argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Christine Blower (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I wanted to say that it was a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, but it is equally a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I have very little to say on the report since it has been covered fully by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I say in passing that the wisdom and clarity of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, was a very good contribution to the debate As we have heard from all sides of the Committee, the extremely long, but apparently inexhaustive, list in Clause 1 appears to be overreach at an extraordinary level. As was said at Second Reading and earlier today, it is really a power grab by the DfE without any real understanding of what the purpose of all these things then residing with the Secretary of State would be. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, they are things that have never been seen. It is remarkable. It would be remarkable for school governors and staff to think that head teachers were going to be appointed in Sanctuary Buildings. It seems so remarkable as to beggar belief. These are unacceptable propositions As I thought about speaking today, I reflected that when I started teaching in the early 1970s, we thought of and talked about education as a national service locally delivered. That is what I would like to continue to see it as. I think all noble Lords would agree that the aspiration of the education service in England should be a good local school for every child. That seems to chime both with the title of the White Paper, Opportunity for All: Strong Schools with Great Teachers for your Child, and with the SEND Review: Right Support Right Place Right Time—it does not say local, but it has that sense of local Where is the local dimension in Clause 1? It is absent. It resides with the Secretary of State. Some matters are best dealt with at national level—my noble friend Lord Knight referred to one—such as remuneration, salaries, conditions of service, pensions and so on. That means that there would be coherence across teaching and education staff nationally, which has massive advantages because it means that teachers are free to move around the country and take their expertise from one place to another. In particular, when thinking about women teachers, it means that they do not have to worry when they move from one school to another about what their situation might be with, for example, access to maternity leave and maternity pay. However, if all these things are different, as they are at the moment, that is a significant problem. Clearly there are things which would be better done at national level, although it is my contention that salaries, pensions and conditions of service would be much better done through a framework of sectoral collective bargaining rather than by being imposed by the Secretary of State.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
James Philip Knight (Labour, Centre-left): Given the noble Lord’s relatively recent experience as Academies Minister, can he clarify, using those four things, how he would have gone about dealing with the 1% that is the basis of our having to legislate, as the Government would put it?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
James Philip Knight (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I follow those welcome comments from the noble Baroness. This conversation—the closest thing we get to pre-legislative scrutiny—ought to give us the opportunity to guide Ministers in their reflections, which we all urge them to have and hope they will have, on what we think is important and less important; what there must be standards about, if we are to agree that; and what we should leave to academies. That is what the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the next group are helping to do. They are opportunities for noble Lords to flag things they think are sufficiently important that the Secretary of State should have a view on them on behalf of the country I too will not get into the whys and wherefores of curriculum freedoms, leadership and management or the length of the school day. I happen to broadly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and it is not unusual that we find ourselves in broadly the same place on such things. However, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. It is awkward, unsatisfactory and goes back to what my noble friend Lady Morris said earlier; this is a difficult Bill for us to deal with at this stage The substantive point I want to make to the Minister at this stage is for when the Government are thinking about time for Report and how we deal with it. It will be quite Committee-ish in how we deal with things—assuming they come back with something substantive and different which shows that they have listened to us. We are going to have to have the opportunity to properly debate what we hope will be much more of an educational vision that they will set out for us. We can then put down amendments on it and discuss in the normal way on Report.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Estelle Morris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I will make a very brief intervention. I struggle with the whole issue of the curriculum. I basically agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. When I look at many schools, there is not the time in the week for them to do the things that—as the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, just said—might need to be done in the school and community context. The school week is overcrowded and does not leave sufficient flexibility for teachers to use their professional judgment about what needs to be covered. I understand that I suppose it is my age—I do not know—but I have always welcomed the entitlement of the child that the national curriculum brought about in the day of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. I was teaching when the noble Lord, Lord Baker, introduced the national curriculum. My kids in an inner-city school got a better deal because we, as teachers, were made to teach them things that, to be honest, we had assumed they were not able to learn. That is a whole history of education to go into I find it quite difficult still to balance the entitlement the national curriculum gave to children to learn a broad and balanced curriculum, and still would. I worry that freedom on the curriculum means that a school will choose not to teach music, science or Shakespeare. When you have the relationship of all schools to the Secretary of State, I struggle to be really confident that the DfE, Ministers or civil servants could intervene if a child was being denied that access to a broad and balanced curriculum I have never quite worked out how it resolves. It is always the same; in most schools it works well, and they get it right, but we need to protect the right of every child to all the subjects in the national curriculum and all those experiences we think they need. I am asking the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in his response, to reflect on how his amendment would ensure that balance and that the protection of the child’s entitlement will be kept.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): I think that we are at risk of having a really interesting debate about the substance of what a child should learn in school, which the Bill does not actually allow us very easily to do. The benefit of what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is proposing is that he is very clear where he is coming from, why he is doing it and what he is seeking to achieve. There is a philosophical underpinning of the amendments that he is proposing, so at least we have something to hold on to when we either agree or disagree with him.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
James Philip Knight (Labour, Centre-left): Reflecting on the debate that we have had, it occurs to me that, effectively, in announcing that all schools will become academies, it is an announcement of the end of the national curriculum. What my noble friend has just described in respect of the literacy and numeracy hour was an up-front policy and up-front announcement—it was something about which there could be a consultation, discussion and debate. There has been no press release saying that the Government’s wish is to abolish the national curriculum, yet that is what we must have in mind as we debate this Bill.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): Is it? I would like to know the answer to that question, because it is not clear whether that is the Government’s intention or not. Were the Government to come forward to say that it is what they plan to do and that they want freedom such that there is no national curriculum as we would recognise it now, then we could have a really big argument about that. We would involve school leaders and parents and look back over the successes and failings of the national curriculum; I very much agree with what my noble friend Lady Morris said about an entitlement to education, particularly around music and literature The fact is that we do not know. The Government’s intention is not being shared with us. We may be imagining and fearing the worst, and fearing intentions that do not exist, but the Government are asking a hell of a lot for us to accept on trust an assurance from the Dispatch Box here that there is no current intention to do certain things. Really, what we ought to expect, and what families expect, is much more information about is going to happen on the ground and in the classroom. That is what people are really interested in. I take it that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, will not press his amendments, so we do not need to get into whether we would support them individually, but I just flag this issue about the lack of effort that the Government have made to engage with leaders in the sector. It is really damaging and is destroying some of the confidence that leaders have in the department at this point.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He has really illustrated the puzzle I have: the handbook is clearly working at the moment—we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, that interventions can take place in the case of maverick trusts—so why on earth not let that continue, allow the consultation with the sector on the future governance and accountability arrangements, and then bring a Bill in a year’s time when we can actually go through it in detail and scrutinise it effectively? We could also have a statement at the front saying, "This Bill is about the academisation of all schools". Why not be explicit and say this up front in the legislation, if that is what the Government want to do? Why does it have to be done in this sort of underhand way, and before they have properly worked out with the sector how it is best done? I just do not get it.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Christine Blower (Labour, Centre-left): I intervene briefly to say that an enormous amount of work could and should be done on the curriculum. The fact is that we are into the 21st century, and fantastic work is being done by educators all over the place about how we best educate our young people for the best possible outcomes. Yet, we have this odd divide between the schools that have to do the national curriculum and those that do not As my noble friend Lady Morris said, we should look at what the entitlements and requirements of an educated society are in order to rise to the challenges we obviously face as we move forward. Those should be things that are available to all young people. There might well be an argument for saying that those schools that are currently maintained schools but are required to do every last detail of the national curriculum might flourish more if they had some of those curriculum freedoms. So there is a big advantage to being able to talk in the round about our vision for what educated young people would be when they leave our education system. After all, there is common agreement now that young people will stay in school until they are 18 or 19. Gone are the days when they would leave at 16. There is such a lot to gain from having a much broader discussion about what an entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum actually looks like, not just for the good of the individual but for the good of society at large.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Christine Blower (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is interesting to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, because I do not entirely agree with her characterisation of what is going on in schools. I believe that there is a level of mental distress among our children and young people. I am sure it was exacerbated by the pandemic but I think it has been there for a very long time I was originally going to stand up only to say that there are lots of things schools can do in response to this issue without pathologising it, which is of course not desirable; I absolutely would not want that to happen. I do not really see that characterisation of schools becoming full of therapists. Frankly, all of our teachers’ time is taken up with doing the stuff that Ofsted tells them they must do, without also being therapists However, it is really important that we have extremely well-staffed CAMHS available to all our schools because it is perfectly clear that teachers cannot diagnose actual mental illness. Nor should they—that is not their role at all—but nor can they necessarily decide what level of intervention needs to be made by either them or anybody else if they think that a child has some kind of mental health difficulty. I would be happy for CAMHS to be not just a place to which children go—incidentally, if they are late for their first meeting, they sometimes do not get a second one because CAMHS are so busy—but a facility available to teachers not to deal with their own mental health but to make a proper, professional decision about whether a child is in some kind of mental health distress. The fact is that teachers are not trained or equipped to deal with this, but we are seeing quite a lot of it So I do not disagree with everything the noble Baroness said, but I do think there is a pronounced role for CAMHS and that, in most of the areas with which I am familiar, they are not sufficiently well staffed and resourced to ensure that they can respond to teachers’ issues and directly, face to face, to young people’s issues.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Christine Blower (Labour, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I had the experience of being a teacher from the early 1970s and what the noble Lord describes in a multi-academy trust is exactly what happened in many local authorities. There were many teachers—for example, primary teachers—who did not particularly want to go into management but had a particularly useful skill to spread around. They could be seconded from their school to the local authority to work in lots of different schools, enhance the skills base of their colleagues and perhaps enhance their own leadership skills. I recognise exactly what the noble Lord is saying, but that was entirely possible in local authorities prior to the MAT arrangements.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Brinley Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I support these amendments. I have just one narrow point I wish to add. One thing that is lacking and to me seems essential is some reference to school students and their participation in the governance of their schools. To me, the case for those over voting age is unanswerable: they can vote in a national election, but they have no right to participate in the governance of the institution to which they belong. Given that the Labour Party’s policy is, I think, votes at 16, I would make the case that school students from age 16 should have a statutory right to participate in governance. I would even suggest that there is some scope for clear guidance to involve even younger children. I believe that there is some interesting work done in many primary schools now where the children are involved. Unfortunately, I missed the boat on making this specific point in an amendment, but I am sure that this issue that will return on Report and I hope that, at that stage, some reference to school students could be included.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this has been a very useful debate. Clearly, I agree with my noble friend that, with parental involvement in school governing bodies, there has perhaps not been a nirvana or golden age where it has always worked perfectly. School governance can be quirky; sometimes heads have far too much control and basically appoint their own governing body, and we have seen the problems that arise from that. However, I think there is a general consensus that getting parents involved in schools is a good thing per se. There are various mechanisms under which you can do that. Parent councils is a very good idea, and I would like to see that further encouraged. However, it is important to have statutory representation, if you like, of elected parent governors on the board of a maintained school or of an academy trust When it comes to multi-academy trusts, I still fail to see why it should be optional, in that if you have two parent governors on the multi-academy trust board, you do not then have to have the same representation on local governing bodies, and vice versa. That should be changed. Where you have a multi-academy trust, both the multi-academy trust board and the local governing body ought to have parent governors. However, I am sure that we will find a consensus on that on Report When it comes to the relationship between multi-academy trusts and local governing bodies where they are the individual trusts within a MAT, that is obviously a much more difficult issue where we do not have complete consensus. Here, the absence of a way forward for MATs is a big problem for us in trying to decide what is the best way through. In her response the noble Baroness said that obviously this is work that is taking place and that we must not pre-empt the outcome of discussions. I could not help thinking that, unfortunately, the Bill pre-empts the outcome of the discussions, which is why we are having this difficulty at the moment However, in principle, it is right that every local school has some kind of governance body. My noble friend Lady Blower is absolutely right: the local school needs ownership of the core decisions. I accept what she says about the need for interventions but, harking back to my health experience, I would say that we have boards until the cows come home but quick interventions can be made. It is really important that, when a parent goes to the school, they know that the people in charge are there, and that includes governance, as much as possible Also, we have to sort out this problem of what an academy trust does if it wants to leave a MAT. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Nash, arguing that an outstanding academy trust can go into a MAT and gain great advantage from it, but what happens if it is not going well? Can that outstanding trust leave? At the moment the answer is no, because it has no legal entity of its own to make that decision.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I know, but I worry about the "exceptional circumstances" because I do not see why an individual school could not simply opt out if it wanted to, giving due notice. Perhaps we will come back to that on one of our later amendments Having said that, this has been a really good debate. I welcome the Minister’s constructive response and look forward to further discussions. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Deborah Wilcox (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this group is another trying to put safeguards around the Secretary of State’s powers to set academy standards. In the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms, industrious noble Lords have sought to add their own. My amendment would require the DfE to consult parents, teachers and governors on how the regulations are implemented and then allow sight and scrutiny of the use of the new powers by way of reporting and assessing the impact that use has had For such a sweeping change to a crucial area of social policy, we believe that this amendment is proportionate and only right to allow meaningful public scrutiny. If the Secretary of State is overreaching or, equally, not doing enough to intervene in a specific case, it would allow that to become public knowledge and the public, expert stakeholders and parent groups to make the case for change My Amendment 83 would subject to the affirmative procedure the Secretary of State’s power to give any person they choose responsibility to judge an academy’s compliance with standards. Such a large empowerment, with the potential to place all-important judgments with anyone that the Secretary of State wills is surely worth giving Parliament sight of, and anyone involved in the process of proper scrutiny and democratic accountability should have little problem agreeing to the amendments. I thus beg to move.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I strongly welcome my noble friend’s amendment. I, along with my noble friend Lady Blower, have a number of other amendments in this area I want to encourage the Minister to say something about this. Clearly, she has heard all our concerns about Clauses 1 and 3. I just want to suggest that one way through may be to consider the super-affirmative procedure for dealing with the issue of standards. We debated earlier the issue that even an affirmative instrument allows us only a debate. The advantage of the super-affirmative procedure is that it allows both Houses of Parliament opportunities to comment on proposals for secondary legislation and recommend amendments before orders for affirmative approval are brought forward in their final form. The idea of the super-affirmative procedure is that those orders are implemented in enactments where an exceptionally high degree of scrutiny is thought appropriate—for instance, for the scrutiny of certain items of delegated legislation made or proposed to be made under Henry VIII clauses Take my noble friend Lady Chapman’s earlier amendment, in which she sought to replicate the standards in relation to independent schools and said that, basically, this would give a much more explicit set of standards to work on. If you combine that with the super-affirmative procedure, you might achieve a greater and more effective way whereby Parliament could scrutinise what the Government seek to do. However, I really do not think that simply having regulations is the way to do it. I urge the Minister to consider this procedure as one way through, because it would give Parliament an opportunity to comment on the draft regulations and the department an opportunity to go away and consider it before coming back with the substantive order. In some ways, this would be a very good way to deal with some of the issues in this Bill.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Deborah Wilcox (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister noted that the Government want a more transparent and accountable way forward, but this whole debate has seen strong arguments from all sides of the House, from former Secretaries of State, in direct opposition to this view. I hope that the Minister has been listening, as I am sure that she has, but the story continues, as do the probing amendments and the demystifying of what on earth is going on here, while wanting the central purpose to remain the raising of standards for young people. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.