Education Bill

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow such a vivid speech, describing—[Interruption.] Well, it contained a lot of imagery, but it described an outcome that I do not think many people outside this House who commented on the Bill will recognise. There are undoubtedly concerns and areas that require clarification, but while the language of the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) was very colourful, it was, perhaps, not entirely accurate. We will look back in a few years and see whether the vision he set out has come to pass. The hon. Gentleman’s party colleague, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), had a more generous view of both the intentions behind the Bill and the outcomes its provisions might produce.

I join other Members in welcoming the addition to the Bill of a commitment to extending early-years provision for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. That will have a huge impact. It will be tied to the pupil premium, which was a Liberal Democrat commitment. I greatly welcome the fact that the coalition is focusing on trying to raise the attainment of those from disadvantaged backgrounds, as the Secretary of State set out. I also hope that this encouragement to drive up the take-up of places in early-years education will lead to more investment and therefore greater provision as well. Other hon. Members have mentioned training and, by setting out greater investment in that sector, we hope to encourage more people to participate in delivering it and to improve it.

The issue of bureaucracy has been raised. The hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), who is no longer in his place, started his speech by stating his family’s educational credentials. Unlike some hon. Members, I have never been a teacher, but both my parents were teachers and my wife is a teacher. I did work for a while in a teacher training college and I have been a school governor, so I have seen close up the reams of guidance and prescription issued by the Department under the previous Government. Therefore, I very much welcome the fact that at last we have a Bill that puts at its heart cutting aside a lot of that and allowing schools to get on with teaching, because that is what teachers want to do.

The Government have already addressed issues such as financial management in schools and the self-assessment documentation, and in this Bill we are looking at the school profile. Those measures together deal with a huge amount of the reading through that has to be done. They also address the quantity of work that head teachers, governors and staff have to do to send back pieces of paper or to hang on to filing cabinets full of paper that do not achieve a huge amount—or a proportionate amount, given the time involved in doing that work—for the pupils in their school or for the wider community.

The Bill also seeks to abolish some organisations; we have heard a little today about the General Teaching Council, the Training and Development Agency for Schools and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency. The Young People’s Learning Agency could have been mentioned too. Those organisations have undoubtedly performed a role, but it is right for the Government to challenge how effective they have been in discharging their roles. If it is at all possible, it is right to do that work far more efficiently.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall talked about accountability, which is also important. She made a good point, because I recall discussions about the Bill that set up the Infrastructure Planning Commission and I felt that it was all about taking tricky decisions away from the Secretary of State and giving them to an unelected body to consider. So I very much welcome the decisions that this Government have taken across their legislation to ensure that Government accountability is included and that the buck stops with them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) made an excellent and measured contribution, in which she rightly set out some questions for the Government. She also mentioned bullying, which has been mentioned by all parties in election manifestos and so on. It is therefore welcome that the Government are dealing with discipline and are tackling bullying, so that teachers can feel confident that they will be supported when they try to intervene to ensure that they get the discipline that they want in their classes and so that parents can be reassured too.

The speech made by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) laid into the issue of apprenticeships. He tried to pretend that the approach that had been adopted towards the end of the previous Parliament was going to deliver a huge number of apprenticeships. A responsibility had been placed to deliver those places, but we need employers to come forward with them. There is far more clarity in our arrangement because the funding and support is in place, and it is then up to people to get out and secure those places locally.

My questions for the Minister focus on school governance. We need to explore in greater detail the proposals for governing bodies to alter their own structures and remove some categories of governor. I have concerns about that with regard to local authority governors and staff governors, so I hope that we can hear more justification of that proposal.

The Association of School and College Leaders has said that it welcomes the exclusions proposals that will ensure that teachers will able to take action to remove pupils who are having a disruptive effect on their classmates. However, we must make sure that safeguards are in place. The Minister may correct me if I am wrong here, but I believe that the Bill provides that decisions on exclusions must recognise the position of children with special educational needs, particularly those who have autism. Could similar sorts of rights be put in place for looked-after children too, given the pressures that they are under and the disruptions that life has inflicted on them?

The measures on providing an independent careers service are also welcome. They will allow people to be confident that the advice being given is in the best interests of the young person. In most cases, it has been, but we have all heard examples of people being pushed to stay on at a particular school in the interests of the school, rather than the young person. The independence contained in the measures is good, but I hope that the Government will be considering transition arrangements to ensure that as we move to the new system, the experience that has been gained in providing careers advice will not be lost.

[Mr Hayes]

I will indeed look at that.

[Dan Rogerson]

In conclusion, we need to explore a number of questions in Committee and on Report that have been raised by hon. Members. I welcome the comments of those who have said that by giving the Bill a Second Reading we can develop and make progress on a number of aspects, such as early-years provision, apprenticeships and giving teachers and schools the room to get on with teaching, which is what they want to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate this evening on the Second Reading of the Bill. If I counted correctly, following the opening speeches there were 34 speeches from the Back Benches—a full class in the state sector, although perhaps not in the sector in which most Government Members were educated.

There are many reasons to oppose the Bill. Indeed, the provision to increase the interest rate on student loans, which has been snuck into the Bill, would be sufficient reason on its own. The Secretary of State accuses us of being against everything in the Bill because we will vote against its Second Reading. In that case, perhaps we should warn the Liberal Democrats that they will be painted as voting in favour of increasing the interest rate on student loans, even if they voted against the student finance measure in the motion before Christmas.

[Dan Rogerson]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

In a moment. I am sure that people will, in a “Focus”-like fashion, look at the way Government Members vote this evening.

There are many other reasons to oppose the Bill, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) pointed out in his opening speech. It strips power from pupils, professionals, parents and the public. That is not to say that we do not support some things in the Bill. We have heard about that during the course of the afternoon. On the surface, the Bill tries to make further progress on the excellent progress that we made in government on behaviour, including on the ability to search pupils and confiscate items, clarifying the position on the reasonable use of force by teachers, and allowing teachers to discipline pupils for behaviour beyond the school gate.

Like any reasonable Opposition, we want to scrutinise the detail in Committee. We want to be sure that the Government’s proposals will have a positive impact and not drag schools into further bureaucracy or legal challenge. The proposals should broadly promote the ability of a school to create a quiet, orderly environment for learning. That is the kind of environment that we all agree is not only good for the vast majority of non-disruptive students, but is in the interests of pupils whose behaviour impacts on their own learning and that of others. We will consider the proposals in forensic detail in Committee.

[Dan Rogerson]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

In a minute.

In Committee, we will consider the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) and others to ensure that the proposals are not window dressing, but a genuine enhancement of what we achieved in office. We will consider whether they will cause more problems for teachers and schools. Part 1 of the Bill seeks to build on the revolution in early-years provision that Labour pioneered in office. In particular, we will look closely at the power the Secretary of State is awarding himself to decide who gets early-years teaching, how much and when. We will approach the Bill in Committee in that way.

Overall, we oppose the Bill on Second Reading because, along with a number of other pieces of legislation, it fits in with the ideology of the coalition Government; an ideology that the Lib Dems appear to have been duped into going along with, having been seduced, it seems, by Lady Localism. Well, she is not what she seems in this Bill and I ask the Lib Dems to consider carefully what the Bill does about localism. Localism, for them, used to mean enhancing local democracy. This fits in with the Orwellian use of language that the Government have adopted. Just as for the Home Secretary a curfew has become an “overnight residence requirement”, localism is used to describe a Bill that takes away local democratic power from communities, teachers and parents, and puts the power into the hands of one man—the Secretary of State. The Bill is described, unbelievably, as a decentralising measure, but he is taking more than 50 new powers to himself to control almost every single aspect of the schools system.