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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue properly. Noble Lords will recall that when this issue came before us extremely briefly at an early stage of the Bill, I said nothing about it because it was grouped with a whole lot of other amendments about faith schools and the very fundamental matter of whether the school assembly should be of a broadly Christian nature. At the end of a three-hour debate, I felt it right to confine my comments to those issues. However, if the noble Baroness chooses to put this amendment to the vote, we on these Benches will support her, and not because we misunderstand the situation as it now stands—with due respect, I think that perhaps one or two noble Lords do misunderstand it. The situation now is that we have the 20 per cent reserved quota and that is not being increased. The Government’s measures, as introduced by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough—as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, might know if he had been here on Report—allow the composition of that 20 per cent to be changed slightly. I know of very few faith schools that do not already have a head teacher of the faith. Therefore, I really wonder why this is needed at all as regards head teachers. What does concern me is that a well qualified head teacher might be passed over for a less well qualified head teacher who is of the faith if this post is chosen to be reserved by the school. At a time when we are desperate for really good head teachers with the qualities of leadership, inspiration, understanding of young people, hard work, creativity and innovation about the curriculum, we do not want to exclude anybody who is really well qualified to lead a school just because they are not of the faith. I am also a bit concerned about some of the other posts that might be included in the Bill. Some of these posts are not well paid and the people applying for them may find it quite difficult to move or to go elsewhere to get those jobs. I do not accept the arguments that this is going to mean that thousands more teachers are going to be discriminated against. But we are nothing if not consistent on these Benches and when the School Standards and Framework Act came before Parliament in 1998, we sought to delete Sections 58 and 60, which brought in these quotas in the first place. We are against these quotas and we continue to be so. Just because this changes the quotas, that does not make them any more acceptable to these Benches.