Education and Adoption Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Louise Haigh and Emma Lewell-Buck

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Alan. I will speak briefly in support of amendment 19.

During debates so far on the Bill we have heard a lot about accountability, which is why I am so surprised that, when it comes to the powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State, there is so little by way of accountability. In our sitting just last Thursday we heard that the Secretary of State will not have to justify her reasons for intervening to regionalise adoption services; now, in clause 2, we see that she will not have to answer for her decision to intervene in a school, either.

I find it a strange trend, at a time when there is such a lively public debate about devolution and giving control of public services to communities, that when it comes to schools the Secretary of State seems to be accumulating ever more power. Clause 2 will mean that interventions can be signed off from Whitehall with no public scrutiny and no way for the decision to be effectively challenged. Taking away governors’ right of appeal makes the Executive completely unaccountable. Parents and governors need to be able to have confidence in the decisions that are being made about their school and they will not be reassured when those decisions are handed down from Whitehall while they have no ability to challenge them.

We all agree that turning underperforming schools around is important, but precisely for that reason, there needs to be proper accountability in the decision-making process. Parents will want to know that the decision has been made carefully and not on some whim of the Secretary of State’s. That is why amendment 19 will require a statutory instrument to be laid before the House before an intervention can be made. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West noted, it is not just Opposition Members who have opposed giving the Secretary of State unbridled power. I repeat that, back in 2011, this Schools Minister said,

“we do not believe that the power of the Secretary of State should be unfettered”.––[Official Report, Education Public Bill Committee, 31 March 2011; c. 835.]

Somewhere along the way it seems that he and the Government have changed their mind. If the Minister is not willing to accept amendment 19, will he please tell the Committee why he no longer believes that the Secretary of State needs to be accountable and why these decisions should be taken without proper scrutiny?

[Louise Haigh]

It is a great pleasure, Sir Alan, to serve under your chairmanship on my first Public Bill Committee. I support amendment 19 and I shall further examine the impact on subsection (2)(h). First, I ask the Minister for a clarification. Paragraph 19 of the explanatory notes state:

“The governing body’s entitlement to make representations against the warning notice to the local authority, and the local authority’s obligation to consider those representations, is removed by clause 2(2)(h)”.

However, the actual effect of this subsection, which removes subsections (7) to (9) of section 16 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, seems to be to remove the entitlement of the governing body to make representations against the warning notice to Ofsted, which may then uphold the warning notice or not. Perhaps this is just another symptom of the unnecessary haste with which the Bill was drafted and put before us, but it would be helpful if the Minister clarified his understanding of this provision and, if necessary, issued corrected explanatory notes.

I want to talk briefly about the real impact that the already highly stringent accountability regime is having on hard-working, dedicated teachers across the country and why I want some right of appeal to be maintained. On Friday night, I hosted a meeting with local teachers to hear about their experiences in the profession. I am sure the Minister will want to advise me on better ways to spend my Friday nights, but following the Minister’s response in the evidence session last week, when he told me there had never been a better time to be a teacher, I was interested to hear from those working on the front line whether they agreed. A wide range of staff attended, from lunchtime assistants, teaching assistants and newly-qualified teachers to teachers with 20-plus years of experience and heads of primary and secondary schools. We covered a range of issues that are currently affecting the profession, from the impact of academisation and the lack of CPD to the increasing use of teaching assistants and unqualified teachers in place of fully-qualified and experienced teachers, but what came up from every single person in the room was their fear of the current inspection regime. They fear that they will be judged as failing, inadequate or, as a consequence of the Bill, coasting. That is why this amendment, securing natural justice, is so important to those teachers.

One teacher with 18 years of experience in the profession broke down in tears in the middle of the meeting, describing working 50-plus hours a week, constant box ticking and evidence taking and excessive marking and paperwork—all things that she described as having nothing to do with why she originally chose to take up this vocation. Perhaps that would be worth it if it were all genuinely necessary to guarantee the best education for all our children, but there was a very strong feeling that the accountability regime cannot always be relied on to provide an accurate measure of quality.

My concern is that the clause will only add to the pressures outlined. For a governing body not to be able to make representations to Ofsted on the basis of a notice it believes to be based on inaccurate claims simply ratchets up the pressure.

I note that one group of teachers was not at the meeting on Friday; there was no one over the age of 50. Perhaps that is a consequence of the increasing number of teachers who retire early. Dealing with “inadequate” or “coasting” schools will ultimately rely on good teachers, such as the one who broke down in front of me who is now selling her house, so that she can leave the profession—something that she never thought she would have to do and least of all wanted to do.

The measures in the clause are perhaps minor compared with the Bill’s impact as a whole, but the direction of travel is important. We should remember that the effect of legislation is not just on processes and procedures, but ultimately on the professionals who operate them and, of course, the pupils, and we all want them to succeed. I hope that the Minister will consider these points and those made by my hon. Friends, and I look forward to his response.