Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part two
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships of my registered interests, including as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education, chairman of the Centre for Education & Finance Management and several other charitable bodies concerned with education. I have been conscious for a long while that there have been lacunae in the 2010 and 2011 academies legislation, and I am glad to see that some of the concerns that many of us have had are to be addressed.

Just before the last Recess, I was grateful for the opportunity to move in Grand Committee a Motion to Take Note on academy schools. On that occasion, I was able to call to mind that they began, in fact, with the Education Reform Act 1988, from my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking, which created grant-maintained schools, which I had the privilege of leading for some six years. These morphed into city academies and thence in 2010 to converter and other academies as we know them today. In my view, it is vital that any new regulations that affect academies ought to take into account their founding philosophy, which can be summed up in one word—autonomy.

In 2010, heads and governors told us that they wanted to be as free as possible from local and central government restrictions. Their conviction that they could raise the standards in their schools if decisions were taken by governors, heads and professionals on the spot and not in Whitehall or the town hall has largely proved to be correct, and my noble friend Lord Eccles alluded to this. Autonomy is also clearly still what schools want today, some 12 years later, in order to serve their pupils as best they can.

Research published by the Department for Education last November shows this definitively. It revealed that 90% of stand-alone academies—that is, those not in multi-academy trusts—reported that their reason for converting had been to gain a greater degree of autonomy. They had looked for

“greater freedom over decisions”

and

“more autonomy over their budgets”

to give

“improved outcomes for pupils”.

Their reasons for not joining a multi-academy trust were fear of a loss of autonomy, loss of control over their spending and the loss of the school’s individual identity.

Multi-academy trusts were originally conceived of not as an end in themselves necessarily but as staging posts for many schools towards the autonomy of which stand-alone academies today make such great use to raise standards. I accept entirely that some schools entering academy status would find it very difficult to go it alone without the support of a multi-academy trust and could need some years of back-up support before they could survive adequately. I accept also that many primary schools would be more comfortable grouped around a secondary school in a small local trust which could provide shared resources, certain central functions and good financial management.

Autonomous schools can swiftly adjust themselves to local needs, including employment requirements. The larger the multi-academy trust, the less that is possible, especially as some have schools in them, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, reminded us, that are spaced many miles apart and no longer have individual governing bodies.

I asked a Written Question of my noble friend in December, and that was to inquire

“whether it is possible for a school in a multi-academy trust … by resolution of its governing body to”

opt out of the trust. The answer was no. But last month, she indicated, I believe, that a consultation on that issue would take place. I hope we shall head towards the point where schools that have, in family terms, grown up enough to do well by themselves will be able to do so and via an uncomplicated process.

It seems quite proper that among the freedoms that academies and multi-academy trusts have should be the right to decide salaries. Given that there are a number of trustees who earn between a quarter and half a million pounds each year—which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, reminded us earlier, has been very controversial—in my view, those governing bodies that wish to award salaries over a certain sum, possibly £150,000 or £160,000, should make out a case to an independent panel of the funding agency. I believe my noble friend is to look into this matter. If so, that is welcome, as the optics are not good.

Our long-term aim should not be, as was implied by the recent White Paper, the conversion of all schools into membership of multi-academy trusts with a minimum of 10 schools in each. In my view, the larger the trust, the less likely it will be responsive to local needs and the more susceptible it will be in the long term to mediocre standards and even failure. The maximum number of schools in any trust should be about 10 as the system matures.

However, I welcome the framework changes, which will introduce powers to intervene where academies are likely to fail, as long as they bear down only on those that are doing badly and do not unnecessarily constrict those schools, such as the majority of our stand-alone academies, that are doing so very well.

Education: Multi Academy Trusts

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Lingfield]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) in the school system, and the ways in which strong MATs can demonstrate their impact on the education of young people.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I am so grateful to all noble Lords who have put down their names to speak on this important aspect of our state education service. I remind your Lordships of my education interests as listed in the register.

If your Lordships would indulge me, I shall take a few minutes to look back and outline the policies that led to multi-academy trusts as we know them today and to put on record my occasional involvement in them. In the mid-1980s, I wrote a policy paper for the then Education Secretary, Sir Keith Joseph, entitled Give Schools Their Own Cheque Book. He was excited by these ideas and asked the then Schools Minister, Bob Dunn, to look into them. Luckily, when Sir Keith left office, they were taken up by his successor, now the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. He saw that what was called local management of schools, giving most schools much more control of their own funding for everything except salaries, was added to the Education Reform Act 1988.

Just as importantly, schools were given the opportunity by that Act, as I had recommended, to opt out of local government control by a ballot of their parents. These were called grant-maintained schools, which were separate, autonomous, incorporated bodies, centrally funded per capita by the funding agency for schools. I was appointed by the Government to lead an organisation that encouraged and assisted schools wishing to opt out, and supported them once they had done so. I pay tribute to the many pioneering head teachers who sought that freedom and made excellent use of it to improve the standards in their schools.

The underlying philosophy was, of course, that autonomy would release schools to be far more responsive to the needs of students, their parents and local employers, and that the important education decisions would be taken by the professionals on the spot, guided by independent governors, and not by a town hall or Whitehall. I shall return to that principle a little later. I remember one head saying to me, “At last I have the authority to match my responsibilities.” Indeed, those schools had a freedom of action unknown outside the independent sector for many decades.

By every then available notification or measurement, those schools demonstrated great improvements. By the time that the incoming Labour Government’s 1998 Act had abolished grant-maintained status, over one-fifth of secondary schools were in the new sector, and some hundreds of primaries. These were returned wholly or partly to the control of local authorities. However, the idea of autonomy for state schools had been born, and I am glad to say that it was kept alive by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, when he produced a policy of independent city academies early on in the Labour Government. These at first were required to have commercial sponsors prepared to contribute up to £2 million to capital costs. That condition was later dropped and, in 2002, the word “city” was omitted from their title. The programme went rather more slowly than we had hoped, but there were 203 of these original academies by 2010.

The incoming coalition Secretary of State was my right honourable friend Michael Gove. He had been impressed during opposition by the Swedish project to allow parents and trusts to create free schools, and this was to be one of the reforms of the new coalition Government. There are some 550 such free schools today.

However, he will tell you that he and David Cameron were persuaded by me that a further policy was needed—one based on the grant-maintained schools of the 1990s—so the ensuing Academies Act 2010 allowed schools’ governing bodies to propose that they be converted to academy status. These so-called converter academies, created as exempt charities, were given a great deal of independence, particularly in the setting of staff salaries and divergences from the national curriculum. All schools which had been graded by Ofsted as outstanding were invited to apply and, by January 2011, 407 schools were accorded the new status.

From the beginning, it had always been recognised that, whereas many schools would wish to remain separate, individual establishments, others would be more comfortable in groups. Some of these groups would be informal and take advantage of, for instance, bulk purchase arrangements for goods and services, such as ground maintenance, and others would be formally gathered under the same legal trustees. These latter would become the multi-academy trusts as we now know them, which are the subject of today’s debate.

Eleven years later, there is now a total of 1,460 multi- academy trusts managing two schools or more. Of these trusts, 41% have five schools or fewer; 18% have between six and 11; 6% have between 12 and 25; and about 2% have more than 25 schools. Last year, 37% of primary schools and 78% of secondary schools had academy status, and the numbers are slowly rising.

Last week’s White Paper looks forward to:

“A fully trust led system with a single regulatory approach”.


Although the regulatory approach is not explained in detail, there is specific commitment to avoid converting schools as stand-alone academies and the expectation that most trusts will be on a trajectory to serve a minimum of 7,500 pupils, or at least 10 schools, by 2030.

Multi-academy trusts are therefore here to stay, and most of them are doing extraordinarily well, but the trend is towards larger ones. At the moment, some have 50 schools or more. This trend is worrying, because the most recent statistics, from 2019, demonstrate how those trusts are doing. To measure primary schools, a percentage of pupils reaching an agreed acceptable standard in literacy and numeracy was used. For instance, the Staffordshire Schools Multi Academy Trust had 90% of pupils meeting those standards. What stands out clearly is that all the trusts in the top 10 primary achievers comprised four or fewer schools and the largest primary multi-academy trusts did uniformly badly, the highest scoring of these ranking at number 32.

For secondary schools, the measurement was of the percentage of students achieving the English baccalaureate at grade 5/C or above. Seven out of the top 10 secondary trusts had five or fewer schools, and the remaining had six, eight and 10, respectively. Throughout, the larger multi-academy trusts did poorly compared to the smaller trusts, and by far the majority of high-performing trusts had fewer than 10 schools. The conclusion from this is inescapable: if we want pupils to do well, they ought to be in either stand-alone outstanding schools or in the smaller multi-academy trusts.

The Government ought therefore to consider reviewing their aims in the White Paper better to reflect the actualities of high achievement in the trusts and make about 10 schools the highest number, as opposed to the target number, to be looked after by a single trust. Large trusts having above this number ought to be gradually dissolved and separated into the hands of smaller trusts, where they would flourish.

There are also in the system at the moment a large number of outstanding stand-alone academies, as well as stand-alone voluntary schools. Among these, for instance, are the 163 grammar schools. It would be completely unacceptable for many of these schools to be coerced into multi-academy trusts. For many of them, their centuries-old rules and regulations would not allow it. My advice to the Government is to leave them well alone if they are achieving well alone.

Why are the small multi-academy trusts and many of the stand-alone academies doing well? I suggest it is because they use their autonomy wisely to be responsive to student and parental needs—parents are well represented on their governing bodies—and because they better understand the needs of local people and local employers. Large trusts are likely to be less encouraging of initiatives by individual schools and more likely to envelop their schools in bureaucracy. My visits to large trust schools suggest that their heads are rather too willing to refer important decisions upwards to the trust bosses, instead of taking them themselves. Some of these large trusts encompass schools many miles apart, yet they tend towards a one-size-fits-all approach to management.

Advocates of larger trusts mention that schools in them can achieve economies of scale, share many resources, centralise functions and ensure robust financial management. In fact, a small trust can achieve all these and more, and, as these statistics show, improve classroom standards as well. Some of the big trusts have recently come under criticism for paying their chief executives very large salaries. Indeed, some 30 trust chiefs earn more than £200,000 per annum—£40,000 more than the Prime Minister’s salary—including seven at between £250,000 and £500,000. If, as the performance figures suggest, larger trusts are not doing as well as the smaller trusts, it is difficult to defend these very high earnings paid from public money.

A policy of larger and larger multi-academy trusts and the disappearance of stand-alone academy schools would inevitably lead to two unwelcome consequences. First, there is the risk that standards will drop rather than improve for those schools as their trust gets larger. Secondly, there is likely to be less responsiveness to local needs. Many authorities ran their schools inefficiently, but at least they could claim a local democratic mandate. Localised multi-academy trusts tend to be responsive, because they have local business men and women and parents on their governing bodies.

Clearly, if standards are to rise throughout the school service, we need as much flexibility as we can achieve within it. We need a large number of autonomous, stand-alone outstanding schools and trusts of two, three or four schools—all trusts having fewer than about 10. We need to give schools already in large trusts the right, if they can prove their worth, to opt out of those trusts and go it alone. The more variety there is in the system, the more highly achieving it will be. The White Paper looks forward to

“a dynamic system of strong trusts … to improve schools”.

I agree with this entirely. A strong trust, however, need not be a large one. All the indications are that it should not be. Large trusts were seen as essential when the policy began—I remember it well—but now they could be standing in the way of progress. As I said, I believe they should be divided into smaller units where necessary.

No one could be more supportive of the concept of academies than me, and I have not changed my view that the best schools are led by first-class heads and dedicated local governors, untrammelled by unnecessary bureaucracy, regulation and interference from government at all levels, and are given as much autonomy within the system as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I thank everyone for taking part in this extraordinarily useful debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, is absolutely right that, of course, before local management of schools came in, there were some very good experiments in the Inner London Education Authority and in Solihull—I agree with her entirely.

My noble friend Lady Berridge was absolutely correct that we have to bear in mind the people in what she called the back office of schools, who are neglected too often, I am afraid. Her remarks about school buildings were very apposite.

I entirely agree with my noble friend Lady Fleet. I am the chairman of the English Schools’ Orchestra, and I know that she knows the huge importance of music and its effects, which are much wider than just the musical curriculum, on the whole of the education system.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made some extraordinarily useful remarks. I would not want to see the worst aspects of local education authorities—there were some—recreated in a large MAT. I know that the noble Lord agrees with that. I hope that the Minister bears that in mind. The noble Lord said that they should be “free to innovate”, which of course all of us approve of, as far as the curriculum is concerned.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, made some very important points and repeated mine—I was very grateful to him for doing so—concerning schools’ ability to leave multi-academy trusts if, of course, they could prove to the Secretary of State perhaps, or some other group of people who had the expertise to decide, that they could go it alone and improve the quality of their service to their pupils by doing so.

I am grateful to my noble friend for all the care that she has taken in her reply. She has given us much to think about and discuss, and I repeat my thanks to noble Lords for giving up their time this evening, on almost the last day of term. I wish everyone a very happy Recess.

Motion agreed.

Music Education in State Schools

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree that it is an essential part of the curriculum: that is why it is compulsory in all maintained schools. I go back to the work of the music education hubs, which have had fantastic outreach into schools but have also linked schools and the children in those schools with music groups in their communities, so they can expand their interests.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware, following my noble friend Lord Black’s point, that whereas 85% of independent schools have school orchestras, only 12% of state schools do? While the music hubs she has mentioned indeed do a good job in providing individual instrumental tuition, the best way of encouraging young people to love music is to give them the opportunity to play in school-based orchestras and ensembles. Will the new national plan please take this into account?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The new national plan is being led by my noble friend Lady Fleet, leading a team of experts from the industry, education and other relevant fields, with a focus on making sure that music education is available to all those children noble Lords have referred to, both regionally and in terms of disadvantage and diversity.

Higher Education: T-Levels

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To the best of my knowledge there are no plans to look at the noble Lord’s second proposal, because a single T-level is equivalent to three A-levels, so it would perhaps be unrealistic to do that. We are obviously in the very early stages of T-levels. We currently have 11 T-level options, I think. There was some confusion in the early stages about some of the content of those courses and how that translated to universities. However, we remain optimistic about the potential of T-levels.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the most important aspects of T-levels is that students have to spend nine weeks of work experience with a local firm? This is quite difficult to find even in the great metropolitan areas, but in areas of deprivation and in rural areas it is very difficult indeed to find such placements. What inducements will the Government provide for firms in those areas to take part? I remind your Lordships of my interest as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the value of work experience and the whole philosophy of T-levels—that students undertaking them will be work-ready. I am aware that there has been disruption to opportunities for work experience—caused principally by the pandemic—but, having designed the qualification with employers, we remain confident that those opportunities will emerge.

School Curriculum: First Aid Training and Home Nursing

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right, and the curriculum is also included in all primary schools in an age-appropriate manner.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend agree that one of the best ways of teaching first aid in schools is through the Combined Cadet Force? The Government’s school cadet expansion programme has a target of 60,000 young people participating by next year. Can my noble friend tell us how far along the road we are with that? I remind your Lordships of my charitable interest as chairman of the Cadet Vocational Qualifications Organisation.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is right to bring attention to the CCF and the great work that it does. But I am sure he would agree that there are a number of other organisations, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the National Citizen Service, that also focus on equipping young people with a range of skills, including first aid. I will write to my noble friend with an update on recruit numbers.

Education: Music and the Arts

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that the number of students doing A-level arts subjects has dropped, but there are some really encouraging signs in the data. The number of students doing art and design GCSE, which could be a precursor to a pick-up in A-levels, has increased by 18% over the past two years while the cohort has grown by 7%. The number doing vocational and technical qualifications in music has risen by 90% between 2017 and 2020.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that it is vital for young musicians to be able to play in orchestras and ensembles? Does she regret, as I do, that only 12% of state schools now have orchestras, as opposed to 85% of independent schools? I remind the House of my registered interest as chairman of the English Schools’ Orchestra.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is right to raise the important role of orchestras in schools, but the Government’s focus has been to ensure that there is a consistent cultural offer, a range of arts and musical subjects and opportunities for children to play a musical instrument at school whether it be in an orchestra or in some other form, maybe a band.

Schools: Music Education

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Black on his impassioned introduction to his debate and remind your Lordships of my declared interest: I am the chairman of the English Schools’ Orchestra, the ESO, which I founded together with Mr Robert Pepper MBE, its Musical Director, some 24 years ago—thus we are coming up next year to our silver jubilee. It is about classical music and classical orchestras in schools that I want to speak today.

Young people join the English Schools’ Orchestra when they are about 12 years old and play with us until the end of their first term at university. They are required to be of grade 8 standard of the Associated Boards and have exceptional ability. They come from schools across the country and from every kind of background. We give them the opportunity to make music in a first-class orchestra with other equally highly talented individuals and to perform in important national venues such as the South Bank, Barbican Centre and Cadogan Hall. Above all, they have superb teachers and tutors—some of whom are also former members of the ESO—who introduce them to a wide variety of classical music. As our late patron Sir Malcolm Arnold said, “You have to pinch yourself to realise that they are not a professional orchestra”.

We developed some time ago an alumni chamber sinfonia which, under the leadership of the director, engages in much outreach work to encourage young pupils from disadvantaged and low-income backgrounds in south London—it has started in south London—to learn to play an instrument and to appreciate classical music. We are indebted to my noble friend Lord Lloyd-Webber whose foundation generously supports us in this work. We have relied entirely, from the very beginning, on financial support from many kind companies, charities and individuals and have never used a penny of public funds—we are all volunteers. When I once tried to make an application for government sponsorship I was asked: “English Schools’ Orchestra—do you play music from other lands?” I replied, “Well, there is Mozart, Chopin and Tchaikovsky”. What she of course wanted, she explained, was that we should play rap, blues and other music that was “more relevant”. I explained that, although our members certainly played these in their own bands and groups, we were there to introduce young people to the finest music in the western classical tradition.

In the last few years, however, we have witnessed some extremely worrying trends: there are fewer children able to receive school or music hub tuition in the rarer instruments, such as the bassoon, the French horn and the double bass—and the violin in Wales, it seems. Fewer young people seem to have experience of playing in small ensembles, which demand the need to concentrate for extended periods, to co-operate with others and to develop resilience, all skills necessary for playing in a large orchestra, especially one performing ambitious works, as the ESO does. Why should this be? Experienced music teachers tell me that young graduates entering the profession need far more training in coaching and directing ensembles of pupils at all levels, both inside and outside the classroom. They also need to have the skills to conduct and to prepare arrangements of music to suit the groups that they have, including an understanding of the capabilities of different instruments at a range of standards. Our music colleges, academies and teacher training institutions really must repair this deficit.

There are, as several speakers have said, fewer music teachers available. It is worth repeating what my noble friend Lord Black told us about the University of Sussex survey: music staffing has fallen by 36% in the last few years. He mentioned the deficit in the number of candidates for GCSE and A-level music. These problems have led to another problem: the number of school orchestras that provide the essential experience that I have mentioned has fallen also. Music hubs, whose funding is provided by the Government on the clear condition that they teach music,

“of a wide range of styles”—

which is fine—tend, however, not to emphasise classical music as they did. This is a mistake and should be rectified as, inevitably, children from poorer backgrounds have less chance of learning to play the music of the great classical composers. There are pockets of excellent practice, such as the London Symphony Orchestra’s small academy and the English Schools’ Orchestra’s own outreach initiatives. Some 800 senior schools still have some kind of orchestras; these are to be praised but, as I said, their numbers are falling and the trend in state schools seems to be slowly moving away from them. It would be a huge dereliction of our duty to the next generations, as noble Lords have said, if they become largely the province of independent schools. That has been mentioned by most of us today, and I hope the Minister will give us some comfort.

To improve the situation and allow students to realise their full potential, we need to fulfil the aspiration of the 2011 national plan for music education, which was to ensure that all pupils receive at least a year of high-quality ensemble or small group teaching. Currently, an average of only 15% of pupils receive at least one term, and fewer still the whole year. These are the Arts Council’s own statistics. This aspiration should lead, for those demonstrating real aptitude and enthusiasm, to the opportunity to have lessons in smaller groups and then individually, as well as gaining experience in small ensembles and beginner orchestras. They should also be given a good choice across the orchestra instrument families, including the rarer ones that I mentioned earlier.

I have only praise for those in schools and youth orchestras across the country who are still dedicated to introducing young people to the joys and skills of playing great classical music. We must give them every possible encouragement and ensure that their future is safe.

Education and Society

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank the most reverend Primate for this important debate on education, and I remind your Lordships of my registered interest as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education.

I was particularly pleased to see the right reverend Primate’s choice of words—“a flourishing and skilled society”—and it is about the provision of those skills that I want to make just a couple of points this morning.

For many years, colleges of further education in this country have had a strong tradition of developing technical skills, working alongside employers. The outstanding Dudley College, for instance, has its roots in the 1862 Dudley Public Hall and Mechanics Institute. There are many more with equally venerable origins, just as the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reminded us the church schools have. However, successive Governments have seen their most important task for young people as pushing them towards university entrance. Consequently, fewer young adults and their parents have come to view further education colleges as providing a viable and creditable vocational and educational path.

The prestige of the FE sector has therefore declined, being often considered as a second-tier alternative for those who did not do too well at school. This is at complete odds with the valuable work that it does, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, reminded us, and the opportunities it creates for its students, business and the economy of this country.

Concomitantly, the FE sector has progressively had its remit altered through changes in government policy. I have mentioned to your Lordships before that the sector’s main mission, which should be the provision of high-quality technical skills, has been too often distorted by its having to teach kindergarten competences to teenagers who have been most seriously failed by primary schools that have neglected to teach them literacy and numeracy properly. Of the 2014 students transferring from schools to FE at 16, some 28% were functionally innumerate—that is, their arithmetical abilities were those normally associated with an 8 year-old—and some 15% functionally illiterate by the same criterion.

For several years it has been the obsession of Governments that too few of these students at 16 have passed GCSE English and Maths at grade C level. Ministers are right to be concerned that secondary schools, like their primary counterparts, are failing these young people, but they are wrong to insist that further education colleges should be the places where the pieces are picked up. This is not a task which should skew the vocational mission of further education. Often, the largest departments in colleges are now those devoted to fulfilling the Government’s directive of getting students from D to C grades in GCSEs; the largest departments should be devoted to engineering and the technologies and not to school resits.

For these students, passing GSCE at grade C in English and Maths, when they have had a history of bad teaching and failure in these subjects at school, is often inappropriate and difficult and the success rates are very poor, especially for those with free school meal entitlement. In some areas such as Wealden in East Sussex, Wyre Forest, Maldon and Ashford, fewer than 4% of students without a C in English and maths at the age of 16 went on to achieve this by age of 19. The average success rate seems to be about 25%. Instead of these resits, such students should be allowed to prepare for vocationally oriented tests of literacy and numeracy, which will seem to them more relevant to their lives and future work. The Government have talked about alleviating the current requirements; perhaps the Minister would let us know when this will happen.

Secondly, an article a few weeks ago in the Times Education Supplement showed that the average funding figure available per student aged from 11 to 16 in secondary schools is £5,700 per annum, and in universities it is £8,500, whereas for providers of further education from ages 16 to 19 it is only £4,500. This disparity is very worrying and suggests that the FE sector is insufficiently funded to deal with the challenges that it faces at a time when skills development is at the heart of the economic agenda. Perhaps the Minister would comment on the worrying £1,200 yearly gap between school and further education funding.

Productivity levels in the United Kingdom remain stubbornly low and have not improved in real terms since the 2008 economic downturn. We are currently ranked 16th out of 35 OECD countries in the international productivity league table—way behind our major trading partners such as the United States, France and Germany. Productivity is of course a factor of investment, but it is also most importantly a factor in the training of young people in technical skills. Yet the Economic Affairs Committee of this House identifies this country’s,

“lower emphasis on technical and vocational education”,

as a major contributing factor to low productivity.

As the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us, Brexit will bring great opportunities and our workforce must be well prepared to use them. The further education sector in this country must be better resourced and better used by government policy if it is to help this country face the economic challenges that the next decades will surely bring.

Educational Attainment: Boys

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Lingfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the educational attainment of boys of all ages at state schools.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my education interests in the register, and thank them for taking part in this debate this afternoon.

A retired general known to me was inspecting a school cadet corps, and as he went round, he noticed that, whereas the girls had large numbers of badges on their arms for military pursuits such as shooting, first aid and field-craft, the boys had virtually none. When he addressed the parade he said, “Boys, you must really pull your socks up. You’ve got hardly any badges on your arms”. While he was speaking, a lad in the front row kept putting up his hand, military discipline vying with indignation, and said, “Sir! We’ve got just as many badges as the girls, but the girls won’t sew them on for us!”.

That is a somewhat frivolous introduction to what is actually a very serious subject: boys in our state schools are doing badly compared with girls. I want to pay tribute to the excellent debate on this issue in Westminster Hall last September, secured by my honourable friend Karl MᶜCartney, MP for Lincoln. Many excellent points were made by members across the political spectrum and I shall refer to them from time to time.

There are enough statistics to last the whole afternoon, but here are just a few of them. Last year’s figures show that in state schools girls are 30% more likely to enter university than boys. In Scotland, the figure is 43%. Indeed, the head of UCAS has recently predicted that, if current trends continue, girls born today will be 75% more likely to enter higher education. At the other end of the spectrum, there is a gap of nearly 16% between girls and boys judged to be achieving a good level of development at the end of the early years foundation stage—74.3% for girls and 58.6% for boys. These trends persist: when finishing primary school, some 57% of girls reach the required standards in literacy and numeracy; only 49% of boys do.

When we move to public examinations, last year girls opened up their biggest gap over boys in A to C grades for 14 years—71.3% of female entries were awarded at least a C grade compared with just 62.4% of their male counterparts. Especially in arts subjects, a quarter of girls earn As or A*s, but under 17% of boys do. It is only in mathematics that boys squeak ahead. At university, women are more likely to graduate than their male peers, and typically they get better grades.

Whichever way the data are read, they show that girls outperform boys at all educational stages in most areas of the curriculum. So boys are doing badly compared with girls, with all that that means for society, when surely their attainment ought to be closer to equal. Why is this? No one knows the answer as too little research has been carried out into this important question. Many theories abound and I shall consider some of them.

First, about 15% of teachers in English primary schools are full-time male teachers, and the figure for secondary schools is only 38%. Overall, therefore, three-quarters of all state school teachers are female. This means that the majority of boys, many of whom have no man in the house, never encounter a male role model at home or at school. Please do not get me wrong: I am not knocking our many wonderful women teachers—we obviously could not do without them—but common sense suggests that schools need nearer a 50:50 split, which, by the way, independent schools come closer to.

Does this worrying situation make a difference to boys’ performance? There have been a few studies, based on small samples, which suggest that boys’ attainment is not necessary better when they are taught by male teachers, but in reality no one knows. The decline of boys’ performance has, however, coincided with the drop in the number of male teachers since the 1980s. Could it be that many schools are now not focused enough on supporting boys, understanding what makes them tick and providing a clear disciplinary framework and an environment that does not fail to encourage masculinity? Boys develop more slowly in their teenage years, and many observably have less positive attitudes to schooling. It is very possible that male role models are vital in instilling in them the importance of education.

Whatever the answer, the Government need to address the imbalance of male teachers to female teachers in our schools. Why are men not joining the teaching profession as they used to? Again, there is only anecdotal evidence. Not long ago I talked to a number of newly graduated men at one of our universities. Would they think of teaching as a career? All were emphatic that they would not. Was it the salary? No, they thought that it was fine for someone in their 20s. They unanimously suggested that they could not put up with the disciplinary problems and the chance that there might be unwarranted accusations against them. When I questioned this, they told me that they had been at school only three years before and knew exactly what they were talking about.

It is also perceived wisdom that methods of teaching and examinations have been feminised in the past decades, particularly with the replacement of written examinations with continuous assessment and coursework in many subjects. This is thought to favour girls, who are better capable of the steady, organised work required, whereas boys, it is suggested, do better at putting a towel around their head and revising for all-or-nothing written papers. There has been a trend of late for schools and examining bodies to rely less on coursework and more on end-of-course examinations, but it is too soon to see if this will narrow the gap in performance again, as is suggested.

There is no doubt that the difference in attainment between boys and girls is a complex subject. It is visible across all ethnic groups. The Government have in the past rightly pointed out that most other OECD countries have similar gaps. One would have thought, therefore, that there would be plenty of research in other countries to address this problem, but there is very little of real relevance. Girls are often said to do even better at single-sex schools than at co-educational schools. Do boys do better at boys’ schools than at mixed schools? There seems to be no research available to enable us to take a view. There are some 150 grammar schools in this country, some single sex, some co-educational. Do boys do better in selective education? We cannot tell as there are no useful immediate statistics to help us.

I do not ask the Minister to come up with any answers today to these complicated and vexing questions, but I am sure that we need to hear that the Government will consider a wide-ranging review of the issue. We badly need some high-quality investigative work, and I know that Members on all sides of the House will agree that that research should be free of political correctness and ideology. We need to find out what is putting men off seeking teaching careers so that we can encourage more of them into the profession. We need to know whether the teaching of boys by men really does make a difference to the performance gap. We need to know whether single-sex education is helpful to boys’ attainment or whether there is little difference. We need to know whether boys in selective schools do as well as girls similarly selected. We need to look at comparative studies from other countries—some work has been done in Sweden, the USA and Australia —to see whether there is anything we can learn. Above all, we need to know what can be done for boys without affecting the performance of girls.

Too many boys at present are discouraged by their results and tend to leave education unskilled and poorly qualified for future vocational courses. More young men than young women are not in proper employment or training. Their next steps are too often to be benefits claimants and then, too regularly, they encounter the youth justice system. We need to address these issues, and to do so we badly need far more objective research into them; otherwise, we shall let down further generations of boys with the most serious consequences for our society.

Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lexden for instigating this debate. I remind noble Lords of my education interests in the register.

I entirely support independent schools giving assistance and advice to schools in the state sector. My noble friend and other noble Lords have given examples of good practice in this area. However, I have several concerns. I would want to be sure that independent schools did not feel under pressure to join in. My noble friend’s speech today has caused me some anxiety, because charitable status could be in danger if schools do not co-operate with the Government’s wishes. Some are fearful that the reporting procedures could lead to the construction of a league table of achievement in the help they are able to give to the state sector.

At the moment, in principle, the removal of charitable status means that a school’s assets could be sequestered and given to another charity. That is unlikely to happen, as we know, but such a threat is still felt by independent schools to be in the air.

Charitable status brings with it certain fiscal advantages—usually cut-price local taxes, exemption from corporation taxes and the ability to obtain gift aid on donations towards certain charitable ends, although not of course on fee income. However, that is not the huge subsidy that some newspapers seem to imagine; independent school governors estimate that those tax advantages account for about 3% of income. There can be few schools which do not spend this on pupils from homes that cannot afford fees. Nationally, charitable status brings independent schools an annual notional tax saving of some £100 million; however, research suggests that they spend more than £260 million on bursaries—bringing it to the sum that my noble friend mentioned.

Independent schools have to tread carefully when assisting state schools. First, they have to reassure fee-paying parents that such a charitable effort is worth while and the cost of it unlikely to diminish their own children’s education; secondly, they have to be extremely careful not to give the appearance of patronage. However, if handled carefully, all this can be extremely beneficial. I have seen wonderful projects involving the teaching of reading by independent school sixth-formers at local primaries, from which the older students gained as much as the younger ones. A good number of cadet units in independent schools have been instrumental in setting up CCF companies in local secondaries. In several cases these now meet as joint forces.

We have heard a great deal in the past, although little today, about charitable independent schools being able to prove public benefit. A landmark judicial review quite properly defined such benefit rather more liberally than the then chairman of the Charity Commission had promulgated. It is true, however, that the modern conception of charity somehow sits uncomfortably with independent schools, which are often seen, usually unfairly, as the preserve of the wealthy. This was guyed really rather well by Ian Hislop in a spoof charity appeal in which he said, “A gift of only £50 will buy a boater for Henrietta”.

On 12 September last year, I asked the Minister whether independent schools that wish to do so will be able to opt out of charitable status and thereby demit the 3% or 4% of their income. His reply was that they will. This is good news, and I suggest that the law could assist those who so wished to opt out by allowing them to keep their current assets and be given the status of what I believe in Scotland are public trusts with no tax advantages. I asked because the governing bodies of independent schools—I was for some years the chairman of one—tend to take a very long-term view. Many of them have survived for hundreds of years by so doing. Threatened in the not-too-distant past by the Charity Commission, some have told me that they fear that threat will someday come again and that they would value being able to opt out, even if it meant the loss of fiscal advantages. Most charitable schools in the independent sector will doubtless wish to remain as charities, with the advantages and possible disadvantages brought by this, but those that do not should, in my view, have the option.

There is one great gift that schools in the private sector can give to the state sector, a gift that costs them nothing. It is the example they set, especially in the use of their independence. Each is a separate, autonomous corporate body; even those schools in groups such as the Woodard Foundation retain their clear individuality. Decisions about financial priorities, staffing, curriculum, buildings and plant are made by the governors and professionals on the spot, without reference to any local or national bureaucracies. This was the freedom that first the grant-maintained schools movement of the 1990s and then its successor, the academies programme, promised state schools and there is no better way of raising standards in them. There is every possible good reason for state and independent schools to work closely together, but it must be made very clear that such arrangements are purely voluntary on both sides.