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Children, Schools and Families Bill

My Lords, as this is International Women’s Day, I wonder whether I have been set up for the odd one out round on "Have I Got News for You": three are women, but only the other one is wearing a dress. I found what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said to be very moving, focusing on the heart of what this measure is about and putting children first, so I apologise that I will go back more to address what was said by the Minister and her opposition counterpart. I approach this debate with both a professional and a personal interest. I have a professional interest because of the church’s strong commitment to and involvement in primary and secondary education, in both church and local authority schools. In the course of my ministry, I encourage vocations to teaching as much as to the priesthood. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, if you want to affect the lives of people in the future, the highest vocation, if there is one, is to teach. I have a personal interest because I have sons-in-law who have done just that; they have responded to that call and taken up the teaching profession. Last week I was delighted to hear that one of them had been given a promotion to a senior management position in his school, but my delight became qualified as I read the measure with all its promises of added regulations, worthy though they are in intent. Indeed, my son-in-law and I had a conversation several weeks ago when he was deliberating with himself whether to stay simply as a teacher or to seek to move up. He is outstanding at his job—mind you, I would say that, wouldn’t I? I remember a distinguished head teacher telling an astonished audience that his school had only one rule. O the joy! If that could at least be an aspiration, it would help us to avoid teaching by numbers, which is the way we seem to be going. There is a real danger of overregulation destroying the inspiration and enthusiasm essential to good teaching, not least in deterring people from entering the profession itself and then in frightening people who have the holistic education of children at heart from progressing through to management. In many of our schools, we are struggling to find teachers who will take up headships. I am not thinking particularly of church schools; small schools, where head teachers carry a wider brief, are especially vulnerable, as are schools in our inner urban areas. I fear for teachers when I read in the Bill of personalised home-school agreements, which are to be reviewed annually—actually, it says "at least" annually. It also says: ""Consultation with the parent must form part of any review"," otherwise, presumably, the parent will go into detention. Mention has been made in another place of the complexity of dealing with parents who are separated from each other. I fear for teachers and for schools and their ethos in the face of parent satisfaction surveys if dominated by parents from hell, as they are called in the profession. The intention to create and build a partnership between school and home is laudable. It was laudable in 1871, when the headmistress of Brampton New National Schools wrote to parents: ""You must remember that you have not done all that is required by merely gaining admission for your child into our school. Do not suppose that its education is to be left entirely to the care of the master or mistress, and that you are to do nothing. Unless you labour together with them for your child’s welfare, disappointment to all parties will be the result"." The quotation comes from an article in last Saturday’s Yorkshire Post by the writer and former schools inspector Gervase Phinn. However, I do not believe that you can legislate for this. Interestingly, the permission for schools to use designated funds in the community will bear much more fruit in bringing parents on board in sharing in the educational well-being of their children. Schools are a natural focus for our communities and, as they expand into them, particularly as centres for lifelong learning, adults and children will encourage each other in their voyage of discovery and families and communities will come together. I welcome this invitation for entrepreneurial initiative in cohesion building. I am nervous about plans to license teachers. I license clergy, readers and lay workers. Often the licence says, "at my pleasure". That captures the imagination. What does it mean when somebody has a licence at my pleasure? It means that they fear that, with a flick of my fingers, I can dismiss them from their post. The Government have urged the church to improve its employment terms for clergy. Now I find that, as we are going along the road of improvement, the Government are meeting us going back the other way. We have two potentially controversial issues in the Bill and I will address them briefly, although they are not controversial as far as the Church of England is concerned. The first is PSHE and sex education within it. We are completely supportive of compulsory PSHE for all pupils at all stages of their school career. We agree that it should be appropriate to their age and stage of development: it should be child-centred. Naturally, we expect that the content of the PSHE and sex education will accord with the religious traditions and teaching of the school if it is aided or controlled. Most important, we want young people to develop the knowledge and understanding that they need to make informed choices on difficult issues in the context of human relationships in a complex world. We hope that schools will create the climate and the confidence required to minimise the desire of parents to withdraw their children from sex education programmes. We are therefore happy to accept the proposals in the Bill for PSHE and sex education, provided that they are properly resourced. I will just briefly mention the concern about the impact on religious education of the Rose review. The curriculum model developed in the report makes no mention of RE. Perhaps, because of its unchanged statutory position, it is judged to need no comment, but I would be grateful if the Minister would enlighten me. Personally, I would prefer RE to come within the planning of the curriculum advocated elsewhere by the review. The second potentially controversial issue is home education. We respect the right of parents to opt for home education but consider that this right should be exercised without unnecessary interference from external bodies such as local authorities. The important word is "unnecessary". It would be negligent if there was no effective supervision. We hope that the relevant agencies can work together to provide a light-touch approach to regulation. In summary, I believe that, while the Bill is not overly controversial, too much of the legislation is already covered by existing measures. I suggest that we also remove those aspects of the Bill that are simply aspirational, some of which I have mentioned; I believe that they would have little impact on raising education standards. Also, if we get rid of the unnecessary parts of the Bill, my son-in-law will not all too quickly have a hairstyle like mine.