Children and Families Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, my comments today are concerned only with those aspects of the Bill, mainly in Part 3, that deal with children and young people with special educational needs.

Some 35 years ago the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, whom I am delighted to see in her seat today, paved the way for wide-ranging changes in the way that the state education system deals with children with special needs and disabilities. It is more than 30 years since the Education Act 1981 put in place many of the tenets of the current legislation and the system of statements of special needs. It is some six years since the publication of the second report of my Commission on Special Needs in Education, which I was asked to chair by the then leader of the Opposition, who is now the Prime Minister.

In the course of that commission, we noted that the extraordinary advances in medicine since the Warnock report and the 1981 Act mean that many more children, often with the most serious, multiple disabilities, now not only survive birth but can find much contentment in much longer lives with the proper attention, therapy, medication and—very importantly—education. During the commission we also heard from a large number of dedicated professionals and devoted parents, whose work on behalf of children with special needs is both heartening and humbling. Virtually every submission noted, and almost every witness from whom we took evidence believed, that radical revision of the provision for special education needs was long overdue. It is for this reason that I welcome the aim to create through this Bill a new legislative framework that better reflects the different circumstances that the decades since 1981 have brought.

In particular, I commend the Bill’s focus on extending the coverage of legislation from birth to 25 years of age, unlike the current system that applies only to the end of school-based education, at which point, to quote a parent giving evidence to us, the child will,

“fall off an educational cliff”.

It is particularly important that those in this older age group with profound and complex needs are eligible for the continuation of their plans, for there are few clear-cut educational opportunities for them and they are the ones most likely to benefit from the continued protection of their plans.

I very much welcome the Bill’s new provisions, mentioned by the Minister, to place a legal duty on health services to make the healthcare provisions specified in the proposed education, health and care plan. I believe—but I stand to be corrected—that in Scotland social care is also included.

I firmly support the provision for personal budgets and direct payments. I note with concern, however, that last month’s evaluation of the pathfinder local authorities carrying out this work at the moment reported that,

“many areas had found it difficult to develop personal budgets”,

and referred to the “limited take-up” of direct payments. In light of these assessments, I am sure that Ministers will be able to reassure your Lordships that they will redouble their efforts to address these concerns.

In his Written Statement to mark the launch of the Green Paper that preceded this Bill, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education set out his aspiration for,

“a radically different system to support better life outcomes for young people; give parents confidence by giving them more control; and transfer power to professionals on the front line and to local communities”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/3/11; col. 64WS.]

The expectations from the new legislation will therefore be very high among families and professionals working in this area, and among all those who seek to ensure that some of our most vulnerable young citizens are adequately supported. If they are not to be disappointed, we must satisfy ourselves that the legislation before us and the regulations and guidance that will follow it will allow these laudable aims for change fully to be met.

It is with this in mind that I want to highlight one of the main challenges I believe the Government will face in moving from what are commitments to actually implementing the legislation. I referred a moment ago to the recent evaluation report of the pathfinder local authorities. It is encouraging to note in it the efforts made by pathfinders to test the new processes provided for in the Bill, and to read that they,

“appear to recognise the advantages of working differently, and are positive about the impact of … changes”.

However, it is clear that pathfinder authorities have had to devote considerable time and resources to developing these new processes and that while there have been some encouraging findings from them, the pathfinders themselves encompass only a small minority of authorities—fewer than a quarter of those in England. As a result, even where pathfinders are able to make progress in putting in place elements of the proposed system, there is still a huge task ahead for these lessons to be communicated, understood and implemented across the vast majority of local authorities and, just as importantly, for these lessons to inform the regulations and guidance that will follow this Bill. I do not need to spell out the consequences of this being done inadequately. Experience suggests, I fear, that in many areas these reforms will be very slow indeed to take effect.

My final point today is that we must absolutely ensure, as we seek to put in place this radically different new system to which the legislation aspires, that we do not remove the current rights for parents and children under existing legislation. This is a point to which I will wish to return, as I suspect others of your Lordships will, as the Bill progresses through your Lordships’ House.

Education: Development of Excellence

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Perry for instigating this important debate. She has, of course, spent a considerable part of her life helping to improve education standards.

I want to talk about a sector of education which is too often the Cinderella of our education services—further education. I declare an interest in that I am currently chairing a government review into certain aspects of further education. Its initial report came out—not without controversy—earlier this year and I hope that the final report will come out by the end of this month. It would be wrong of me, therefore, to pre-empt the conclusions and aspirations of that report. However, there are a couple of important matters which struck me forcefully during our work which I want to mention today.

During the past nine months I have visited many outstanding further education institutions, both in the private and public sector. I have seen much to enthuse me and I have met many wonderful practitioners who are inspiring and work extraordinarily hard. I pay tribute to them. I pay tribute, too, to my honourable friend John Hayes, who was until recently the Minister of State for Further Education. He was much admired in that role and, of course, in his previous shadow role.

Further education has one extraordinarily important and worrying task. Colleges and other providers tell me that government statistics suggest that some 28% of young people who were 16 or 17 when they left school are functionally innumerate. This means that they have the arithmetical skills of the average nine year-old. Some 15% also are illiterate. This means that too often colleges of further education have to be the remedial department of their local primary and secondary schools. This is a shocking circumstance and FE has to pick up the pieces far too often. Too often also it diverts them from their primary task of equipping young people with the workplace skills which will enable them to found their careers.

This is not for one moment to denigrate the enormously important work which goes on in the teaching of basic skills in our further education colleges but merely to hope that the reforms which the Government are putting into place, and which my noble friend Lady Perry has described extraordinarily well, will in the end make it unnecessary for further education lecturers in further education colleges to teach what are basically kindergarten skills to 16 year-olds. We seriously need to improve upon that.

Schools have to play their part—and, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Perry, some of them do not do very well at the moment—if we are to provide this country with the technically accomplished workforce which will enable it to outperform its competitors in a deep and difficult economic environment.

Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Determination of Turnover for Monetary Penalties) Order 2012

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the order and commend the Government for bringing such a sensible conclusion to a complex inquiry. In doing so, I declare an interest as being currently and for the next month chair of one of the bodies mentioned in the supporting papers, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. I mention that body also to illustrate how complex the measure is, because it probably means that the department, or certainly Ofqual, would have to check reasonably regularly that the way in which it had constructed the annual turnover figure was accurate. The figures for ABRSM given in the supporting paper show the turnover as being just over £31 million, which was probably the figure for two years ago. That turnover is based not simply on the 300,000 candidates in this country but on 300,000 candidates overseas and shows the complexity involved in determining turnover for activity in the UK. I know that it is simply an illustrative figure in an illustrative paper, but it makes the point that there would have to be accurate checks and agreement with the organisations in question. I do not think that the eventuality will arise, but, if it did, one would need to know in advance on what figure the 10% cap was based. Another slight complexity, again illustrated by the case of ABRSM, is that the figures are to be examined in Scotland as well as in the other three jurisdictions named in the paper. I am not sure whether that makes a difference, but it is the kind of detail that should be checked out. However, I support warmly the direction in which we are now moving.

[Lord Lingfield]

As noble Lords will remember, I brought up this issue during the passage of the Education Bill, so I shall not rehearse the list of difficulties that we all saw in the newspapers during 2011 and in previous years—the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, told us a lot about those, too. The principle of giving Ofqual powers to fine awarding bodies that have been in dereliction of their duty seems entirely proper and necessary, which is why I support the Government. Their proposals seem entirely fair. The awarding bodies are a disparate group and it was always going to be difficult to devise a scheme that coped with all the differences, but the decision to limit turnover for the purposes of Ofqual regulation to all activity within the UK seems appropriate. Sufficient safeguards are built in: there will be an appeal mechanism; Ofqual will be required to state its reasons for using its powers, as the Minister has told us; and there will be a review of the order and Ofqual’s activities. Those are enough. A great deal of needless distress was caused to pupils and their parents, and a lot of difficulties were created for colleges, schools and universities. I hope that the order will be used to alleviate those problems. We shall see whether it does, because it can be reviewed.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the reasoning behind the order and for his earlier letter to the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, providing an update on the steps taken since we last discussed this matter during scrutiny of the Education Bill.

We share the Government’s determination to drive up standards in the conduct of examinations and to ensure that Ofqual has the suite of tools necessary to hold awarding organisations to account for any mistakes made, particularly if they have a wider impact on overall public confidence in the exam system. We therefore approach scrutiny of this order with the positive view that it is in our interests for Ofqual to demand, and ensure, the highest possible standards in the administration of the exam system.

I could of course begin by questioning whether this order is already out of date given the Secretary of State’s apparent decision, leaked last week, that from autumn 2014 O-levels will be revived and the current exam board free-for-all replaced by a single exam board for each subject. Yet I realise that however short-lived this order turns out to be, we have a responsibility to deal with it as best we can. However, in one sense the Secretary of State’s announcement has a common cause with the order here today because the fact that there are so many different awarding organisations of every shape, size and constitution, as we have heard, is the central cause of the headache for Ofqual about how to regulate them fairly and consistently. I suppose that it begs the question as to whether we have allowed too many bodies to spring up to enable consistent marking and proper qualification comparisons to be achieved. In this context, however, I have a few specific questions.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, by introducing these new clauses into the Bill the Government will allow local councils to test the use of direct payments for meeting special educational needs. I certainly welcome and support the greater personalisation of educational provision for young people as does the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Lord, Lord Rix, who I know had some very fruitful and useful meetings with the Minister and his officials. Both noble Lords wished to be here this evening, but are unavoidably unable to be with us; they have asked me to mention to the Minister how much they appreciate the courtesy and the assistance he and his officials have given.

Direct payments have played an important role in allowing disabled people to have choice and control over the services they receive. Nevertheless, there are some significant risks in the use of direct payments in education, particularly in schools. The Department for Education has been working closely with the Special Education Consortium to mitigate these risks, and I know that the Special Education Consortium has certainly welcomed that collaboration and consideration. The matters they are still concerned about include ensuring that the pilot schemes must be set up by an order by the Secretary of State. Establishing the details of the pilot scheme within the legislative framework is a necessary safeguard if these significant changes to the way education is delivered are to be properly scrutinised by Parliament.

The order which establishes the pilots was originally to be the subject of a negative resolution. The noble Lord, Lord Low, and I tabled amendments to ensure these important changes were properly debated through an affirmative resolution procedure. We have withdrawn these amendments because the government amendment means the pilot schemes will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure as the Minister told us this evening. This is very welcome, and we are grateful to the Government, particularly as the initial amendment on direct payments in education was tabled at such a late stage, as the noble Lord has explained.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, and I also tabled further amendments concerning the details of the scheme. However, as the order will now be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, we believe these concerns might be more usefully spelt out and discussed in detail during that debate. These too have been withdrawn. Nevertheless, we would still like to put on record some of the issues we hope will be addressed by the order.

We need to know how to measure the reaction of education providers to individuals holding direct payments for special educational provision. This may interact with school and college finances and employment policies, and will affect the ability of schools to plan for all children with special educational needs. Perhaps the Minister will say what steps will be taken to ensure that the viability of specialist SEN services is not threatened where direct payments are taking money out of the system. We also need to know how decisions about the amount of direct payments will be made, particularly if statements are poorly written—there are examples of that as I am sure we all know—and how parents can appeal those poorly written statements. Finally, we need to know whether there will be a thorough evaluation of direct payments in education in particular before Parliament is asked to renew the order in two years’ time.

The noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Rix, and I welcome the Government’s new position, but we urge the Minister to make debating this order a priority in the parliamentary timetable so that these proposals, which are rightly being tested, can be given the fullest opportunity to show their worth. Great progress has been made, and I have been asked by my colleagues—who are not able to be with us this evening—to say to the Minister in particular how much they and I and especially the Special Education Consortium have appreciated the fact that he has genuinely worked with us to try to resolve our concerns. This seems to be a better way to make law.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I particularly welcome this new clause because one of the most important items in it allows a continuation of funding post-16 and 18 to the age of 25. Many parents are dismayed that their “special education offspring”—as one put it to me—fall off the end of a funding cliff when they reach early adulthood, and this pilot will help us see much more accurately how this can be done. I hope, however, with the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that the Government will set out very clearly how these experiments are to be monitored, so that best practice may be observed and reported. It is also important for the Government to make clear to parents what they should do if they want to challenge the amount of payments, and contend that the health or social service elements are too little. My view is that the clauses are necessarily restrictive, in that as I understand it parents frequently agree part-funding with local authorities, but are not to be allowed to supplement the amount of the direct payment to purchase the provision set out in a beneficiary statement. Perhaps the Minister would look at this again. However, I welcome this step in the right direction—albeit it is a small, pilot step—to alleviate the great problems that there are in the special needs sector. I look forward eventually to seeing the careful evaluation when it is published.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clarke of Hampstead]

My Lords, I hope that, at this late hour, the Government will firmly reject this amendment. I have no reason to quarrel with the integrity of the people who have proposed it, some of whom I have known for many years. I believe that they are blessed with the intelligence to put forward what they think is the right thing. Like wider roads, stronger beer, motherhood and apple pie, you could say snap to most of the amendment. What has been said about bullying and civic learning is absolutely clear. However, I have been here long enough to know that when someone says that something should be included in a Bill you have to be careful.

The amendment is actually saying that a school inspector “must”, not “could” look at the type of school and what its policies are. That is where we have a problem. There will be some schools that do not have a policy on the subject that has exercised us for most of this debate. Most schools make up their minds through the governors and parents, or through whatever consultation they have, and they make their decisions. If the amendment is carried, the chief inspector must ask those schools the questions and will have to report on them. In most areas the report would be clear.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds referred to the Government’s intention. However, it was only two days ago that the Minister was able to tell the House, at col. 543 of the Official Report, that the Government had no intention of changing the policy on sex education. I thought to myself, “That is good. There is no need for the proposed new paragraph because we have heard a clear statement from the Government”. I welcomed that at the time.

I am not influenced by hundreds of letters. I was not influenced by them on fox hunting and all the other issues that attract a deluge of correspondence. I admit that I did not receive much teaching because I left school at the age of 14, but I was taught to think for myself. It is wrong to put words in the Bill that could force people in certain circumstances to do things that they do not want to do. Therefore, in the event of a Division, I shall vote against the amendment—although reluctantly, because I recognise the integrity of those who are proposing it.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, all of us sympathise with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, regarding the appalling letters she and others of us have received from time to time and which completely miss the point of this debate. I do not think that any Member of your Lordships' House would think that a school ought not to have clear policies on bullying, the aspects of life dealt with in citizenship education, personal social, health and sex education, and even healthy eating. However, where I part company with the noble Baroness is that if these issues are a matter for close inspection by Ofsted, then the global views of that organisation—it has global views, although that may alter—become written in stone. Once these policies are apparent, schools often are scared to deviate in any way from what they come to believe is the letter of the law. The grades given by Ofsted to schools are very talismanic. The school is outstanding, satisfactory or merely good. Heads and governors become hugely anxious that an Ofsted report will say something detrimental and, if the buzz from other local schools already inspected is that it is important to tick the right boxes by adopting certain policies on sex education, certain aspects of discipline, citizenship education or even on the consumption of hamburgers and chips, sadly they will have those policies. We have seen far too much evidence of that.

We should leave these decisions entirely to individual schools. We should not want to take from the hands of heads, teachers and governors the right to make professional decisions in these areas of school life. Of course, every one of the items mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in her amendment is absolutely important, but we should trust the staff on the spot to deal with them and not impose upon the staff, as inevitably this amendment would, an Ofsted view—and that, sadly, means a government view—about these matters.

Professional teachers and their governors are best equipped to know of the appropriateness of, say, certain aspects of sex education, certain specifics for bullying, and dietary needs in their own schools, and it is the whole thrust of the coalition's schools policy that schools should be free to take the decisions that the situation demands. I ought to add that Ofsted entirely lost its way by trying to inspect—and, therefore, inevitably setting into concrete—so many areas of school life, with something like two dozen criteria. I welcome the Government’s new view that schools should concentrate broadly on teaching, learning, discipline and leadership. If you get those right, everything else falls into place.

I should like to leave noble Lords with one thought. A paragraph or two that is passed by your Lordships can quite literally lead to 1,000 pages of bumph for an individual school. That is true. It is not necessary for Ofsted to inspect all these matters. I therefore oppose the amendment.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

Amendments 56A and 56B are in my name and both are amendments to Amendment 56. I tabled them because we, and I suspect other noble Lords, have received a fair amount of correspondence about this provision. Two issues arise from it. One, which is the subject of my amendments, relates to a very narrow issue—the 10 per cent of turnover to which the fine should be related and the question of whether that is the total turnover of the organisation or just that part of the organisation’s turnover that relates to its United Kingdom activities. As the Minister has made clear, the Government have effectively accepted these amendments, and I gather that the turnover will relate only to United Kingdom activities.

The other issue goes somewhat wider and relates to the whole process of consultation that took place. I understand that, as the Minister explained, the Government were anxious to get these powers on to the statute book because Ofqual had the choice of only either a fairly gentle reprimand or the nuclear option of withdrawing recognition of the examining board, and it wanted a further range of sanctions to apply, as is the case with other regulators. However, it is very unfortunate that the period of consultation was reduced to as little as 10 days and that the examination boards did not have a chance to respond to these proposals as fully as they would have liked. It is also unfortunate that a wider consultation with other people affected by the knock-on effects of this provision did not take place. Some of them may also have received a letter from the ASCL pointing out that a fine imposed on the examining boards is quite likely to be passed on to the schools, which pay considerable fees for their pupils to sit these examinations.

I recognise that we do not want our examining boards to make the serious errors in examinations that occurred this summer and that sanctions of some sort are not a bad idea. Nevertheless, the fact remains that an inquiry was set up to examine those errors and it is not going to report until the end of the year. Normally, one would expect to see some action taken after the inquiry reports, and I therefore ask the Minister whether it was really necessary to act as quickly as he did. Furthermore, I hope that full consultation will now take place with the examination boards. As the Government put flesh on the bones of the sanctions in this amendment, I hope that they will have proper discussions and consultations with all those concerned about how the sanctions should be imposed and implemented. This is not good practice and I hope that the coalition Government will not continue with the rapid pursuit of issues in the same way.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister that, following my remarks, these clauses are to be inserted.

It is worth reminding noble Lords of the unedifying accounts in the newspapers a short time ago, when we saw complaints from parents, teachers and schools. A printing mistake by the AQA board led to some schools receiving GCSE maths papers, taken by 32,000 pupils, which included questions from a previous version of the examination. The OCR maths AS-level paper, with nearly 7,000 candidates, featured an impossible question worth a whole 11 per cent of the marks. OCR’s Latin paper mixed up a passage by Cicero and attributed it to Tacitus, and two characters were mixed up. Edexcel’s AS-level biology paper offered a selection of wrong answers to a multiple choice question, but the correct answer was not included. The OCR guide issued to staff marking the AS-level information communication and technology paper contained four errors—staff were required to mark down students who gave the correct answer. AQA’s AS-level business studies examination, taken by 41,000 students, asked about a fictitious company’s factory profits, but the adjoining profile information failed to show the profits, making the question completely unanswerable. Of course, there were other examples in earlier years. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, who is in his place, carried out, as I am sure he will mention, a review that suggested that QCA was responsible for massive failures resulting in tens of thousands of children getting their SATs results late.

That is why I support these extra powers for Ofqual boards. I believe the penalties that are outlined seem a fair and useful way ahead, with the appropriate safeguards of notice and appeal that the Bill sets out. I hope that noble Lords will support them and they will lead to a diminution in the angst and difficulty caused earlier this year to pupils, parents and teachers after the examinations.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I warmly welcome the government amendment, and not only for the reason it means that one’s words do not always disappear into the ether for ever, although it is nice to see a bit of thought being given to them. Examining boards do an extremely difficult and complex job. Over the years, we have built for them a system that requires too much, and too much complexity. We are now rolling back from this, and that is the right direction. However, examination boards which, for the most part, have done this very well, do fail from time to time. They fail in ways that are serious and, as we have heard, are deeply upsetting to schools and candidates. It is therefore right that Ofqual should have the capacity to assert some discipline over them.

As has been suggested, I have seen in great detail—more than I ever want to see again—the complexity of the procurement process for a national set of examinations. If Ofqual were committed to its only sanction being to reset the process in motion, we would have the wrong system. Under this amendment, Ofqual will have different alternatives. I say to my noble friend Lady Sharp that this should have been in the original powers of Ofqual rather than being put through at this stage. I welcome the amendments and hope that the House will support them.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I move this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lucas, who I think is rowing for the Lords at the moment. As is quite clear from the wording, the amendment asks the Government to consider whether it is necessary for only qualifications that are accredited by Ofqual to be counted into the points score for individual schools. It is now not only independent schools but many others that offer the international baccalaureate, for example, and other professional and vocational qualifications may not be accredited by Ofqual but are accredited by other perfectly respectable and widely acknowledged bodies. As I understand it, Ofqual has within its remit only about 15 per cent of all qualifications; the other 85 per cent are variously accredited by other organisations, many of which, as I say, are themselves well accredited.

The purpose of my noble friend’s amendment is to ask the Government to consider whether they should collect data on all qualifications gained, assuming that they have proper provenance and whether or not they are within the empire of Ofqual. On his behalf, I beg to move.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I rather support the amendment because, as my noble friend Lady Perry said, a large number of schools, not just in the state sector but in the independent sector, are considering innovation as regards examinations. A number of very grand independent schools can consider these and not worry about any point scoring that comes out in league tables throughout the country. However, many other schools cannot afford to take these initiatives in a way that they might wish to. This is a good idea. I am not certain what the minutiae of it could be, but I very much hope that the Minister will take away the point made by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lady Perry and look at it carefully.

While we are on the subject of Ofqual, noble Lords will remember that huge difficulties were mentioned in the newspapers during the previous round of examinations which did not show some of the awarding bodies in a very good light. I understand that there were nine incidents overall. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that Ofqual can impose two types of sanction on the awarding bodies—first, a rap over the knuckles, which may not be very effective; and, secondly, the nuclear option of striking them off the list, which may not be in any way suitable and could cause great difficulties. Therefore, will the Minister and his colleagues consider a third option that could involve a series of fines for various circumstances that would add seriously to the sanctions available to Ofqual? Perhaps some of the difficulties that arose last year and caused distress to pupils and schools will not arise in the future?

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the remarks that have just been made. Ofqual is in its early stages; it has set off on what is essentially a new path with new powers given on the Floor of this House, among other places. It is important that Ofqual has the powers and flexibility to maintain a reputation that will be essential if standards are to be properly observed in this country.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am happy to give strong support to Amendment 66, in the light of the remarks that the noble Lord has just made. However, I have my reservations about the practicability of Amendment 67.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords—

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, could speak to his amendment in this group.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I do not think that anyone could quarrel with the values behind the noble Earl’s amendment concerning CPD. They are excellent. I draw attention to two matters. Two years ago, I carried out some research on the amount of CPD available for SENCOs and other teachers of children with special needs. Alas, the picture is that very little is available. Some schools do it extraordinarily well and a few institutions do it very well indeed, but the picture across the country is very patchy. I went to one university to see an excellent MA course for special needs teachers. Seven people had received grants to go on it and three had received no grant at all. That was for the whole county. That picture was replicated across the country. Therefore, the noble Earl’s amendment must be aspirational in this area. We have an enormous amount of work to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made a very good point, but I suspect that it applies particularly to secondary schools. We all probably know of many primary schools where that level of training does not take place, and the 50 hours mentioned by the noble Earl would require, for every 10 teachers at the school, a half-time teacher to take the classes of those engaged in CPD. It is a difficult matter. Obviously one must support the aspirations behind the amendment, but it would be very difficult to do what the noble Earl wants straightaway.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I support Amendment 62, which very much follows on from Amendment 61 and has a similar intent to that described by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

We also recognise the arguments put forward by some school leaders that punishment is more effective if it takes place nearer to the time of the original incident. Therefore, we understand that there will be occasions when same-day detention is preferable if the necessary safeguards can be built into the child’s welfare. Indeed, that is why detention at lunchtime, which we introduced in previous legislation, is a very useful additional tool. However, to be safe, we regard it as essential that parents are properly informed for same-day detention when it is intended that it should take place after school.

Therefore, our amendment, in the form of a new clause, would require schools to give parents or carers reasonable notice of detention and to obtain an acknowledgment from the parent or carer within 24 hours. Where that acknowledgement has not been received, detention would still take place, but only after the original 24 hours—the current system.

A number of concerns have been raised about Clause 5 as it stands. For example, Ambitious about Autism made a point that I hope noble Lords will take seriously, which is that you need to prepare autistic children for the disruption to their plans and routines. Therefore, short-notice detention of children with autism is not only disruptive to their life and organisation but can cause them considerable mental distress.

Secondly, even Sarah Teather, during the progress of a previous education Bill said:

“For the record, we would not be in favour of removing the period of notice. It would be totally impractical”,

as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said. Sarah Teather continued:

“In rural areas, especially on dark evenings, parents would not know what had happened to their child and would be extremely concerned. It is perfectly acceptable to give 24 hours’ notice, as it will allow parents to make other arrangements for travel … Anything else would be unacceptable”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education and Inspections Bill Committee, 10/5/06; cols. 855-56.]

Equally, we need to be aware of the needs of young carers who could be stopped from doing vital caring work at home, with no warning and no ability to make alternative arrangements. We need to be aware of the fact that some schools are not aware of the full caring roles that their pupils are carrying out when they get home, and the schools may thereby not be sensitive to some of the pressures that they are putting on the children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has made the case about rural areas and I shall not repeat it. Unamended, the clause could disrupt the relationship between schools and parents. The NUT made a good point when it said:

“Behaviour systems and policies always work best when they are fully supported by parents. Detention without notice does nothing to bring parents on-side”.

That is also important.

Our amendment therefore helps to redress the balance. It recognises the advantages of short-notice punishment while acknowledging the need to build parents into the disciplinary equation by requiring parents to be made aware of the sanctions the school intends to take. It fosters good relations with parents while allowing them to raise any genuine and practical concerns about a child’s late journey home. In the event that it is not possible to contact the parent or carer, it should remain that the default position is 24 hours’ notice. I hope that noble Lords will see the sense in both amendments.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will confirm that this did not rise just out of a vacuum and that a large number of teachers and teachers’ organisations have indeed been in contact to support this piece of legislation. It is hugely important that where punishment is going to happen in schools it happens quickly in order to be effective. This legislation will not actually place a duty on schools to do this but simply provide a power to do it. Some schools could decide in their wisdom that they want nothing to do with having detentions under these circumstances. Others could decide that only certain members of staff under considerably constrained conditions may do so. Therefore, we can expect a variety of responses among schools in order to do this. However, there is absolutely no doubt that this power is needed by schools—or at least by some schools. It is part of a series of new tools for the toolbox that I am sure the Minister will agree he is trying to provide, and sends a message to teachers, pupils and parents that a lot of the misbehaviour that we have heard so much about is being combated. It is not one thing—there are other things, all of which are hugely important. They send a clear message to those people that they are going to be supported by government under these circumstances, and that teachers will not have to put up with the kind of misbehaviour that we have heard quite a lot about.

According to the thrust of the Government’s position, these decisions should be left to individual schools. We trust individual schools to make these kinds of decisions. Frankly, it is good so to trust them. Given that kind of trust, the response is always more professionalism. We do not need any more safeguards built into this. Where things are, there they should stay.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I will briefly make three points, unless something else occurs to me as I am on my feet. First, will the Minister tell us how many schools have actually asked for this? I have listened carefully to what the last noble Lord said, but in my three years as Schools Minister no school ever asked me for this power. I would be really interested in what evidence there is for a demand for it.

Secondly, I listened to what the noble Lord said about the fact they we should trust schools and leave it to them to decide whether to use the flexibility that they are being given in this Bill. I refer back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said about schools not necessarily fully understanding the circumstances of some of their pupils’ families; her example was whether or not they have caring responsibilities. I was shocked to talk to some schools where they did not know that parents might be in prison. All sorts of things happen that families do not necessarily want to go around talking about but which affect the nature of the home environment, and would then affect whether it would be appropriate to give a detention without notice on the same day after school.

Finally, on reinforcing the discipline from the school at home, when I was given detentions at the prep and independent private schools that I went to for things like forgetting my towel or—God forbid—being cheeky and a bit mouthy, which I know would shock noble Lords, there was always a letter home that went with the detention. That was always the worst part of the punishment: your parents knew that you had been given a detention. Giving 24 hours’ notice so that your parents are informed of the detention is a really important aspect of linking up the discipline of the school with home. We know that the single most important determinant of the success of a child’s education is the involvement of their parents in that education. I strongly believe that it is really important that we ensure that that linkage through the notice is there in every school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Quirk]

My Lords, if the only the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, had been in charge of briefing for the Opposition in the other place in February, such a massive and very welcome defence of the GTC might well have given this Bill a different course as it has proceeded through Parliament.

Even now, having heard the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, we seem still to be assuming that the GTC is no good. We know that it has not been the huge success that those of us who spoke for it 15 years ago naively anticipated, but it has not been a complete failure either. The GMC, the historic model, has been discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. Let us not forget that, even at the present time, the GMC’s wheels sometimes grind a little greasily, particularly over the competence of individual practitioners. That does not mean that any patient would want to see the GMC abolished and its role devolved to Andrew Lansley. The GMC is strong in its institutional mechanisms and it can put right the defects that are inevitable in any human institution. That is true for the GTC. I do not know much about it, and I certainly do not know as much about it as the noble Lord, who directed it during its first, uneasy infant steps. The GTC, I am reliably informed by people inside it, knows that it is not working properly. It knows what is wrong, why it is wrong and how to put it right. The solution surely is to fix the GTC, not to abolish it and then have a string of amendments such as we have in front of us today replacing the bits of the GTC that we see as so essential and putting them into somebody’s hands in the Department for Education. Surely the time has come really to think, “If this is a failure and if we did wrong 15 years ago, let us look to see whether this is true”.

In his Second Reading speech, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, who said that teachers in the private sector of education, for whom this Bill is not intended, are very keen to join the GTC. In January this year, research was published that showed that more than 90 per cent of parents wanted the profession to be regulated by a body such as the GTC and not by the Government. During all their speeches in this House and the other place, Ministers such as Mr Gove and the noble Lord, Lord Hill, have talked continuously about trusting the profession and letting teachers use their professional judgment. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, says, “Let teachers be the judge”. Let us go to the teachers and ask—as we had thought and hoped that we would—whether they want to be regulated by someone in Whitehall or are big enough to start regulating themselves properly.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I will not take you back to Henry VIII, as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, did. I sympathise enormously with his position. He did a magnificent job in trying to get the General Teaching Council off the ground. The issue of the GTC arose long before the noble Lord did, but rather after Henry VIII, in so much as the publication of Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens in, I think, 1840 so shocked the Victorian mind concerning conditions in schools that moves towards a general teaching council were started almost straight away. As the noble Lord told us, and the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, repeated, the General Medical Council was a great spur to teachers to get moving to get their own profession. What went wrong?

What went wrong was something that went right. In the 1860s and 1870s, as these moves were going on, teachers’ unions and associations started to get their act together. Quite rightly, they were there in order not to protect the customer—which is what a general teaching council and a general medical council are about, by improving professionalism—but to stop teachers being exploited by employers. That is how the unions came together. Unfortunately, these two things became conflated, and they stayed conflated throughout the 20th century. All the moves towards a general teaching council, which were successful in Scotland, died away because of the conflation of ideas on what a union would do and what a general teaching council should do.

I remember being sent by the then Secretary of State, Mark Carlisle, to talk to all the union leaders, because he rather thought that a general teaching council would help to improve professional standards. It was very clear right from the beginning that it was all about how the unions would get certain seats on such a council and what power they would have, and what power they would have to give away.

When it comes to the noble try by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, to get that together, we find exactly the same thing. As he said at Second Reading:

“Some of the unions that claimed to want a GTC backed off the moment they realised it might involve power-sharing, and the Government of the day were extremely ambivalent”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 754.]

Governments of every shade have been ambivalent throughout the history of bids for a general teaching council because they were absolutely unwilling to hand the reins of teacher supply to an outfit that would come to be dominated by unions. Today, if I remember correctly, some 36 of the current General Teaching Council’s 64 members have strong union connections. Therefore, the conflation is still there.

Education Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rix, has been called away as a result of a family medical situation and has therefore asked me to deliver his speech for him. I shall speak also to Amendment 42 in the noble Lord’s name.

He would first like to thank the Minister for the offer he recently made to meet him with some of his officials to discuss these matters in more detail. The noble Lord says that he is most appreciative of the Minister’s time and for his constructive and helpful approach to the various matters raised.

I intend to focus my comments on the educational attainment of pupils with special educational needs, notably those who are disabled, and particularly those who have a learning disability. For the record, it is appropriate that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, declares an interest to your Lordships through his role as president of the learning disability charity, Mencap.

As your Lordships may be aware, the exclusion of pupils with a learning disability remains disproportionately high compared to non-disabled children. Pupils with SEN—both with and without statements—are more than eight times more likely to be permanently excluded than pupils with no SEN. It is for this reason that he has tabled the amendment and Amendment 42, which aim to ensure that children with SEN are not unfairly excluded as a consequence of either their need for additional support to achieve their full potential, or the failure of a school to recognise and provide for those needs.

The amendment would ensure that where a child’s SEN has an association with behavioural needs, a school cannot exclude a pupil without demonstrating the attempts made to support those needs.

Inadequate identification of a pupil’s needs denies that pupil access to support and the consequence is a poor education. This in turn leads to children becoming frustrated with the lack of appropriate provision, and a misunderstanding by teaching professionals of the subsequent conduct and behaviour of the pupils concerned. However, all this may have been caused by the initial and ongoing failure of the school to identify that pupil’s support needs. In such a climate, what hope is there for the children affected? The tragedy is that once mistakes are made in the early years of a child’s education, they can sometimes lead to a repetition of these failings as they grow older and older. Amendment 34 would go some way to tackling some of the issues to which I have just referred.

This leads to my second amendment in this group, Amendment 42, which provides a trigger for an assessment of a child’s support needs if they are excluded more than once in a 12-month period. I understand that when this issue was raised during the Commons Committee stage of the Bill, Ministers claimed that it would be “too rigid in practice” to implement. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I do not share this view. Indeed, I take a contrary opinion: the prospect of the trigger would lead to more schools taking the right steps early on in an attempt to avoid exclusions occurring in the first place.

I fear Ministers may also overestimate the enthusiasm of some schools and educational professionals for identifying where extra support is required for children who exhibit failing conduct. I also advise a rethink of this position to fall in line with the SEN Green Paper, which states that the Government,

“will recommend in exclusion guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment in instances in which a pupil displays poor behaviour that does not improve despite effective behaviour management by the school”.

Why can the Education Bill not take note of the Green Paper, rather than wait a further year before accepting this sound advice? I beg to move.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I have enormous sympathy with the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, would no doubt have moved and spoken to if he had been able to stay. His record on behalf of the vulnerable and the disabled is superb. He has spent all his life doing these things.

The assessments for which he calls in his second amendment raise a question of some difficulty. Most schools in most of the 6,000 cases of permanent exclusion call for some reassessment at that stage. Not all schools do and that record should be improved. However, it is a stage that triggers—at least in the mind, if not in legality—a reassessment under those circumstances. There is a huge problem over that. Most SENCOs, most teachers and many professionals working in this area will tell you that when the assessment is triggered—which does not always happen, as we know—it is not independent. Some local authorities have a fine record in this area but there are some whose record is, frankly, poor. Too many of the professionals I have mentioned believe that because the assessment is made by local-authority-employed educational psychologists, it reflects rather more the funding and provision available in the local authority area than the needs of the child.

The Green Paper, which has already been mentioned, gives us a glimpse of hope on this. We all rather hope that when it becomes a White Paper it will become more definite. It promises that in some trial areas we shall find some real independent assessment of the kind that is necessary here. I hope that that will happen, that we will see many of those trials and that at the end we shall see a new system that will able to assist excluded children in this way.

I suspect that when the noble Lord, Lord Rix, reads Hansard he will find that the Minister has not been able to grant him immediate gratification. Nevertheless, he should be able to give some guarantee that those assessments must become more independent and be conducted by more objective criteria than they are at present.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I support Amendment 35 and Amendments 48 to 52 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Low. Children who have been permanently excluded are less likely to achieve five good GCSE results or to be in employment in later life. There is a long-established link between being excluded from school and being involved in crime. Research from the prisons inspector in 2004 found that 83 per cent of young men in custody had previously been excluded from school. There is a clear consensus that exclusion from school results in dramatically poorer outcomes for the child concerned and has significant long-term costs to society.

Exclusion disproportionately affects disabled children and children with special educational needs, further compounding the disadvantages that they face. The Bill’s equality impact assessment itself recognises that pupils with SEN account for 72 per cent of all exclusions. Disabled children and children with SEN continue to be over eight times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the rest of the school population, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, when she gave us his speech.

Children placed in School Action Plus who have significant needs but who are without the statutory support of a statement for special educational needs are over 20 times more likely to be excluded. The Special Educational Consortium, which provided a brief for today, recognises that the Government are seeking to ensure that children with SEN are not disadvantaged by the new system. However, I share its concern that the Government have not gone far enough to mitigate the potentially negative impact that the proposals would have on children with SEN. The consortium tells me that it is often unmet learning needs, including unmet special educational needs, that are at the root of the persistent behavioural difficulties that these young people become involved in. In Committee in the other place, the Minister for Schools said,

“Incidents which prompt multiple exclusions will often be an indication that a pupil has underlying difficulties that may not have been correctly identified”.

This recognition is most welcome; I think that we would all welcome it. The Minister went on to say that the Government,

“will recommend in exclusion guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment in instances in which a pupil displays poor behaviour that does not improve despite effective behaviour management by the school”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/11; col. 378.]

On Report in the other place, the Minister said that it was the Government’s intention to ensure that those assessments actually take place.

The Special Educational Consortium rightly has serious concerns that those assessments will not happen if there is only a recommendation and they are not included in the statutory guidance. All my experience, both in the other place as a Back-Bencher and a Minister and, as I said in the earlier debate, as a councillor for 20 years, shows me that that would be the case. Exclusion guidance is already clear about the need to look at underlying causes of behavioural difficulties, yet this has not reduced the number of children with special educational needs who are routinely and regularly excluded from school.