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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I support what my noble friend has just said. To me it is astonishing that the House has virtually emptied, having given itself great satisfaction in passing an amendment—or at least getting the Government to agree to it—about promoting community cohesion. Many have left the House at the very point at which the issue of how many community schools are going to survive in this country comes to the centre of the debate. What an astonishing paradox that is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, pointed out, the tremendous achievement of our comprehensive, local authority schools has been precisely in creating community schools. The whole idea of comprehensive schools was to bring about such cohesion, because faith is not the only issue that might divide a society; there is also class, income, background, gender and race. Over the past 40 years, these community schools have made an astonishing contribution to community cohesion in this country. Having satisfied themselves with putting a couple of words into the Bill—with, admittedly, as the Minister has articulately pointed out, some obligation on the inspectors to ensure that that means something—a part of this House then leaves before the crucial element of the Bill is discussed: how many of our community schools will be permitted, under the Bill, to survive. In our amendment we are proposing something simple. The local authorities that could be permitted to put forward a proposal for a new community school or community special school should include not just the very thin group at the top that are described as ““excellent””, but the rather broader group described as both ““excellent”” and ““good””. I must ask your Lordships to consider for a moment whether we are applying those criteria to all the other schools that will be part of the pattern of education under the terms of the Bill. The Edinburgh study published in May 2006 pointed out that the academies so far in existence, despite all the extra money that has been lavished upon them, had achieved less than a 1 per cent improvement on the position of the associated previous community schools. I pointed out to this House only recently that the closest parallel we have to the proposed trust schools, the charter schools of America, have actually produced less successful standards in literacy and numeracy than the schools they succeeded. We have pointed out from these Benches that the single most successful educational system in the whole of Europe, according to the OECD—a pretty independent and impeccable source—is the comprehensive system in Finland. It is far ahead of virtually any other European country and sadly a long way ahead of this country. It has been argued that Finland is a small country. Yes, it is. It is also amazingly cohesive and educationally successful. We have tended not to look too closely at the relatively better results of our Scottish colleagues, in terms of the proportion going on to higher education, staying on, achieving in schools and so on, in what is still almost entirely a genuinely comprehensive system, not one that has been raddled by political football matches in the way that has been in true in the United Kingdom. My first point is that we ought to consider above all—I believe that the Minister is very concerned about this and always has been—what constitutes a good school. Surely the criteria we apply to good schools, whether trust schools, academies or CTCs, should also be the criteria we apply to community schools. That means we should include the good alongside the very small group called ““excellent””, and that should be true across the whole spectrum of education. My second point has already been made effectively by my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford. What is proposed runs directly contrary to the promises made by the Government in the White Paper on local government. In it we give local government some extra, rather unattractive, powers to impose fixed penalties. In this Bill, we take away from local authorities a much more significant power, the power to run a substantial number of schools in their own communities, thereby making a joke of the Government’s recent promises to devolve much more power to local authorities. Thirdly, on community cohesion, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is right to say that words, admittedly supported by the inspectors in this case, are not much of a substitute for a structure of education that puts the community and community cohesion at its heart. We are trading a serious system for a passel of promises. Fourthly, but not least important, we have a serious problem of trying to attract enough good teachers to stay in our schools and enough even better teachers to take on the huge responsibilities of headship. We know that, at least in London and other great cities, it is now extremely difficult to find a good head teacher. In our previous debate on community cohesion, as in so many debates on this Bill, we once again placed responsibility on the teacher and on the head teacher. If you add up the responsibilities that we now place, morally and legally, on head teachers, it is hardly surprising that so few people are willing to come forward to bear such huge burdens, with so little assistance. The evidence is clear that without the support of local authorities and their inspectors and the support that one gets from a good county hall, it becomes even harder to become a head teacher—and that becomes a very lonely activity indeed. We have not begun to thank our teachers and head teachers for the huge endeavours that they have made and for their successes that they have to their credit, whether in secular or faith schools. We have a brilliant, articulate and extremely helpful Minister. If he was not there, this Bill would have had a very much rougher time getting through the two Chambers of Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Peston, whose honesty always gets the better of him, has implied, quite a few passionate critics of the Bill have decided that the better course is simply to stay away and let it happen, because they feel that it would be futile to try at this late stage to change it by more than minor ways. In my view, this Bill will prove to be a disaster. There will be constant competition under it. The fine words about fair admissions and all the rest are, I am sure, sincerely meant, but they will turn out to be in conflict with the deep, underlying principles of the Bill, including sponsorship of trust schools, introducing the private sector, and so on. It will be very difficult to square that circle. I end on a personal note. It is incredible that a Labour Government should be bringing forward this Bill. It is more than incredible; I find it heartbreaking.