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Education and Inspections Bill

I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 216A, 218, 218A, 220 and 222ZA in this grouping, all of which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I also support the three amendments that have been spoken to so far. Amendments Nos. 216A, 218 and 218A would all put into practice some of the more positive aspects of the Steer report. Amendment No. 216A proposes that, as recommended in the Steer report, every school should appoint a pupil-parent support worker—the amendment quotes directly from the Steer report— "““as part of the support staff of the school to work with the teachers to ensure appropriate delivery of pupil and parent support measures””." Aligned with that are Amendments Nos. 218 and 218A, spelling out some of the parent and pupil support measures that might be appropriate. Amendment No. 218 refers to the list included in Clause 82(1), and rather than just dictating that pupils should show respect, it asks for, "““mutual respect between pupils, parents and staff””." I shall come back to that amendment in a moment. Amendment No. 218A asks that those pupils who need help with managing behaviour and relationships should be given support and guidance. We have in mind the sort of counselling advice offered by the charity Place2Be, which a number of noble Lords know about and have perhaps visited. It operates in some 120 primary schools in deprived areas, dealing with children referred by the staff because their behaviour is truly difficult to manage and they are underperforming. Often helping the pupils means helping the parents. The charity always takes parents into its confidence and has their permission before working with children. Children also self-refer. Once a counsellor is established in a school, and has his or her own room, they hold open sessions where children can drop in to discuss any issues worrying them, whether it is the death of a favourite cat or issues of abuse, which arise on occasions. The counsellor’s room becomes for children a place to be if they have a worry. It is where they go to talk about it. The counsellor helps them to unravel some of the complicated bits of the unstable lives that some children live. For many of these children, school is an oasis of stability in a disturbed life outside. It gives them a place to go and talk things out. Many children who underperform, whether from disadvantaged or ““advantaged”” homes, do so because of difficult home circumstances, and teachers do not have the time in today’s crowded curriculum, with SATs pressures and so forth, to give each child the time that they sometimes need to unravel all the complications in their lives and to come to terms with them. That is essentially what the counsellor is there to do. The person concerned should be trained;the counsellors of the charity Place2Be, whichoffers placements for training, are trained child psychologists. The second half of Amendment No. 218A calls for information and guidance for parents. The concepts of parenting contracts and parenting orders were first introduced in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, and they are extended in Clauses 90, 91 and 92 to give head teachers the right to impose them, where they feel it appropriate, for bad behaviour in school. Many parents who are referred to parenting classes after parenting orders have been imposed on them because their children have been difficult come away after three months asking, ““Why did nobody tell me about this before?”” The response of parents who have difficulty controlling their children—it is usually the boys—is, ““I can do nothing about him””, and they feel that they would like more help with coping with parenting. During the passage of the Education Act 2005, just before the last general election, we tried to introduce a clause under which, when a child joined a school, whether at primary or transition level, or when they moved into the area, the school would make known to the parent where help, such as parenting classes, might be available. That would convey the notion that every child can be difficult at times, but that help is available: teachers can help, the parent/pupil support worker can help and, if parents do not want to go to anybody at the school, there are other places that can help. The school would give them the telephone numbers of places where they can access that help. That is what Amendment No. 216A is about. Wefeel that it is important for parents to be given information; if parents want help, they should know how to get it. Amendment No. 218 is about mutual respect. It replaces the concept of, "““respect for others on the part of pupils””," with, "““mutual respect between pupils, parents and staff””." In 1989, the Elton report on discipline in schools stated: "““Our evidence suggests that schools which put too much faith in punishments to deter bad behaviour are likely to be disappointed. This is confirmed by research findings. Rutter found that different forms or frequencies of punishment bore little or no relation to standards of behaviour in secondary schools. Mortimore found that behaviour tended to be worse in junior schools that emphasised punishments more than rewards. The more punishments listed, the more negative the effect seems ""to be...We have suggested that pupils learn more in schools than they are taught. They also learn from messages carried by the way in which the school is run and the relationships between people in it. Our impression is that, in schools with a negative atmosphere, pupils learn to see themselves as irresponsible beings who must be contained and controlled at all times. Our evidence suggests that pupils live up, or down, to teacher expectations... we emphasise the need for adults to model responsible behaviour for children””." The Government’s Respect Action Plan states that, "““children learn behaviour - good and bad - from the adults around them, and particularly from their parents and teachers””." Ofsted’s 2005 report Managing Challenging Behaviour states that, "““pupils describe the good teachers as being those who respect pupils””." The Steer report reiterates those lessons, emphasising the importance of offering rewards as well as sanctions. It says that schools need to set up pastoral support systems for pupils, to which I have referred; that staff need training and support in order to help them to manage pupil behaviour effectively; that staff must themselves demonstrate positive behaviour; and that that should form part of the school’s behaviour policy. None of these areas is represented in the Bill and it is unclear whether any will appear in the statutory guidance referred to Clause 81(4). Amendment No. 220 is a probing amendment to introduce the concept of redress and, in particular, to ensure that the school has a complaints processin place for parents and pupils who feel that the behaviour policy has been unfairly applied. At present, Clauses 81 and 88 allow for no element of redress. There is no means by which a pupil or parent can challenge a proposed disciplinary penalty that is disproportionate or unreasonable, even if it amounts to degrading or inhuman treatment in breach ofthe pupil’s human rights. Where such a penalty is imposed, it is unlikely that it could be successfully challenged by judicial review, save in extreme cases. In cases where parents and pupils feel that the penalty has been unfairly enforced, there is a strong feeling that they should have the right to complain about the imposition of a behaviour or discipline policy into which, as currently drafted, they have little input. This amendment has been suggested by the National Children’s Bureau, which feels particularly strongly on this issue. Finally, Amendment No. 222ZA is about acceptable behaviour contracts. Its aim is to promote the idea of acceptable behaviour. The idea is that the school, as part of the development of its behaviour policy, develops a set of rules or guidelines for pupils, setting out the sort of behaviour that it expects from them. Many schools already do this, but the amendment carries the practice slightly further by involving parents and asking them to countersign the document with their children. It tries to emphasise the positive—to raise the aspirations of children and their parents about expected behaviour—rather than the negative of ASBOs, parenting orders and so forth.