Education and Inspections Bill

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The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairmen: Frank Cook, † Mr. Christopher Chope

† Blackman-Woods, Dr. Roberta (City of Durham) (Lab)

† Brooke, Annette (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD)

† Cawsey, Mr. Ian (Brigg and Goole) (Lab)

† Chaytor, Mr. David (Bury, North) (Lab)

† Clappison, Mr. James (Hertsmere) (Con)

† Creagh, Mary (Wakefield) (Lab)

† Dorries, Mrs. Nadine (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con)

† Evennett, Mr. David (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)

† Gibb, Mr. Nick (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)

† Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)

† Hayes, Mr. John (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

† Hillier, Meg (Hackney, South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)

† Hope, Phil (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills)

† Leigh, Mr. Edward (Gainsborough) (Con)

† Moffatt, Laura (Crawley) (Lab)

† Morden, Jessica (Newport, East) (Lab)

† Mulholland, Greg (Leeds, North-West) (LD)

† Shaw, Jonathan (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)

† Smith, Ms Angela C. (Sheffield, Hillsborough) (Lab)

† Smith, Jacqui (Minister for Schools)

† Snelgrove, Anne (South Swindon) (Lab)

† Teather, Sarah (Brent, East) (LD)

† Wilson, Mr. Rob (Reading, East) (Con)

Alan Sandall, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

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Standing Committee E

Tuesday 18 April 2006

(Morning)

[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]

Education and Inspections Bill

Clause 5

School improvement partners

Amendment proposed [30 March]: No. 14, in clause 5, page 3, line 22, at end insert ‘underperforming or coasting'.—[Mr. Hayes.]

10.30 am

Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 17, in clause 5, page 3, line 23, after ‘maintain', insert

‘that is not highly performing'.

No. 18, in clause 5, page 3, line 25, at end insert—

‘(1A) A school is “highly performing” if it meets such standards as the Secretary of State shall by regulation prescribe.'.

No. 19, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert—

‘(2A) Where a school fails to improve within two years of the appointment of a school improvement partner, a new school improvement partner shall be appointed.

(2B) A person appointed as a school improvement partner who has been replaced twice as a school improvement partner under the provisions of subsection (2A) shall cease to be an accredited person under subsection (2).'.

No. 20, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert—

‘( ) The Secretary of State shall publish his departmental policies in relation to the appointment of school improvement partners.'.

No. 15, in clause 5, page 3, line 40, at end insert—

‘“coasting”, in relation to a maintained school, means a school which in the previous academic year was in the third quartile nationally of the value added measure of school performance;'.

No. 16, in clause 5, page 4, line 4, at end insert—

‘“under-performing”, in relation to a maintained school, means a school which in the previous academic year was in the fourth quartile nationally of the value added measure of school performance.'.

Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): It is nice to be back after our short Easter break. My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) ably set out our concerns about imposing school improvement partners on all schools, including highly performing schools. One thing that irritates teachers and head teachers alike is time-consuming bureaucratic demands,

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whether they involve form-filling, reading the latest lever-arch file of partially relevant or irrelevant advice or attending meetings with local authorities or imposed school improvement partners.

School improvement partners are a good idea for raising standards in underperforming schools, but they will put a huge burden on good schools. I met the head teacher of one of the best-performing secondary schools in London, who found her school improvement partner to be an irritant that she could have done without. As far as she was concerned, it brought no added value to the school. Sir Kevin Satchwell, headmaster of Thomas Telford school, said to me that one of the best things about his school being a technology college is that he does not have to attend interminable meetings with the local authority. He believes that a head teacher should be in the school, focusing on raising and maintaining standards.

If all schools are to have school improvement partners, those partners should at least be well qualified and competent. Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 would introduce a mechanism to remove the accreditation of SIPs who are not fulfilling their role effectively and whose advice is not resulting in improvements to the school. Under amendment No. 19, if a school did not improve within two years of the appointment of a particular SIP, he would be replaced. If a SIP were replaced twice, he would lose his accreditation. Nothing can be worse than being advised by someone who is not up to the job. Amendment No. 19 would give the SIP a second chance. To fail once may be regarded as a misfortune; to fail twice looks like carelessness.

Amendment No. 20 specifies that the Department should publish policies on school improvement partners. I am delighted that the Government have published a statement of policy intent, and I shall speak to that policy when we debate amendments Nos. 190 and 191.

Sarah Teather (Brent, East) (LD): In responding to the Conservative amendments, I note that the answer to the question whether all schools need a SIP depends, as we discussed during the last Committee sitting, on whether its role is to be a critical friend offering advice and support or to be the heavy hand of Whitehall—or perhaps I should say the heavy hand of the local education authority.

During the holidays, the Department issued new guidance on schools causing concern. The guidance, although relevant to amendments Nos. 46 to 60, is predicated on the discussion that we are having now. I should like to place on record my irritation that it was not sent to Committee members before or even immediately after it was issued in the press. We have come to expect things to be floated in The Times before being sent to most Members of Parliament, but we had a right to expect the guidance to be sent to the Committee during the holidays. As far as I am aware, it was not sent to any Committee members, although it was e-mailed to directors of children’s services.

I hope that that will not be a pattern for the rest of Committee consideration. The Government will inevitably issue a variety of guidance, and the Committee has a right to scrutinise and discuss it at the

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appropriate time. It would have been particularly helpful if we had received this before we began clause 5. It is of some concern that we did not and I should like to place that on the record. May I ask you, Mr. Chope, to request that the Government do not do this in future?

The Minister for Schools (Jacqui Smith): I welcome you, Mr. Chope, and members of the Committee back to what I always think of as the summer term. I suspect that any request to hold the Committee outside in the lovely sunshine would be turned down, just as I turned down similar requests from my pupils when I was teaching.

We return to our discussions on clause 5. I should like first to respond to the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), who does not seem to have been imbued with the sunshine like the rest of us. Given the wealth of regulations and guidance that I have so far made available in ample time for the Committee to consider them alongside the clauses, and as I will this week make available the regulations and guidance relevant to part 4 so that we can consider them when we get to it, her comments were slightly churlish.

Sarah Teather: It would have been helpful if the material had at least been published on the Department’s website, but it is still not available there, so it is impossible for us to get hold of it unless a director of children’s services provides it.

Jacqui Smith: As I pointed out, I will, as I have done scrupulously up to this point, make sure that it is available to the Committee well in time for the discussion on that part of the Bill. It does not directly relate to this clause.

I shall start with amendments Nos. 14 and 17, and Nos. 15, 16 and 18, which are contingent upon them and which seek, as the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) identified, to limit the number of schools that would have a school improvement partner. I am sympathetic to an argument that might be made about the proportionality of intervention and contact with schools and I will talk about that in more detail later. School improvement partners come within the overall context of the new relationship that we are developing with schools, which is achieving its aim of removing the clutter of bureaucracy in the system while maintaining a suitable level of challenge, alongside the support for schools that I identified when we discussed the first set of amendments on the clause.

SIPs will help all schools to put in place plans for improvement. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) made the important point that even in very highly performing schools there can be groups of pupils who are underperforming. SIPs will have an important role in relation to the underperformance of particular groups of pupils within schools. As we also said in the White Paper, SIPs should hold schools to account for how well they support, for example, looked-after children and improve their educational outcomes. Of course, weare most concerned about schools that are underperforming or not highly performing. SIPs will

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work with those schools to help build capacity and to agree priorities and targets for improvement, but restricting SIPs to coasting or underperforming schools or those that are not highly performing could create problems.

First, we need to be able to respond when a school’s performance is declining, even if it is acceptable or highly performing in absolute terms. That is the point rightly made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove), who pointed out the need for early identification and challenge where schools are drifting into underperformance. Secondly, even in the best schools there may be concern about the performance of particular groups of pupils or about standards in particular subjects. The purpose of this Bill and the next stage of reform is to ensure not only that institutions perform well, but that every individual child in those institutions has the opportunity to fulfil their educational potential. We would be letting down under-achieving pupils if we did not extend the SIP function to all schools.

Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con): The right hon. Lady is right to say that there are few schools in which something is not going right. Similarly, there are few schools in which everything is going right, so she is correct to say that even in the best schools there is room for improvement. Before Easter, however, we said that there will not be a limitless supply of improvement partners—not, at least, of the standard we would all expect. In focusing the limited supply where it is most needed, we should take amore considered view as to where improvement is desperately needed.

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Prepared 19 April 2006