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Education and Inspections Bill

I was speaking to AmendmentNo. 257. I tabled it merely to understand what is going on in that part of the Bill. My other two amendments, the chief of which is Amendment No. 258, followed by AmendmentNo. 252, are to do with educational research. It has long been my feeling that we do not have the quality of educational research, and more particularly the quality of use of educational research, in this country that we should have. When the educational system is the generator of so much research, it seems extraordinary that it does not conduct proper research and put it into effect in the educational system. Far too much happens as the result of ill considered nostra, far too many restrictions are placed on development and experimentation, and far too little is done to discover which developments are doing well and to spread the good news. A very recent example is the Government’s by no means too early conversion to phonics, which have been an evident path to go down for some considerable time. There has been a lot of research and a lot of work, but it has taken government fiat to make it happen. In a healthy education system, that sort of realisation and improvement should be spreading and generating itself as a matter of course. In Amendment No. 258, which mirrors the provisions under which the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence was set up, I suggest that we take a leaf out that book, which the Government wrote early in their career by setting up that body, and set up a body whose function is to promote research into education. We should then ensure that, where that research generates some kind of consensus, that understanding is properly promulgated throughout the educational system by means not of fiat but of recommendation, so that we get a pattern of investigation and putting into practice properly researched educational ideas. Many areas would benefit from this, not least diagnosing and treating children with special educational needs. There are all sorts of methods and means of educating and exciting people, and bringing pupils who are finding education unattractive back into the fold. There are so many ways in which research should benefit education, and so few ways in which it does. I do not criticise this Government for lack of trying—we had the beacon schools project, which was tried but failed, and we now have school improvement partners, which are making attempts in this direction—but it seems that we lack a motor at the centre of this, and the Government should take a lesson from their own good practice. Amendment No. 252 is a small additional change in this direction. The Education Act 2002 introduced the ability of schools to innovate where the Secretary of State approved that innovation. I suggest that we loosen that a little and do not require the Secretary of State to be convinced that a particular course of action or proposal is good, but require him merely to allow it to go ahead if it is within ordinary bounds and subject to a proper evaluation of its performance. In other words, we should allow innovation and experimentation if there are useful results from it and something at the end of the day that other schools can know and understood; namely, that it has not worked or that it is a really good idea that they should pursue. There would be a proper record of how it was done, what was done and how it worked; in other words, the sort of research base you need to make progress in education. There are a lot of schools with good ideas and a lot of teachers who are really innovative in the way in which they approach things. Where teachers are invited to generate proper research findings, as they are frequently by, for instance, Durham University’s Institute of Education, they produce a succession of well thought-out and well documented ideas. That is the sort of process and freedom that schools should be allowed. The Secretary of State should not see herself as the gatekeeper to these things, but the person who makes sure that they are done properly. I beg to move.