 12.30 pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, it is now 12.30 pm—at least, I think it is. It is very difficult to see the time against the red background. It might still be 29 minutes past, but if all Members of the Grand Committee are ready, we can recommence.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we have already discussed the principles underlying the Government’s education reforms: increasing school autonomy, improving the quality of teaching, and strengthening accountability. Back in 2005, in their schools White Paper, the previous Government set out their vision for all schools becoming autonomous and for the local authority to become more of a commissioner than a provider of education. We are building on that approach.
The Bill makes few changes to the role of local authorities. It is also the case that our approach to the spread of schools converting to academies in last year’s Academies Act was permissive, because we wanted the extent of change and reform to be driven by governing bodies and head teachers of individual schools. The speed of conversion to academy status tells us something about the attitude of schools towards the previous arrangements and their appetite for taking greater responsibility. What has also been particularly striking, as the programme has moved on, is not only the desire for schools to have more autonomy but increasingly the desire to combine that autonomy with greater collaboration.
We are seeing groups of schools forming clusters and chains, building on the collaboration that they have already established and which the previous Government took forward. That is one of the most encouraging developments of the academies programme. We are also seeing early converters themselves becoming sponsors of underperforming schools, with the development of the kind of collaborative work that I think all of us would want to see. While I recognise that the landscape is changing—more rapidly in some parts of the country than in others, it is fair to say—I do not accept the basic premise of the argument that, left to themselves, schools cannot be trusted to act collaboratively and therefore need to be brought under a new set of statutory arrangements.
At the heart of this debate about a local schools commissioner is a difference of view between us and the party opposite about the new schools system. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, moved a probing amendment to get the debate going. However, she seems to want to reconstruct a system that many schools have been choosing to leave. She seems to prefer a more structured approach, applied equally across all areas of the country and prescribed in legislation. The Government, by contrast, believe in a system with autonomous schools led by professionals who want to collaborate and drive improvement locally.
I agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of collaboration. So far, over 160 schools have created 58 new or expanding chain partnerships across the country. We are increasing the numbers of national and local leaders of education to 3,000 by 2014, building on the previous Government’s initiative to provide support to other schools. The national college has now designated 100 teaching schools to start in September, so that the very best leaders and teachers can drive improvements in the quality of teaching in their area and for the next generation of teachers.
Academies also have to be part of their community. Funding agreements require an academy to,
“be at the heart of its community, promoting community cohesion and sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community”.
A recent study from the London School of Economics found that not only had standards in academies improved faster than in other schools but that other schools in their locality had seen results improve—further evidence of the way in which schools, working together and helping to raise standards, spread those benefits more widely.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, rightly asked about accountability. Our approach to that is to increase the amount of data available about schools and to make sure that in future inspections concentrate on the most important issues: what pupils achieve; the quality of teaching and leadership; and that pupils behave well and are safe. These changes apply to academies as they do to all maintained schools.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, mentioned fair admissions. We have already discussed that at some length. Academies must comply with the admissions code and are part of the co-ordinated admissions process run by the local authority. As we have discussed, this Bill extends the adjudicator’s remit to academies, and local authorities can refer any school to the adjudicator if they feel that admission arrangements breach the code.
I accept the noble Baroness’s reproach about my failure to have circulated before now the list of measures in the Bill and how they affect academies rather than maintained schools. I signed it off this morning. I am sorry that I did not get it across before this debate, but we will circulate it later on. From it, noble Lords will see the way in which the measures of the Bill are applied equally to academies and maintained schools in many regards.
I recognise that it is a time of considerable change, but that change is being driven locally by parents, professionals, schools and others with an interest in education. The noble Baroness talked about localism. I recognise that there is an important debate to have on where localism resides, but I would argue that there is nothing more local than a group of local parents and teachers wanting to set up a school for local children and making that provision fit what those children require, whether it is for children with special needs, an alternative provision or for more of a mainstream school. We are driving change from the department to address entrenched school underperformance, which disproportionately affects the most disadvantaged pupils, and I believe that is the right thing to do.
The noble Baroness specifically mentioned children missing education. Local authorities, maintained schools and FE and sixth-form colleges have safeguarding duties under the Education Act 2002. Academies are required to make provisions for safeguarding under the independent school standards and their funding agreements. Under education regulations from 2006, all schools are required to inform the local authority when a pupil fails to attend school regularly. Noble Lords may also know that the Government have committed in the other place to review the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 and to tighten up and extend the circumstances in which all schools must inform the local authority when a child is missing school or removed from the register. We are also planning to revise the statutory guidance to clarify how local authorities can best carry out their duties to identify children missing education. So there are clear, statutory duties to support that important and vulnerable group of children.
Overall, many local authorities have welcomed the changes that the Government are taking forward. They deliver the stated aim of the previous Government, which I share, for local authorities to be commissioners. There is growing evidence that the best school leaders and professionals welcome the opportunity to collaborate and drive improvement across schools in their area. We hope that these changes will free local authorities, led by directors of children’s services, to focus on championing the interests of parents and children who most need support. We are working with representatives from all sectors through a ministerial advisory group on the role of the local authority, of which my noble friend Lady Ritchie is a member, to help shape our thinking in this area.
Our aim overall is a freer system in which the best schools and professionals are in the lead and collaborating to improve the education for all children in their area. I do not think that the specific proposal for local school commissioners made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, is the right approach. It would add, as my noble friends Lady Perry and Lady Ritchie said, another layer into the system, which would blur accountability.
The noble Baroness made specific points about admissions, children missing education and accountability. There are mechanisms in place. I recognise that it is a time of change, and I acknowledge her questions, but as the process of change is taken forward and driven by schools, professionals, parents and teachers, we will get to a system that will raise quality and provide more choice for parents, which we all want. Therefore, I hope that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
Before moving on, for the assistance of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, I calculate that the debate on Amendment 107A lasted for 38 minutes.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I rise to oppose the Motion that Clause 36 stand part of the Bill and to speak to the Motion on whether Schedule 11 should be agreed. These amendments go to the heart of the difficulties that we have with this Bill. In seeking to restructure education provision in this country, far from decentralising power to parents and local authorities, as we have just debated, the Secretary of State is taking decision-making away from them. Flexibility and parental choice are being restricted rather than embraced and welcomed.
Clause 36 and Schedule 11 illustrate this point perfectly. In future, there will be a presumption that any new school will be an academy. The power of local authorities to consult widely, to plan for a spread of school choices and to take account of parental demand is massively curtailed. Under this clause, when a new school is needed, local authorities will have a duty to seek proposals to set up an academy and identify a possible site. They must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, with great respect to the noble Baroness, yet another Division has been called. If she could curtail her remarks, the Grand Committee will be adjourned until 12.56 pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, it is now 12.57 pm. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was interrupted in full flow.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I could bore everyone by starting again, but I am not going to do that. I was talking about how under this legislation the power of local authorities to consult and to plan for a spread of school choices is massively curtailed.
Under this clause, when a new school is needed local authorities will have a duty to seek proposals to set up an academy and to identify a possible site. They must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent before publishing proposals for a competition to set up a new school, and the Secretary of State can intervene at any point to stop a competition early. Meanwhile, competitive academy proposals will no longer need to be submitted to local authorities for approval and can instead go directly to the Secretary of State. I do not think local authorities are left in any doubt about what will happen to their proposals if they put forward anything other than an academy to the Secretary of State. They might well wonder what happened to their strong strategic role supposedly defending the interests of parents and children, as envisaged in the schools White Paper.
I am intrigued to know how the Minister can explain how this central directive that new schools can be only one type squares with the concept of parental choice. Moreover, how would the Secretary of State know what represents the best type of school for a particular locality? If, as it appears, the Government think that academies are always the right solution, does that also mean that maintained schools, even the best performing ones, are in some sense second-class schools? It might be thought that as these provisions apply to new schools only, they will have relatively little impact on the overall architecture of school provision, but the proposals cannot be seen in isolation from other clauses in the Bill that allow the Secretary of State to close down schools more readily and to hasten the conversion of maintained schools into academies. From all these measures, it appears that the Government’s grand plan is that all schools should be academies. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that.
I am sure that the Minister will remind us at this point that the academies programme was brought in under the previous Government, and indeed it was, but it had a different purpose. Academies were seen as a way of targeting resources and focusing on struggling schools when other interventions had failed. As more and more schools convert to academies, they will lose the kudos, focus and additional resources that helped them succeed.
Education Bill
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I would have finished it by now if the noble Lord had not intervened.
There is an extremely wide range of views on this important issue, as I knew there would be, and, like others, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Avebury for raising it. In considering the current system and the way forward, the Government’s guiding principle is that the arrangements for collective worship should be flexible and fair to pupils and parents as well as manageable for schools. The requirement for a broadly Christian collective worship is a long-standing one, which I think was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, who referred to it as our Christian heritage. A similar point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port.
If I may declare an interest, as other noble Lords have, I am the son of a Methodist mother, who herself had to go to chapel three times a day on Sunday, and of a father who was a chorister at Westminster Abbey and so went to church almost every day for six years. As a result of that, we had no church at all in our household because I think that my parents suffered from overload. However, as a kind of historian—or a historian manqué—I think that it is difficult to write out the role that the church has played in education and in the history of our country for many hundreds of years—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
With great respect to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Peston, was entirely right, as a Division has now been called. The Grand Committee stands adjourned for 10 minutes, to resume again at 5.10 pm.
Education Bill
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Lord Puttnam
My Lords, this amendment is grouped with Amendment 107C tabled in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Willis. I want to add to what was said towards the end of the debate on Monday. I should say that I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said. He is correct that technology is not an add-on, something it would be nice to have or that we ought to be looking at. Technology in education today is absolutely fundamental. Here I must declare a series of important interests. When I worked for the department for six years between 1997 and 2003, I became fascinated by the impact of new technology in education. On leaving the department, I became engaged with and subsequently joined the board of Promethean, a company producing interactive whiteboards. I still sit on that board. I am also chairman of Futurelab, which is an educational research charity. It is important to say that the reason I joined the board of Futurelab was to try and ensure that—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
Perhaps I may intervene on the noble Lord for a second. Could I ask our expert in the corner whether the microphones are switched on because we cannot hear the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, awfully well? Perhaps I may also suggest that noble Lords make sure that their mobile phones are turned off because it is their phones which are causing that curious buzzing noise.
Lord Puttnam
Thank you, Lord Chairman. I could go into detail about why I think this is so important, but perhaps I should go straight to something I read the other day which is absolutely factual. It concerns a teaching assistant and special needs teacher called Bev Evans at Pembroke Dock Community School in Wales. Bev Evans puts lesson plans up on the web using the TES Resources website. Over the past few years she has shared 276 teaching resources on the web with other teachers. As of last month, her work has been downloaded 1,345,330 times by 237,364 educators in 169 countries. Teachers save an average of 30 minutes per resource, the equivalent of 672,665 hours of teaching time, which is worth 431 teaching years. I cite that because it is a fantastic illustration of the way that technology has the ability to transform teaching and learning. These figures and indeed the whole concept would have been unimaginable a decade ago, so the role that technology now plays in education is fundamental.
To put it kindly, I am afraid that, at present, the White Paper is technology-light. I am concerned about that because the whole purpose is to start a serious conversation both at the department and with the Minister. We need the reassurance of knowing that this subject will not be like discussing the adaptation to or mitigation of climate change with someone who does not really accept that climate change is an important reality. This is a reality. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, sensibly cited the example of electricity. It is absolutely true to say that in the early part of the last century, the difference between the attainments of some children over others depended on whether there was electricity in their homes. That would allow them to do homework in the evenings, whereas those without electricity could not. Technology is as fundamental as that. That may sound like a large claim, but it is not an irrelevant one.
I am also puzzled because two weeks ago the Secretary of State, Mr Gove, made a really remarkable speech at the Royal Society. The second half of that absolutely nailed and eulogised the use of technology. He was completely clear as to how important the adequate but intelligent use of technology was to our competitiveness. He was very clear about the way technology is being used in other countries successfully and that we had to get our act together and make a success of it. He could not have been more crystal clear on that. Yet none of that speech is contained at the moment anywhere in the White Paper as I read it. It would be good for the Government, the country and, I suggest, the Minister if it were. The purpose of these two amendments is to try and ensure that that finds its way into the Bill and the Government prove for good and all that they are absolutely committed to technology within teaching and learning.
Education Bill
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The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes)
It has been suggested to me—if noble Lords will excuse the possible pun—that, as a matter of convenience, this might be an appropriate moment to take a short break. The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 6.20 pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
My Lords, the Grand Committee will recommence. Before calling Amendment 73HA, I should advise that, following a request from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the question that Clause 13 should stand part of the Bill has been degrouped and, therefore, will be put separately after Amendment 73M.
Amendment 73HA
Education Bill
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees
Before moving to Amendment 16, I wonder whether I could ask our electronic expert in the corner whether it is possible to raise the volume of the microphones. With the amount of noise going on above us, it is extremely difficult to hear.
Amendment 16
Academies Bill [HL]
Lord Geddes Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I shall speak also to Amendments 12A, 19, 19A and 28A. The purpose of this group of amendments is to probe a little further the proposed financial arrangements in the setting up of academies. Amendment 2 has unfortunately been placed on the wrong line. It should have been on line 7 and would, therefore, have amended Clause 1(2)(b) to read:
“Subject to section 4(4) for a former maintained school, arrangements for Academy financial assistance”.
We are talking about the financial assistance route as distinct from the agreement route for former maintained schools. This amendment is linked with Amendment 28A, which puts the amendment in its proper place and becomes subsection (4) of Clause 4. It requires that where the Secretary of State makes a grant of financial assistance under Section 14 of the Education Act 2002,
“he must … secure the agreement of the governing body to the terms of the financial assistance”,
before the school can go ahead and convert into an academy.
The purpose of these two amendments is to ensure that all those responsible for the school are fully aware of the terms under which financial assistance is given. When we discussed this issue with the Minister in Committee, he made it clear that for existing schools, as distinct from new schools, the financial assistance route would be the exception rather than the norm. The financial agreement route requires the full co-operation of the governing board, which is kept informed all the time because it is party to the agreement. With the financial assistance route, Section 14 of the 2002 Act gives the Secretary of State considerable powers to decide unilaterally how much finance to give and to set the terms under which that finance is given. This amendment ensures that the governing board is aware of the terms that are being asked for by the Secretary of State before the terms of the grant are agreed. We think it only right that, just as with academy agreements, where the governing board is kept fully informed, when a school goes down the financial assistance route—the grant route—the school’s governing board should be kept in the picture and be informed about what is happening.
Amendments 19, 19A and 20 relate to numbers and needs. They elucidate the terms of financial agreements and financial assistance. The Minister made it clear that that part of the school’s budget that is retained by the local authority—funding for special educational needs and transport—will remain with the local authority. This is often the larger part of the moneys kept by local authorities. The remainder goes on such things as payroll and property management and general support services. However, included among general support services are important services; for example, educational psychologists and language and behaviour specialists. They provide valuable support, especially to smaller primary schools, particularly where special educational needs funding comes from the school for school action and school action plus. If the resources that are left are distributed evenly between schools on a per capita basis according to the number of pupils, schools with a disproportionate number of pupils with learning difficulties of one sort of another and pupils with other disabilities will receive less funding than they do under the present arrangements.
There are worries in two directions. First, will academies with a disproportionate number of pupils, as well as the remaining maintained schools, receive enough funding in these situations? Secondly, many of the schools that are outstanding and are therefore being fast-tracked to academy status are often located in better-off areas and have a relatively low number of children from disadvantaged homes. Dividing local authority funds on a straight per-pupil basis would give them rather more funds than they have traditionally received and would leave a lesser amount in the kitty to be shared out among the SEN services of other schools.
The key amendment in the group is Amendment 20, which stipulates that the funding should follow needs, not numbers. It also raises five additional questions to which I would like the Minister to respond. Will the Young People’s Learning Agency, which is to distribute funds to the academies, distribute the dedicated schools grant in the way that the local authority would have distributed it to each school, or will it have a separate funding arrangement? How accurate is the ready reckoner on the DfE website? Does the money proposed for the removal from local authority expenditure replicate the costs of services that schools will lose from their local authority? What will be the effect on those local authority services, including services outside children’s services, if a significant proportion of schools become academies? Lastly, the pupil premium is not discussed in this Bill. We presume that it will come up in the next Bill, but will the Minister elucidate?
Finally, Amendment 12A is different and arguably should not have been in this group, but I will speak to it now. It is fairly straightforward and brings us back to an issue that we raised in Committee: monitoring the characteristics of an academy as listed in Clause 1(6). In Committee, we asked who was going to monitor how far academies actually adhered to the commitment that they had made to retain those characteristics. The Minister assured the House that the Young People’s Learning Agency would be responsible for monitoring academies’ activities. We have some reservations about this. The Young People’s Learning Agency is very new; it got off the ground only in April. It will be responsible for distributing money to these new academies, but it is understood that it is to be a very lean agency and will not have large numbers of people. Will it have the capacity or the capabilities to monitor the characteristics of an academy? Would it not be better, as we have suggested, for some independent agency, possibly the schools adjudicator or someone like that, to act as monitor on such an occasion and to keep an eye on whether the academies are living up to their promises? I beg to move.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes)
My Lords, to the best of my knowledge, the amendment proposed is on page 1, line 8.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s remarks. The Minister will, I hope, recall that I asked him in a private meeting last week about the ready reckoner on the department’s website. I pointed out that our colleagues in York told us that if several schools in York applied to become academies, they would get more money than the whole of York local authority for the same services. Have the Minister and his officials had the opportunity to check the ready reckoner? When local authorities find themselves in situations like this, some of them will be left thinking that they will not just be left with no money, but that they will be left with a negative amount. I am sure that the Minister does not intend that. Therefore, I wonder if he can explain.
The Deputy Speaker
Before calling Amendment 3, I must advise your Lordships that if it is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment 4 due to pre-emption.
Amendment 3
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes)
I call the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to move Amendment 6.
Baroness Walmsley
I am sorry, but I thought that we would now move on to the next business.