Education Bill

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the sentiments behind these amendments, and those in the opening remarks of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Hughes. Some of these amendments are quite technical, but there is something underpinning them in that the proposals before us are, first, unjust, and, secondly, not the best way of dealing with a significant problem. In particular, I support the group of amendments that give a right of reinstatement if an appeal should be successful.

I invite the Minister to revisit the Government’s assumptions that brought about this group of amendments. It strikes me as the sort of thing that is great in opposition but which you hope that people have realised is not very good by the time they get to government. Its starting point was something that we can all share: there are children whose behaviour is such that they ought not to be in schools. They ruin the educational chances of other children and make the lives of teachers a misery. Nobody ought to have to put up with that.

There is another starting point that I support: that the head needs control of their own school. They need to be able to set the rules and regulations. Within a framework their writ must run. That is the nature of leadership. Where this went wrong to some extent is that there is a feeling out there that the problem of reinstated children is bigger than it actually is. Somebody will quote the figures at some point, but it is not a big issue. It does not happen often. On most occasions, the tried and tested system which will now be repealed completely has worked well. Schools, parents, governing bodies, head teachers and pupils will on the whole say that it works well. In any structure in a social organisation like a school or society, there will be times when it does not work well, is a bit frayed at the edges and you might want to second-guess a judgment. We should always try to make that better, to improve the law and improve the process.

I do not know how the Government have concluded that this is the way forward from there. What I really want to test with the Minister is that there seem to be two either/or assumptions underpinning this bit of legislation. The first is that heads are always right and pupils are always wrong, which is a case of infallibility all over again. The second is that even if heads are wrong, we must not admit it. If one of those two assumptions does not underpin this set of amendments, I do not know what assumption does. Both are deeply flawed. I hope that I do not have to say more than “heads are not always right”. I have taught where heads have made the wrong decision about exclusion; sometimes there have been sets of circumstances. It has been absolutely right that the child has been reinstated, and the school has not collapsed. Nobody can say that the head is always right.

I agree about the power of the head, but it must be about having a set of rules that the school community and the parents have bought into, and about enacting those rules. I do not agree with this notion of leadership and headship which says, “I can make the rules up as I go along, and if I decide that you have broken them then I can act accordingly”. It is only by giving that sort of power of rule-making to the head that this legislation makes any sense.

Let us say that we do not agree that heads are always right. I sense that where the Government are coming from is that, in order to support heads, we must support their every decision. That is a miscalculation and a misjudgment, and I choose my words carefully. There are heads in this room who will tell me whether I am right or wrong in this but, to be honest, if a head teacher needed this sort of legal protection to keep order and discipline in their school, I would question the quality of the school leadership. A half good head teacher can manage a reinstatement and the house will not fall down. What seems to be feared here is that, if a reinstatement goes ahead, the head will lose control and authority within the school. Good heads do not do that; they manage it, because exclusion is not the only way in which to ensure discipline and good behaviour in schools.

If we make laws to protect weak heads so that they never have to admit that they are wrong, we will not be producing laws that are good for discipline in schools. We need laws that give heads the right to run their schools, and in our utterances and judgments we always need to support heads in what they do. They live in the real world; the children live in the real world; the parents and governors live in the real world, and nowhere else in the real world is someone proven innocent but not given the right to reinstatement.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I was for many years one of those utterly infallible heads until my governors thought otherwise. Will the noble Baroness comment on the other factor that she has not mentioned? There is a misconception that the organisation that reinstates these children against the wishes of the head and the governors is the local education authority. That is another fallacy that underpins so much of this proposed legislation—that somehow it is pernicious local authorities that want to keep the heads under control. Perhaps she would like to comment on that, given her experience as a Minister and a Secretary of State.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

The noble Lord is right. As a not so infallible Minister, I remember the legislation because there was a fear that local authorities would make life difficult for head teachers. If my memory serves me right—and I am absolutely sure that it does on this—there was a requirement in previous legislation to make sure that someone with educational experience was on the appeals panel. Previous legislation has done the mending that needed to be done in terms of the appeals panel. People who have served as Members of Parliament may also know that there has always been a feeling among parents and students that appeals panels lean over backwards to support the schools. If there is a feeling in society, it is not that the appeals panel leans over backwards to exclude the child; it is the other way about. As the noble Lord said, many people on the panels have educational experience and want to support heads. Therefore, the people on the appeals panel are not anti-heads, anti-discipline, anti-order, anti-fairness or anti-justice; they are people who know about education and they try to do a difficult job.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight, because I found it extraordinarily surprising that this Government, who stand very much for working with and alongside parents and making sure that there is accountability and responsibility at home, can suggest that they would give a detention without informing parents. Having worked with the Minister, Tim Loughton, on other issues and knowing how important it is for the Government that children should be safeguarded, I find it astounding that they can suggest that children can be detained in the evening and be allowed to go home without their parents knowing and without safeguards. I expect better.

Detention is not always about discipline. I got my detention for leaving my French homework on the bus and not producing it.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

Quite right!

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I, too, support both these amendments. There are real concerns, as we have already heard, about the proposals to remove the requirement for written notice of detention outside school hours, given the safety concerns of parents for the whereabouts of their children, particularly if their children are at risk due to family circumstances or where they live or the nature of their journey from home to school. It is essential that the school gives parents notice if their child is to remain at school outside school hours and that the child’s safety and well-being are considered and given top priority.

Many have considered this proposal to be in direct opposition to the current insistence that the parents of excluded children must account for their whereabouts in the first five days of exclusion. It is only fair that, in return, parents are kept up to date by schools on their child’s whereabouts. I therefore support the amendment to retain the requirement for written notice of detention outside school hours.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to ask the Minister a specific question, which arose from the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, without any support or evidence at all to back up his claims. We should not have any legislation on the statute book unless it is actually going to do something—to improve or rectify a situation. The Education Act 2002 gave schools two powers. One was the right to earned autonomy and the other was the power to innovate. I am sure the Minister’s officials could tell him, or her, immediately how many schools since 2002 have applied under those powers to innovate to have detentions on the same day.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

In the case of pupils who were young carers, one hopes that that would be known by the schools, although I grant you that it might not be. Once again, we come back to the fact that detentions without 24 hours’ notice would occur in very exceptional circumstances. Teachers would ensure with the pupils concerned that there was no reason for it to be inappropriate for them to be detained in those circumstances. Teachers are already legally required to take appropriate and reasonable action in giving an out-an-hours detention and to consider all the relevant circumstances. I do not believe for one moment that they would be gung-ho. We should listen to head teachers when they tell us that this measure will help them.

My noble friend Lord Willis asked how many schools applied for a power to innovate. The answer is probably none, because few schools have ever applied to use the power for any reason. It would simply be something that they had it in their power to do if the need arose.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I am grateful to the Minister for responding so quickly and to the Box for finding the response. She makes exactly the point that I want to make; namely, that these powers already exist. You do not need additional legislation to have an impact here. If a school wanted the power, it could simply apply to the Secretary of State under the 2002 legislation and the Secretary of State would gladly give it to them.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, there is currently a ban on giving a detention without 24 hours’ notice. That is why we are legislating here to enable schools to have the additional power if they wish to use it in very special circumstances.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I apologise if I am being incredibly stupid, but the 2002 Act gives the Secretary of State the right to grant to any school in England earned autonomy and the power to innovate. If you have the power to innovate, surely that takes precedence over any legislation, otherwise—I say with due respect—the 2002 Act becomes meaningless.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

With due respect to my noble friend, I think that it would be quite a time-consuming process for each school to apply to the Secretary of State for a power to innovate for a circumstance which would be likely to arise very seldom and which would need immediate action. Processes for expecting in advance to be able to do this are not practical.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I am sorry to take up the Committee’s time but this is important. It would not be done on every occasion. As a school, you apply for the power to innovate and you put it into your polices that you have the power to give a detention without notice—end of story. Why is new legislation needed?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Each school would have to apply individually for that power to innovate. We are setting in legislation the fact that each school would not need to apply individually to the Secretary of State; they would have it as an additional power which they could use on the rare occasions that the school deemed that it was an appropriate way of dealing with a pupil’s behaviour.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I shall be relatively brief; I suspect we shall want to adjourn fairly soon. I was pleased to put my name to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Puttnam, not just because there is a reasonable presumption that you should always agree with one of the people who proposed you at your introduction but because he is, as ever, right. As we have heard, the amendment suggests that teachers themselves should vote on whether the GTCE should continue. I looked up what the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, said on 2 June last year, when he announced the scrapping of the GTCE. Incidentally, I understand that the people working there, including the chief executive, were at the time as surprised about it as everybody else. Michael Gove said that the Government trust the professionals. This amendment trusts teachers to decide whether they want their professional body to continue.

The other half of the amendment uses the proper threshold. This should appeal to the Government, given that on 26 June, on the “Andrew Marr Show”, the Secretary of State Mr Gove confirmed that Ministers are looking at minimum thresholds in the context of strike ballots. In respect of such a ballot, which I am assuming that the Minister will say he supports, because it is so much in the spirit of where this Government are going, I would argue for the retention of the GTC, but with reform as necessary. Why the GTC? Because, in the end, professionalism is important. Again, I looked up the words of the Secretary of State in November last year in his forward to the White Paper. He said:

“At the heart of our plan is a vision of the teacher as our society’s most valuable asset”.

He went on to say:

“There is no calling more noble, no profession more vital and no service more important than teaching”.

Who could disagree with his words?

The Secretary of State’s actions cause me a little more concern. Given his commitment, if he so believes in them and their professionalism, it is a surprise that teachers have voted overwhelmingly that they have no confidence in this Secretary of State. Perhaps that is because of the reality of his attacks on that professionalism. Look at what he is doing to the pension scheme. When the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was in his place, he renegotiated the teachers’ pension scheme and made it effective and funded. They see that attack. They see anyone being allowed to teach in free schools, and they see a mum’s army being asked to come in and teach during the strike. If he was Health Secretary, would he have had said the same about nurses, and that mums should go and replace nurses in hospital if there was a nurses’ strike? If he was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, would he ask them to do the same if there was a firefighters’ strike? I suspect not. I suspect that he would respect their professionalism more than he respects teachers.

Then he wants them arbitrarily to close their professional body. As others have said, would he have closed the General Medical Council if he was Health Secretary? No he would not. He would respect their professionalism and their professional body. The other shocking consequence of the abolition of the General Teaching Council is that the teaching agency will take on only the disciplinary functions of the GTC, as we heard in a speech of my noble friend Lady Jones. Can he confirm this? Does this seriously mean that there will no longer be a register of teachers? If so, this is an extraordinarily reckless move by the Government. I assume that the logic is that it is now up to schools to decide whether anyone can teach and what they are paid, and it is all part of this wonderful freedom that we are now going to give head teachers. Hence the assumption is that everyone is eligible to teach unless they fail a CRB check. I find it incomprehensible as to how that will work—and not just in relation to the relationship with Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland and making sure that people can move freely, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I just do not understand how the teaching agency will exercise its disciplinary functions without a register or how this move will improve teaching standards. I see it only lowering teaching standards. There are opportunities to use a register to raise standards. You could introduce a right to continuous professional development to teachers and, in return, they would have to re-register, so that we could ensure that they continued to receive training and raise their professional standards.

Finally, I repeat the point that this is part of the power grab by the Secretary of State. He will be directly responsible for recruiting, training and disciplining teachers as a result of this Bill. That is a massive change. It makes him very vulnerable to problems, when problems occur, as they inevitably will. But that is his problem.

These are just some of the arguments and reasons why I would reform the GTC to distil its statutory functions down to those coincidentally in Amendment 64A, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. We could also think about the composition of the council and how it can be reformed better to represent the customer rather than the producer of education. With reform, I think the GTC can be an effective organisation, but I am happy to be hands-off about this and to leave it to teachers—hence my support for the amendment. If teachers do not want their professional body, they should be trusted to get rid of it.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I rise partly to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, for calling him Lord Lucas earlier. I am sorry for that. I blame my Front Bench for giving me the wrong information. I do not want like the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, to go back to the Middle Ages and end up at 1858 with the General Medical Council or indeed to revisit Nicholas Nickleby and the Dickens novels. I would like to start in 1963 when I became a teacher. It was the proudest day of my life when I got my first teaching post and went into a secondary modern school, Middleton County Secondary Modern boys school in Leeds. I spent 34 years in the teaching profession and I regarded it not only as a profession but as the most noble and decent thing that I have done in my life. If I had my life to run over again, I would do exactly the same thing.

One thing was always missing, however. Those of my friends who, unlike me, did not leave school early to try to play football and fail before going into teaching but who became doctors, lawyers or dentists all had a professional body which not only were they proud of but which decided the standards by which they ran their profession and which they met.

It was interesting that last Thursday we had two of your Lordships, the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Hill, proudly talk about having to visit the dentist. I do not know whether it was an enjoyable experience for the Minister but it certainly was for the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who was speaking perfectly well today. I suspect that when they went to the dentist they wanted to know that the dentist was registered as a dentist with the General Dental Council, which was set up by the Dentists Act 1956. If they had any doubt, they could have gone on the internet, looked at the register and confirmed that the dentist was qualified, registered and hopefully competent. They would not have liked to go on to the web and seen a phrase saying, “It might be a dentist. The only information we have is that he has not been barred for misconduct and that at some time in the past he did some training”.

That is what we are talking about. Let us remember that this Bill comes from the White Paper, The Importance of Teaching. If the importance of teaching is to say that we are not even prepared to let you as a profession have your own register to decide the standards by which you operate, the standards by which parents have confidence in you and the standards by which society has confidence in you, then God help us.

I can say to the Minister that the dentist that he visited last week was taught by teachers. They got the training necessary to go off to university and to train as a dentist from the teaching profession as it stood. I say to my noble friend that the GTC was set up by the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 and that I sat on that Bill. To be fair to the Minister, the Labour Party at the time was not desperately keen on it either. I can remember proposing an amendment to that Bill which set up the register, because the original proposal—the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, will agree—was to have a GTC but with the Secretary of State having the register. It was through good argument during the passage of that Bill that we persuaded the then Government that essential to a GTC must be a register of teachers who were not only trained and competent. That was the very basis of it.

I support much of what the Minister wants to do in saying to schools that they are going to have greater autonomy, that head teachers will have greater autonomy and that the Government are going to set up all sorts of different organisations, although we may or may not agree with some of them. But to say that the one group of people who cannot have autonomy are the teachers themselves as part of the teaching profession is sad indeed.

As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, mentioned, for the Secretary of State to say in his White Paper that there is,

“no calling more noble, no profession more vital and no service more important”,

than teaching and then, at one stroke of the pen, say, “Ah, but you are not even worthy of having your own teaching council”—my goodness, Minister, you really do need to think again.

Education Bill

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I hope that the Committee will forgive me for intervening briefly but the last point is very important. What has triggered the behavioural deterioration that has resulted in exclusion? These children may already have special educational needs. The behaviour may be down to bullying but sometimes it is due to abuse. Sexual abuse is particularly difficult to uncover in these children. It may also be a grief reaction to loss or bereavement, which can sometimes be delayed. One problem is that in the majority of our schools staff do not have adequate training to deal with children who are bereaved and have bereavement and loss reactions. The reactions to grief and loss in this group of children can appear to be disruptive and bad behaviour, and it can exacerbate other behaviours in the children around them. Therefore, the triggers that have set this cascade towards exclusion going are absolutely critical, and if we do not focus on them we will continue to fail children over time.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I rise briefly to address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in Amendment 39A. His comments, which I strongly support, take us back to 1979 and the Warnock report. They take us back to why that report and the 1981 Act moved away from the categorisation of special needs and conditions associated with special needs and towards two things. The first was to look at the severest cases and to make sure that they were properly assessed with a statement of special needs, which then had to be statutorily supported in our schools. I very much supported that at the time.

The Warnock report also recognised that in 1979—not in 2011—some 20 per cent of our children had some form of special needs which should, if recognised, be supported within the school community. From that time through to when I entered Parliament, I spent most of my professional career working first in the north-east, opening the first school to look at the inclusion of children with physical impairments; and then latterly in Leeds, working to ensure that children with severe learning difficulties—mostly Down’s syndrome, hearing impairment and sight impairment—became part of the mainstream setting.

In all those cases, both in the north-east, where we did some pioneering work with NFER and then HMI, and in Leeds, the crucial factor—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is not here at the moment—was training your staff. You can identify until you are blue in the face but, following that identification, you have to ensure that you translate the needs of the child into an appropriate action point, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, with the appropriate resources. This is not a massive resource issue but it is a training issue. It is a question of ensuring that people have the skills to support these children. I am sorry that the noble Baroness whose name I should remember—

[Noble Lords]

Finlay.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I apologise. She is so famous that I get star struck. Not only was the noble Lord, Lord Finlay—I am sorry; I have given the noble Baroness a lesser status. I shall shut up before I dig any more holes. The reality is that unless you look at the child in the round you will start to get these narrow categorisations. That is my worry about the noble Lord’s amendment; if we go back to looking for a categorisation, we will start looking in silos rather than at the whole child within the whole school and indeed in the broader community. I ask the Minister, when he considers these issues, to do so in the round. The danger of an education programme that looks at giving autonomy to every single school in the country, both secondary and primary, is that it becomes more and more difficult to find opportunities to do the training and create the systems.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

As noble Lords know, the clause changes the appeals process for pupils if they are permanently excluded. It removes the ability to appeal to an independent panel with the power to reinstate a pupil. It does not make any provision for, and does not seem to recognise, the fact that the vast majority of children who are excluded have a special educational need or a disability. As noble Lords have already alluded to, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, this group of amendments focuses on trying to mitigate the even greater impact of these proposals on SEN and disabled children by proposing assessments and reports at various stages in the process that the Government are now putting forward. I support all the amendments in principle. I am speaking to those from my noble friends and me in this group—Amendments 36, 39 and 54—the last of which is slightly different.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, was right to alert us to two things. First, there are the traumatic and possibly long-term consequences for a child of a permanent exclusion; it can stay with them for many years and affect their job prospects as well as their academic record. Secondly, there are the difficult decisions that schools have to make, particularly those working with difficult children and in challenging communities.

I accept that, but I would also say that in taking these decisions it is important that the process demonstrates to parents, to all the pupils and to staff that there is a process of natural justice—the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, referred to this. Whatever the difficulties that schools are facing, is it right that there should be a process in which there is no opportunity for a decision of an independent tribunal that says, “Actually, we think that this decision was the wrong one” and reinstates the child? I pose that question because it seems to be an important one. What are we saying to children and parents if, after a permanent exclusion, we push them through that process but they do not have the redress that we would all have in any other situation about a decision of such seriousness that affected our future? We talked before about messages, and this seems to be really the wrong message to give to everyone, not just to the children concerned.

We heard a great deal about the evidence that children with special educational needs are grossly disproportionately represented in the figures for permanent exclusions. With respect to the Minister, the issues that he has to address with regard to this group of amendments are as follows. The evidence now is that, even with the power of reinstatement, and even though it is rarely used—it is used in only 10 per cent of the cases that go to appeal; there are only 60 cases a year out of more than 600 that appeal—schools are still disproportionately excluding children with special educational needs and disabilities. Therefore, what will be the effect of removing even that small check and balance, which will be in the back of a governing body’s mind when it is making this decision? One can conclude from the evidence before us of what happens next only that the removal of the power to reinstate will, if it does anything, compound the position of children with special educational needs and disabilities, making it more likely that they will be excluded permanently. That is why noble Lords have tabled this group of amendments, including those in my name and that of my noble friend—to mitigate that effect.

Education Bill

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest, first, as chair of the e-Learning Foundation, about which the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, will be delighted, and, secondly, as having spent 20 years as head teacher of some of the north of England's largest, and I would say poorest and most demanding, comprehensive schools.

I begin my comments by saying that there is much to commend in the Bill, which, like most legislation in the education field, is brimming with good intentions. I also commend the way in which my noble friend introduced the Bill, leaving out the wild, implausible claims of the Secretary of State in another place

My starting point for the debate must be the 13 years of the Labour Government, which put education at the heart of their agenda, which spent more of our national resource than any other Government since the war and introduced more initiatives, targets and high-stakes testing, all of which were to drive up standards. However, standards plateaued at best, and for our most vulnerable children simply slipped behind. Worse still, we saw our position against our international competitors drop dangerously down the OECD league tables. I take no particular pride in saying that, because I believe that successive Labour Ministers genuinely believed that their policies would make the quantum change that our nation and our nation's children deserved.

Ironically, much of the policy succeeded. Our best schools compare with the best in the world. Our universities and college students compete and win against global competition, particularly in science and engineering. However, the Bill will be judged not against our high-fliers, against those with aspirant parents or against those in high performing schools but against what it does for the habitual underachievers.

Today, as we debated the Bill, 64,000 children voted with their feet and played truant. Today, 3 million children live in poverty—about 1.5 million, according to Action for Children, in severe poverty. The correlation between poverty and educational underachievement is well proven.

The influential 2009 IFS report, Drivers and Barriers to Education Success, could not have been clearer. Only 20 per cent of our poorest children attain five GCSEs, including English and maths at above grade C, compared with 74 per cent of the richest 20 per cent. Fifteen per cent of our poorest children become NEETs at the age of 17, compared with only 2 per cent of the richest. Twenty-four per cent of our poorest children play truant, compared with 8 per cent of the wealthiest. We know, too, that poverty breeds a lack of ambition, of self-belief, to get out of the poverty trap. Crucially, evidence from around the world tells us that access to education remains the golden key that can unlock the potential of our young people. It is the silver bullet.

We should not judge the Bill on how many irrelevant quangos are axed or how many new powers the Secretary of State can take unto himself. The Bill should be judged on how it gives our poorest children opportunity and hope. There are some good elements: early years places for two year-olds, the pupil premium, raising the participation age, access to more apprenticeships, comprehensive all-ages careers service, greater freedom and autonomy for heads and teachers. All those are really positive things in addressing that issue, but that is not enough.

Far too much of the Bill is about rewarding those who can take advantage of the new freedoms. The new baccalaureate is a case in point. If it is handled badly, it will become a stick with which to beat the poor and the less able and will challenge those with special needs. I want the Minister to recognise that reaching the hard to reach is about more than giving primary children an additional dose of synthetic phonics; it is about starting from where a child is and designing a curriculum that is relevant to that child and its parents. It is about building confidence in basic aspects of learning and rewarding success, not punishing failure. As the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, rightly said, it is also about recognising that the most potent 21st century medium for learning is information technology and that children, no matter where they are born or how poor or wealthy they may be, are hard wired for the technological age. Yet ICT is totally absent from the Bill, as it is from the language of coalition Ministers, though I am pleased that my noble friend has agreed to visit a school where the e-Learning Foundation is very active.

In today’s learning world, having access to a computer and broadband is not a luxury, it is an absolute necessity, yet 1 million children in England do not have access to broadband or the internet. It is no coincidence that the north-east has the lowest educational attainment of any region of England. It is the poorest region and has the lowest uptake of broadband and digital inclusion. According to the IFS, having a computer at home at the age of 14 strongly correlates to educational attainment at the age of 16. It means an increase of 14 GCSE points, whereas lack of access means a drop of 20 GCSE points. Access to the internet is a crucial factor in explaining the gap in educational attainment and combined with poverty is a double whammy for our poorest children. I appreciate that there is little spare cash to support digital inclusion. That is where charities such as the e-Learning Foundation can help. However, access to the pupil premium would do much to bridge that digital divide.

Michael Gove said in another place that the Bill will prepare children for the technological challenges of the 21st century. If that is so, some mention of ICT in the Bill before it completes its passage is absolutely crucial. After all, the iPad which the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, can afford would give access not only to the works of Shakespeare, which the Secretary of State desires, but to half the world’s knowledge at the touch of a fingertip. That is what I call giving children a real opportunity.

Education: 16 to 18 Year-olds

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Grand Committee

Asked By

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to offer support to 16 to 18 year-old students in full-time education.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes)]

My Lords, I intervene at this point because we believe that a Division in the Chamber is imminent. We must make a start but once the Division is called, I then have to suspend the Committee immediately for 10 minutes. I am extremely sorry if that interrupts anybody’s flow of speech but I thought it important to mention it.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

Thank you for that warning.

I am grateful to noble Lords for speaking in this not so packed Room in this short debate on support for 16 to 18 year-olds in full-time education. It is rather sad that the Room is not packed for such an important topic. I am particularly grateful that my noble friend Lord Fink is with us. We are delighted that he is making his maiden speech and we very much look forward to his contribution. I actually sought this debate in July 2010 and it is testimony to the potency of EMAs that, despite last week’s announcement of a very welcome replacement bursary scheme, the question of support for 16 to 19 year-olds remains a contentious issue. Indeed, when the Mayor of London argued on BBC “Question Time” last week that the new scheme did not go far enough, he expressed—

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I am very grateful that we are having this debate on support for 16 to 18 year-olds and particularly delighted that my noble friend Lord Fink has chosen to make his maiden speech this evening. I sought this debate in July 2010 and it really is testimony to the potency of this issue that, despite the Secretary of State’s very welcome Statement last week, the issue of support for 16 to 19-year-olds remains contentious. Indeed, when the Mayor of London—an uncontentious figure—argued on BBC “Question Time” last week that the new scheme did not go far enough, he expressed the views of many of us who believe that the Government produced little sound evidence for ending EMAs and threatening participation, other than the need to save money.

The decision to save £560 million by scrapping EMAs was hardly unexpected. Indeed, given the parlous state of our finances, I appreciate that the money had to come from somewhere. However, the argument for doing so—that this was an ill targeted scheme, that it was unsuccessful and that it had huge deadweight costs—simply did not bear scrutiny. The Government largely pray in aid the 2007 IFS evaluation, claiming that 90 per cent of students in receipt of EMAs would have stayed on regardless. Those are the so-called deadweight costs. Yet the IFS did not make that claim. Rather, it was a somewhat shoddy report by the NFER that surveyed students prior to them even entering post-16 education. In fact, the IFS concluded in 2007 that the EMA achieved its aim of increasing and retaining participation by some six percentage points—the key aims of the previous and the current Governments.

What is more, if deadweight costs are to be key criteria for revenue reduction, what about the winter fuel allowances for the over 60s, many of whom, like those in your Lordships’ House, could well afford their own heating? What about subsidised student loans, which go predominantly to the better-off, not to mention child benefits paid to large numbers of those whose children are not remotely at risk? Indeed, a far more reliable source of evidence about the effectiveness of EMAs came from the CfBT Education Trust 2009 research project, Should we end the Education Maintenance Allowance?, which clearly showed the success of the programme. So does the mountain of direct survey evidence from the AoC, the 157 Group and from schools, demonstrating the crucial part that EMAs have played in providing support for students, especially for travel and equipment and particularly for vocational courses.

However, the Minister will be surprised to hear that I am not calling for the EMA scheme to be retained. The direction of travel announced by the Secretary of State last week is right and I pay tribute both to the Government and to my honourable friend Simon Hughes, the MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, for producing an interesting proposal. It passes responsibility to schools and colleges for its execution and secures £70 million of Treasury cash to achieve the welcome but modest £180 million budget for the new scheme. Perhaps the Minister, in his summing up, will confirm that this is new money and that he is not simply top-slicing existing 16 to 19 programmes.

I am calling for the restoration of more of the £570 million that the scheme currently spends so that a wider group of students can be supported. Without a larger bursary fund we cannot start to tackle issues such as travel costs, which are one of the largest obstacles to participation and retention post 16.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, for the third time, I am making the case not to retain the EMA scheme as it stands but to retain a significant part of its budget. However, to make a credible case for retaining resources while still delivering substantial savings to the Treasury actually requires us to think differently. I concede that young people from families with household income of up to £16,200 a year—the maximum income level for free school meals—have largely been protected to some degree by the bursary proposals, although the IFS paper last Tuesday made a different assessment. But if parents have a joint gross income above £30,800, young people at present do not get a single penny of EMA. My concern is that the Government are putting at risk participation by young people from families with incomes between £16,200 and £30,800—hardly the affluent middle classes.

There is a widespread belief that 16 to 19 financial support is simply limited to EMAs; it is not. There are two other significant sources of financial support: 16 to 19 child benefit and 16 to 19 child tax credit, which are treated not as education but as social security. However, at 16 plus, child benefit and child tax credit are not paid to parents for every child. They are paid only on condition that young people are in full-time education or unwaged training. Parents with 16 to 19 year-olds in jobs, apprenticeships, part-time education and those not in education, employment and training—the NEET group—do not receive child benefit or child tax credit. That is, some 15 per cent of all 16 to 18 year-olds.

I am inviting the Minister to view 16 to 19 child benefit and 16 to 19 child tax credit as financial support for education, not simply for social security. Currently, around £1.5 billion is spent on 16 to 19 child benefit and £2.3 billion is spent on child tax credit, which, when added to the EMA spending, amounts not to £700 million but to £4.3 billion of taxpayer support. Is the Minister confident that this entire £4.3 billion pot is being deployed in such a way that maximises post-16 participation, supports students and delivers value for money for taxpayers? No doubt the Minister will argue, correctly, that the Government are increasing the level of means-tested child tax credit, including for families with 16 to 19 year-olds in full-time further education. But at the same time the availability of child tax credits is being scaled back to those with a gross household income of around £26,000 from 2012-13. In any event, the extra payments for those below £26,000 a year were never intended to compensate for the loss of EMA which, as the Secretary of State has admitted, is up to £1,000 a year.

No one can deny that the EMA is not progressive, as payments are restricted to young people from households where less than £30,800 is coming in, but if there are deadweight costs in the EMA, what is the level of deadweight cost in 16 to 19 child benefit? The reality is that 16 to 19 year-olds from better-off families will stay on in full-time education irrespective of whether their parents get £20.30 or £13.40 in child benefit.

A week ago in the other place the Secretary of State argued that,

“there are real questions as to whether it is socially just to pay 45% of students a cash incentive to stay in learning when we could concentrate our resources on removing the barriers to learning faced by the poorest”.—[Official Report, Commons; 28/3/11; col. 52.]

The fact that he made that statement is quite interesting. If that is the case, how can it be socially just to pay child benefit to better-off families with 16 to 19 year-olds who will stay on anyway? So rather than cut £360 million in financial support from the EMA, which risks reducing participation of young people from relatively poor families, the Government should look at finding the £360 million from 16 to 19 child benefit paid to better-off families, which will not put participation at risk. That is the tenor of my argument. At present, the Government have opted to divert EMA funding from the relatively poor to the poorest, rather than divert 16 to 19 child benefit funding from the better-off to the relatively poor. We should debate that argument.

I believe that there is an overwhelming case for decoupling payments of nought-to-16 child benefit, paid to every child, and payments of 16 to 19 child benefit paid only to young people in full-time education and unwaged training. I also believe a common means test should apply to financial support for all 16 to 19 year-olds. I accept that that would extend means-testing. If you are going to target support, you have to have some form of means-testing.

As for balancing the books, my noble friend Lord Sassoon provided Written Answers to me on 7 December about potential savings from restricting 16 to 19 child benefit. For illustrative purposes, if 16 to 19 child benefit was restricted to those with less than £31,500—just £700 above the present maximum threshold for the EMA—the Treasury could save a whopping £875 million. Restricted to those with a gross household income of £37,500, the savings would be £600 million, with the equivalent savings just for England being £740 million and £510 million. I am arguing that there is an alternative way of providing the support for 16 to 19 year-olds, which could be targeted through the bursary scheme hugely effectively following the Government’s proposals, and by thinking differently about how we use the maximum resource rather than having pots of money in silos which do not move.

Further Education: 16 to 19 Year-olds

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what support they plan to give 16–19 year olds in further education.

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

My Lords, we are committed to raising the participation age to 17 by 2013 and to 18 by 2015. We are protecting funding for 16 to 19 learning, expanding the number of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds to 131,000 and creating more training places. We are also doubling the number of UTCs and have announced a £180 million 16 to 19 bursary fund, which will be targeted towards those young people who most need support to continue their education and training post-16.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I thank the Minister for that, as ever, helpful reply. In terms of the bursary fund, will the £70 million shortfall be arrayed on the 16 to 19 budgets that are already there? The recent AoC inquiry looked at reasons why students were not staying on in colleges and found that, for 94 per cent of colleges, the reason was access to transport. Local authority after local authority is doing away with 16 to 19 transport. Will my noble friend please look at this, because there is no point having good colleges and good courses if the students cannot get there?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

From the whole range of conversations that I have had with principals and with Members in another place from all parties who have brought them in to see me, particularly from rural areas, I am very aware that there are particularly acute transport provision issues, as my noble friend says. One of the points of the new discretionary fund, unlike the current one, is that schools and colleges will be able to make provision for transport. Local authorities have a statutory duty under the Education Act 1996 to set out what provision they are making for post-16 transport. However, I agree with my noble friend that that needs to be kept under review. We need to see what local authorities are doing and how they are discharging their duty and to bear in mind the importance of transport going forward.

Building Schools for the Future

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his attempted hospital pass, which I decline to accept. The reason that I decline to accept it is that although, as I said, I have spoken to a large number of local authorities concerned over many months and will be happy to do so again, the judge makes clear in his ruling that in his view the decision as to what to do subsequent to the representations made by the six local authorities rightly rests with the Secretary of State.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, the essence of the judgment in the High Court is that the Secretary of State did not carry out appropriate consultation. What consultation has my noble friend had with local authorities about the top-slicing of capital budgets for academies and free schools? If he has not had legal advice on that matter, will he take it urgently to avoid going to court again?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I think that I am right in saying that that question should be directed to the DCLG, which is the responsible department, but I will follow up my noble friend's question.

Educational Psychology

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am not sure that I can give the noble Baroness the specific assurance for which she has asked. However, I can give the assurance that all these issues and the best sustainable system will be considered by my honourable friend Sarah Teather as part of the Green Paper consideration. There are a number of ways in which one can approach this matter and I know that she will be keen to give it the fullest possible consideration.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is not simply the training of educational psychologists that is a problem but the number available, given that so much of their time is spent purely on annual statements? Will he give the House an assurance that when his right honourable friend—sorry, he is my right honourable friend as well—devolves all budgets to individual schools, the funding for educational psychologists and their training will come from a separate pot rather than from individual school budgets?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As I am sure my noble friend knows, currently educational psychologists are funded separately and the relevant money does not come from schools’ budgets. I accept his point that it is important not just to get the training right, although that is important, but that one has to look at the numbers as well. The advice we have received from the CWDC is that the numbers seem to be appropriate, but I agree that one needs to keep that very much under review.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

I understand the point that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is making, but I did not discuss that matter with my honourable friend. After all, the procedure at the other end is not a matter for a Member of this House; it is entirely for the other end.

On statementing, the general duty on local authorities to ensure that appropriate children are statemented is not within the scope of the SEN obligations. It is a discretionary matter for academies as to whether they put forward children for statementing. Therefore, on one view, children in academies might be disadvantaged; on the other hand, the likelihood is that academies might overpresent children for assessment for statements—but this, of course, has its own problems.

That the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, has felt it necessary to table this amendment again highlights the fact that many noble Lords are still not satisfied that the mechanism is fair and transparent for calculating how much extra funding goes to the academies and how much will remain with the local authorities to enable them properly to carry out their duties in relation to the children in maintained schools.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, accepted that these arrangements must be seen to be fair and undertook to,

“reflect on the underlying principle of making sure that there is transparency and trust in these arrangements”.—[Official Report, 23/6/10; col. 1333.]

The ready reckoner on the department website has a lot to answer for and the funding mechanisms are clearly a work in progress. We have suggested that someone needs to take an independent view that these arrangements are fair to children in and out of academies. However, because of the rules on Third Reading, we were not allowed to table amendments containing further ideas on how this might be done.

We are not convinced that the YPLA is up to the job and remain concerned about this matter. As I said earlier, we have briefed our colleagues in another place, who will now have the opportunity to explore these issues further. The Government have time to get this right and we on these Benches hope that they will do so.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I was not in the House when the Bill was presented, but I wish to raise an issue on this important amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. Since 1979 and the Warnock report, Governments of all persuasions have committed themselves to the principle of inclusive education, of allowing children with mild and complex special needs to be taught with their able peers within mainstream schools. Will the Minister say whether the Bill recognises that the small number of SEN children who appear in mainstream schools, and who will appear in some of the academies, may be refused entry simply because the school does not have access to adequate facilities to make provision for those children? They have specific needs that require funding. I hope that my noble friend will respond appropriately when he replies to the amendment.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

The case has been well made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilkins and Lady Howe, and others. I spoke on the issue on Report so I shall not labour the point further. Indeed, it is hardly necessary as I think that the Minister acknowledged, in responding on Report, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, said, that there is a problem. There is a case to answer but the Minister has not answered it. I very much hope that he can do a little better when he responds. Otherwise, as other noble Lords have said, the discussion will have to continue in another place. I very much hope that that will not be necessary and that the Minister can respond in a way that will sufficiently reassure the House this afternoon.

It is not only that there is a problem; it is an increasing problem. The dissipation of local authority budgets will increase with the number of academies. There are few private providers who can take over the provision of the specialist services that we are talking about. The only way realistically to provide them is for local authorities, which have a sufficient critical mass to sustain services for these low incidence groups, to do so. If the budget is removed from local authorities so that they cannot provide specialist services, there is the problem of knowing where academies will buy them in for their pupils from low incidence groups. The problem is serious and is likely to grow. I hope that the Minister can give us further reassurance when he replies.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I apologise to the noble Lord but I am trying to get the parlance correct. It would be helpful if he would explain the funding arrangement under the previous Government when a new academy came into a local authority area. How was the money clawed back to balance the places and resources?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

The noble Lord will know that academies have been used to replace failing schools, so there is a fundamental difference in the policy reflected in this Bill. We are being asked to agree arrangements for academies to convert from outstanding schools and, in this case, we are discussing additional schools. There are one or two additional schools for which my noble friend sitting next to me, or I as the Minister responsible, might have been able to find the additional money. That is why I keep asking the Minister whether he has some revenue funding that he has not told us about and whether he has agreement from the Treasury. In these straitened times that is unlikely, so it is most likely that it will come from other schools in the local authority area.

Is the Minister aware that following the unfortunate Building Schools for the Future announcement, there is a considerable appetite among local authorities to take legal action against his department when things are rushed out without working through the details? That is what is happening because of the unexplained desire to get the Bill on the statute book this month.

I know that I have asked the Minister a lot of questions, and he may want to write to me with some of the answers. Since I raised it in this Chamber last week, I would be most grateful if he could explain in his summing up how revenue funding will work for these additional schools, and why the Bill does not provide for consultation with local authorities and school forums.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

First, I am extremely supportive of these amendments, but I was amused by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about Ofsted. I am sure he did not wish to mislead the House because that would be unforgivable, but Ofsted does not report on every school every year. In fact, the proposal of my learned friend the Minister is that those that get academy status, particularly those that get automatic academy status because Ofsted has already determined them to be outstanding schools, will in fact be rarely inspected by Ofsted. I think the whole purpose of my noble friend’s proposal in this amendment is that we will have comparable data, which we were due to have under the 1996 Act, so that we can make sure that we do not have the scrabble in the media to compare different types of schools but that we have a baseline of data on all our schools, including academies, that allow this House, and indeed the other place, to have a sensible, adult and cultured debate about the progress of our schools.