Education and Adoption Bill

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this Bill and for emphasising his undoubted concern for children—one which we all, of course, share. I very much enjoyed the inspiring speech of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, and look forward to further contributions from him. I shall focus on the education section of the Bill, and shall first make some comments on education in general, as I see it. I shall then go on to talk about “coasting”, and oversight and inspection of schools.

The aim of any education Bill surely has to be to improve the life chances of all children. I think we would all agree on that. I support excellence in education, but I would want to look at the meaning—the definition—of education more thoroughly. The Prime Minister, other politicians and other people lately have talked about the importance of social mobility. Schools, of course, should contribute to that, not just from testing and examination results—and I shall talk a little more about that later. The Minister knows that education is much more complex than just examination results.

I would like to give just a few facts from the Government’s own State of the Nation 2014 Indicators. There were some worrying facts about progress. The number of young people not in education or training is the same today as it was in 1997. The gap in attainment between pupils of different social backgrounds persists. This is extremely disappointing. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission published its report on the state of the nation, also in 2014, stating that children from less advantaged backgrounds who attained highly in cognitive skills were found to be less successful at converting this early high potential into career success. In a report called—significantly—Downward Mobility, Opportunity Hoarding and the ‘Glass Floor’, the commission states that to change matters, politicians will need to,

“address barriers that are preventing less advantaged children from reaching their full potential and remove barriers that block downward mobility”.

The Minister may say that this unblocking of downward mobility is what the academies programme is about. However, I personally do not trust that.

Academies are not the entire answer to downward mobility. The National Foundation for Educational Research has conducted several studies on the performance of academies. In 2014, it found that, in relation to underperforming academies,

“attainment progress in sponsored academies compared to similar non-academies is not significantly different over time when the outcome is measured as GCSE points”.

The same was found to be true for converter academies—those performing well, but which have converted to academy status—though to a lesser extent. Academies open for more than two years make less progress than non-academies.

The cross-party Education Select Committee, earlier this year, called on the Government to,

“stop exaggerating the success of academies”,

and to be more open about how they run the programme. It warned of a lack of proof that academies raised standards for disadvantaged children or overall and also warned of the rapid conversion of secondary schools and the impact that that had on primary schools. Moreover, it called for Ofsted to have the power to inspect academies. Other research has shown the differences between academy chains. There have been warnings from educationalists about expanding academies too rapidly and without more research into their impact.

Earlier this month, in a letter to the Times Educational Supplement, the Catholic Education Service challenged the aims of this Bill. Its director stated that academisation —a horrible word—is not the only way to improve inadequate schools. Schools have improved in attainment measures over the last ten years, indeed since the year 2000, due to changes in teaching methodologies, including some virtual and online education, teacher education and good leadership, which has been talked about a lot this afternoon.

However, we now have a situation where teachers are leaving the profession. They blame greater bureaucracy, a greater emphasis on academic testing and a lack of support. Sadly, some of these teachers were from the Teach First scheme. Last year, 50,000 teachers left. We will need 160,000 teachers over the next three years to avoid a staffing crisis, yet applications to teach fell by 21,000 in the last year. Noble Lords have expressed on many occasions today how important teachers are. Many of us have benefited from inspiring teachers, whatever the school structure. These are the areas on which the Government should be focusing in particular.

One key to understanding how schools are performing is inspection, and schools have got better at self-inspection, using methods such as school improvement partners. Ofsted is key, yet it is prevented from inspecting academy schools. I have seen no comparative data on the performance of different academy chains. I believe it exists, but it has not been made public. Could the Minister explain this? Could he explain the role of school governing bodies? When I was a governor, parents were involved. Is this still the case? Who will be on these executive boards?

I will move on to “coasting”, of which there was much discussion during the passage of the Bill in another place. It makes fascinating and long reading, in particular the Committee stage, when a definition was finally given. I find it extraordinary that a Bill can be presented without a definition of a key concept in it, but there we are. The Secretary of State gives a definition of “coasting”, but it relates entirely to academic performance. I can see the dangers in this. I know that teachers have been known to teach pupils how to pass tests—it is not very difficult. Educationalists would say, “This is not real learning”, and I would agree. There is evidence that young people and teachers in our schools are stressed and overpressurised by an overemphasis on testing. What about the broad and balanced curriculum spoken about in previous Education Acts? What about schools, like the one where I was a governor, where the intake had a large number of pupils who did not speak English or had poor language and communication skills? Progress was slower, but it was made. They did not “coast”.

I would define a coasting school as one which does not provide pupil access to a broad education—to sport, the arts, self-discipline, teamwork, spiritual and moral education, citizenship and, yes, personal, social and health education. Many head teachers say that academic learning will take place only when these basic elements are fundamental to a school. All this is part of the ethos of a successful school. Of course academic achievement is important, but so is the joy of learning and the development of curiosity.

What about Burntwood comprehensive school for girls in South London, which was recently awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture? One girl there said:

“The new building has made me more excited and motivated”.

The school environment is also part of the school ethos and is important. I wish that the Government would stop chasing distant bandwagons such as the Shanghai system—Shanghai is a long way away, with a different culture—and look instead at things closer to hand. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned Finland, which has excellent academic outcomes but which also scores very high on measurements of child well-being. Finland is aghast at our obsession with interminable tests and measurements.

The picture is not black and white; education should have many bright colours. The education section of the Bill is limited. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to unravelling some of these conundrums in further stages of the Bill.