---

Address in Reply to Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, I was going to remark on the degree to which this debate is something of a switchback from one subject to another. In saying that, we would ask the usual channels to think again about the practice in some past years of grouping subjects so that we have mini debates on the different items on the agenda in the Queen’s Speech debates. I welcome, as others have done, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to the Front Bench. I thank him for a thoughtful and well crafted maiden speech in opening the debate. I echo the thoughts of my noble friend Lord Oakeshott that it is surely right that the noble Lord is now here on the Government Front Bench to defend the policies that he is promoting, rather than promoting them from the sofas at No. 10. Education was given a prominent place in the gracious Speech, but not at great length. The gracious Speech states:"““Education remains my Government’s main priority. My Government will further reform the education system to improve quality and choice in the provision of schooling, and build on the progress already made to improve educational standards for all””." It does not tell us very much about the legislation that we shall see, but fortunately the DfES website, and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, tell us somewhat more about what to expect by way of legislation. Four items appear in the agenda. First, there will be legislation giving greater parental involvement. The DfES background notes state that it is,"““to give parents a greater role in their school’s education and in raising the performance of the school””," involving greater use of ICT and developing the concept of the pupil profile. Secondly, there will be new powers for Ofsted and LEAs to tackle school failure and under-performance. Again parents’ concerns about school standards will be addressed. Thirdly, there will be greater independence for successful schools, encouraging all schools—including primary—to seek foundation status. Fourthly, new educational providers will be welcomed into the state system through the extension of the academies programme, and on other occasions when,"““they can help to boost attainment and opportunity locally””." In addition it is proposed to re-enact the School Transport Bill which had successfully passed through this House but fell in the other place at the end of the previous Session. My first and immediate reaction to the proposals is: why is legislation necessary? On all four areas we already have on the statute book legislation that provides all the powers necessary. On parental involvement, Section 408—on the provision of information—of the Education Act 1996 gives the Secretary of State wide powers to make regulations to provide parents with information about the progress of children. On school failures, LEAs already have wide powers to tackle schools failure and under-performance under Sections 14 to 17—on intervention by LEAs—of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 and under part 4—on intervention in schools causing concern—of the Education Act 2002. Ofsted itself has no operational powers over school closures or management and, if it is to retain its independent status, it is right that it should not have those powers. But the Secretary of State retains powers to close schools. On extending foundation status, the 2005 Act, which we have just passed, provides for fast tracking foundation status for secondary schools. Primary schools can be given the fast track by amending the regulations under Section 35—schools changing from one category to another—of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. New providers can and do enter the maintained system under the provisions of Section 28 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. That has now been supplemented by the proposals of Section 66 of the Education Act 2005, which I say again we passed very recently in this House. In other words, with the exception of the re-enactment of the School Transport Bill, in none of these areas is legislation really necessary. Given that we are constantly being told how short the Government are of legislative time and how difficult it is to get parliamentary counsel to draft legislation—as is shown often by the poor drafting with which we are confronted—why are the Government bringing forward their proposals, thereby effectively, if I might say so, wasting Parliament’s time? They do not need those powers; they already have them. As for the schools, colleges, teachers, parents and governors at the receiving end of all this legislation and regulations, why not give them a holiday from new regulations? At least one Education Bill has been passed for every year of this Government, and there has often been more than one. The Government are constantly changing the goalposts. We were told that in this third term the emphasis was to be on delivery. What is needed more than anything else is a chance to catch up and to consolidate the changes that are already in the system. Many in the profession consider that, with the implementation of the Children Bill, the establishment of children’s trusts and, not least, the workforce agreement and three-year budgeting, they have enough on their plates to contend with and do not need new legislation. Therefore my first reaction was: why have this Bill? My second reaction was: what is the coherence of the measures? How do they hang together? The four main ideas being mooted come from the Labour manifesto and last year’s Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners. The big idea then was personalisation, which has now been replaced by parent power. Then, as now, there are a number of inherent contradictions in the ideas. Competition or collaboration? Schools will be   encouraged to form partnership clusters, yet simultaneously forced to compete with each other through league tables. I shall read the Select Committee’s deliberations on the five-year strategy and the idea of partnership. It states:"““The idea of schools working together to share expertise and hard to teach pupils is attractive, but we consider that the Secretary of State may be underestimating the challenges involved in realising this vision. Given the Government’s current emphasis on standards and the consequent climate of competition between secondary schools in some areas, who wish to maintain their status in the league tables of results, many schools may not consider it to be in their interests to join partnerships””." There is a lack of adherence to evidence-based policy. After 18 years of conviction politics under the Conservatives great hopes were held out in 1997 that the new Labour Government would make use of the wealth of policy analysis coming from the social science community in this country and elsewhere. It is fair to say that both at departmental level and in No. 10 there has been a flowering of policy studies. In broad terms, for example, the emphasis on early-years Sure Start policy has been influenced by those findings. But that has not happened in all areas of policy. Indeed, as time has passed we have seen a shift away from evidence-based policy back towards more conviction policy. For example, the issue of academies was dealt with at some length by my noble friend Lady   Walmsley. Why have the Government not waited until the evidence from the 17 pilots that are already established has been evaluated? The Government might have heeded the results of some of the research they commissioned from Warwick and Newcastle universities about the experience of eight secondary schools in former coalfields whose GCSE results have improved in every one of the past five years. The research found that the key factor in turning a school around and achieving consistent improvements was not a super-head or super buildings, but having a team of well motivated teachers and a well trained leadership group with high expectations working with parents and the local community. There has been much discussion on the issue of discipline and behaviour in schools. Here, too, we need to look at the evidence and welcome the setting up of the taskforce of experts. Taking some of the populist element out of the debate, it is right that the Government have set up the taskforce. As my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, in so far as they are listening, it is good that the Government have done so. But again, the message is consistency. Schools should have clear codes of discipline that are adhered to and upheld by the school community. Being tough on bad behaviour is important, but in earlier debates in this House I have asked, and I ask again, whether the Government are being tough enough on the causes of bad behaviour. To pick up some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I was struck by an article by Will Hutton in last week’s Observer about the hidden problems of mental health in this country. It picks up an issue that was raised by the Evening Standard in February when it reported on a report by the Institute of Psychiatry that referred to an epidemic of mental illness among teenagers. Are noble Lords aware that it is reckoned that 10 per cent of young people aged 5 to 18 in this country have a diagnosable mental health disorder? That is 1.1 million children, all of whom would benefit from professional help and advice. In addition, the institute reckoned that there are a similar number with less serious problems who also need some help. Today’s Guardian highlights an NSPCC report linking children’s performance at school with abuse at home and showing, among other things, that maltreatment in the first five years of life triples the likelihood of a child having psychological, behavioural or academic problems at school. Being tough on the causes of indiscipline and bad behaviour means nipping these problems in the bud. We have to be positive about teaching good parenting—here again I echo the thoughts of my noble friend Lady   Walmsley—and we should not leave parenting classes until after the horse has bolted and the young people are out of control. At least in the first instance, we have to provide help and counselling for these young people in school so that we can begin to sort out their problems before they become unmanageable. I shall end with a short word about the Tomlinson report. On these Benches, there was considerable disappointment that the Government spurned the recommendation to develop a new school-leaving diploma system. The Tomlinson report was commissioned after the A-level fiasco of 2002, but we also need to look at the whole question of the   disaffected teenagers who the noble Lord, Lord   Dearing, mentioned, and at why so many young people—roughly 10 per cent of those in school—are so turned off learning. Tomlinson gathered together some of the country’s experts in this area of education to think about how best to rejig this stage of education so that all children felt that they got something worthwhile from it. The experts spent two years in a very open process of deliberation. The essence of what he proposed was to build a structure of qualifications for those between 14   and 19 that bridged the academic and vocational divide and provided a route to lifelong learning. In a world of global competition and continuous innovation, we know that in the future training and retraining will become an essential part of life. Therefore, putting in place between the ages of 14 and 19 the early building blocks for lifelong learning is vital for the competitiveness of this country, but we should not forget that it is also vital to the fulfilment of the individual. Let me come back to where I began. In the education sector there is much worthwhile work that needs to be done and completed. It is a shame that we seem to be going to have to spend so much time and energy on unnecessary legislation.