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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I speak against Amendment No. 4. The picture of the English education system described by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, is not one that I recognise as of the real world. I would have preferred her to start this interesting debate with a recognition that every single indicator of improvement in standards, in quality of teaching, in management, in leadership and certainly in investment by the Government, shows things are far better now than they were a decade ago. The argument about foundation schools and community schools has run throughout the passage of the Bill. I want to make what I hope is a relevant comment to what I believe is an irrelevant debate. An error in all these discussions is to believe that there is greater autonomy for a foundation school than for a community school. If I really believed that having foundation status gives schools more powers, more freedoms and greater autonomy, I would support the amendment. I oppose the amendment because I do not believe that foundation schools have greater autonomy or more independence than community schools. That is because I believe that the Government have worked exceptionally hard over the past 10 years to try to make the education system, the schools system, structurally more equal and to give it greater equality. Having listened to the Minister and many people over the past months, I am yet to be persuaded of one meaningful, extra freedom, one grain of greater autonomy that one has with foundation schools that one does not have with community schools which would persuade me that standards would increase as a result. If I could be persuaded of that, even at this late date, I would support the amendment with great voice and great enthusiasm. However, one can see no evidence that foundation schools now perform better than community schools. I pay tribute to the many wonderful foundation schools that exist in the inner cities which have turned schools around—there is one in Peckham to which I pay huge tribute—but I need to hear some generosity of spirit that pays equal credit to the wonderful performance of many community schools—many serving most schools in the inner-cities—that have really raised standards. On this debate, the irony is that the only people with whom I have discussed community schools and foundation schools are politicians. In the past five years, I have not met one head teacher, when visiting a school or at a conference, who has asked, ““Why don’t you make it easier for us to be a foundation school?””. Quite simply, it is so easy now to be a foundation school—far easier than becoming a grant-maintained school in the days of the Conservative Government—that if our good head teachers really thought that it would make a difference, they would do it. They have asked me for lots of other things, but not one single head teacher has said, ““If only you made it easier for us to be a foundation school, with all those extra freedoms that would go with it, I know that I could deliver better outcomes for the children””. Given that that is the picture, why would we want to put an extra responsibility on a local authority to promote more of them? They have better things to do than to promote something that is readily available if a school wishes to take it. The noble Baroness talked about trusting heads, trusting schools and trusting governing bodies. We should trust them and if they want to become foundation schools they can; they do not need a local authority encouraging and persuading them to do that. I am persuaded on two points. I could interpret the notion of foundation in a slightly different way and that would be a partnership in school improvement, an external partner to provide support in raising standards. I am all for that, but equally I know many community schools with the strength of such an external partner, so I have come to the conclusion that I really do not mind whether a school is a foundation school or a community school. I do not mind one bit. I am happy to leave it to the school because I believe we have a level playing field. To be honest, I mind us all spending a lot of time debating the matter when the world of education is not in any way putting an obligation on local authorities to pursue these structural changes. The real challenge for us is that schools and heads want greater autonomy and ask for greater freedom. They tell me that if they had greater freedom, they could do better for their children. But the freedoms they ask are freedoms in the national curriculum, often freedom from the accountability framework, sometimes freedom from the publication of their results in the local press and the ability of the neighbouring school to seduce the most able children to go to it. The difficulty is that those are the freedoms we do not want to give, and a debate on that will come later on Report. I am not against freedoms, but there is nothing in foundation status that will give our heads more freedom to do their job more effectively. If there were, they would take it because it is there for the taking. Let us not place this additional burden on local authorities by making them pursue something that will do little for the children they are meant to be serving.