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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley are attached to this amendment. We thoroughly endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, has said. The Adult Learning Inspectorate is being absorbed within the new Ofsted. The Minister and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector have made it clear to us that in forming the new Ofsted they would incorporate the staff and the ethos of these different inspectorates. But the Adult Learning Inspectorate has had a specific mission, which in many ways is encapsulated in the words of this amendment. It would be advantageous if the new Ofsted contained at least one person who had a very clear remit to protect and preserve the ethos of adult learning. So we thoroughly support the amendment. Amendments Nos. 133 and 134 in this group are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. The aim of these amendments is to give the chief inspector the power, rather than a duty, to review and rate overall performance of each local authority every year. We put forward a similar set of amendments in Committee. There was remarkably little discussion then—that came later on amid a very large group of amendments. The Minister’s response effectively was just to say that the Government thought that it was a good idea that Ofsted should have the duty to produce an annual report, and that the combination of the report and the rating given on overall performance was a way of enhancing local accountability. We tabled the amendments on behalf of the Local Government Association. The association accepts that the process of inspection is valuable; it does not argue against the process of inspection. It argues that, just as with schools and colleges, the process should feed into a self-evaluation in which self-assessment takes centre stage. That self-assessment would be annual; it would draw on the inspectors’ report but also consider other evidence and draw on other sources of information. That is not to say that Ofsted should never report on the local authority—far from it. As with the self-evaluation framework for schools, which is being introduced, an Ofsted inspection would take place regularly—every two or three years. A key aspect of that inspection would be to examine how realistic was the self-assessment. The key issue is whether it is necessary that every year the chief inspector should have the power and duty to review the local authority and assess its performance. I ask the Minister whether, given the evolution towards the self-evaluation model, it is really necessary to put the duty on Ofsted to report every year on the local authority.