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Division
No.
4]
Smith,
Ms Angela C. (Sheffield,
Hillsborough)Question
accordingly negatived.
Mr.
Hayes: I beg to move amendment No. 190, in clause 5, page
3, line 27, after ‘unless'
insert ‘he has headteacher
experience
and'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 191, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end
insert ‘and has undergone training
in teaching children with special education needs and
disability.'.
Mr.
Hayes: The lead amendment suggests that the people whom we
appoint to perform the important task of school improvement partner
should be head teachers, and amendment No. 191 proposes that they
should have undergone training in teaching children with special needs.
The Committee will know from earlier debates that the most
disadvantaged children are at the heart of the Conservatives’
approach to the Bill and to education more generally. Children with
special educational needs are among the most disadvantaged
children. Let me deal
first with head teachers. Debating the previous group of amendments, I
said that it was critical that the people who perform the important
role of SIP are of the best possible quality. There are many people who
are not head teachers whom we would not want to describe as being
anything less than of high quality, but it seems a useful benchmark to
suggest that, if a person is to be appointed to a school to make real
changes to its organisation, its teaching and learning practices as
well as to its management, that person should have been a head
teacher. Perhaps I may
plug the school of which I am a governor. The head teacher of John
Harrox school in Moulton in my constituency, Mr. David Munro, does a
good deal of work advising other head teachers. He is an experienced
head and works with other primary heads to help them to improve
practice. I am sure that other members of the Committee know of similar
examples from their areas of the country. We know that there are
already good models of head teachers working with other head teachers
in collaborative ventures of one kind or another, to help them to
improve practice in their schools. In broadening the number of people
who could be involved in that work, we risk undermining schools’
confidence in that provision.
One reason why we want to focus
school improvement partners as I described a few moments ago is that we
are of the mind that there will not be sufficient head teachers with
sufficient time to perform the task. The provision entails former head
teachers—they may have retired or moved on, or be doing
something else entirely—allocating significant time and energy to
the task. I suspect that the Minister will resist the amendments
because she knows that if she continues to say that every school should
have a partner, there will not be enough head teachers and it will be
necessary to broaden the net to draw in people without experience of
running a school—people who are not former head teachers. The
amendments are consistent with our approach of maintaining that school
improvement partners should be of the highest quality. The right people
must be appointed to the job. The White Paper makes it clear, at
paragraph 2.62 on page 38, that a school improvement partner should
be “a nationally
accredited expert, usually a
headteacher”. We are,
therefore, not a million miles from the Government on that
matter. It is made
clear in the White Paper that school improvement partners are an
extension of the idea of collaboration and federation that underpins
the Government’s approach to the sharing of good practice. I
suspect that the Government are right that it can make a real
difference when a failing school federates with another, more
successful, school in its area. A school can benefit from that kind of
collaboration if there is good knowledge of the local circumstances, if
relationships between members of staff, governors and others associated
with the school are good, and if there is real knowledge of some of the
challenges facing the school. Such collaboration must be rooted in such
local expertise. I am very concerned that a school improvement partner
who has not been a head teacher and who may not be from the locality
may be parachuted into the school without that that sort of
understanding or knowledge of local considerations, and perhaps without
the “nationally accredited” expertise that a head teacher
would typically
have.
Sarah
Teather: On a point of clarification, does the hon.
Gentleman mean that all SIPs should be serving head teachers, or that,
as the amendment specifies, they should have head teacher experience?
What he is saying seems different from what is in the
amendment.
Mr.
Hayes: The amendment makes it clear
that both are possible. Of course there will be circumstances in which
an existing head teacher—as in the example from my
area—can play a useful part in supporting the work of another
school with challenges that he overcame in his own school. That is why
I made the point that it is best for a school improvement partner to
come from the same locality, so that he will understand the local
challenges and the character of the area and perhaps already have some
knowledge of the school. The idea of a serving head teacher travelling
to another part of the country and, perhaps, spending many weeks
working with a school that has profound difficulties raises all kinds
of questions. Where would that head teacher’s priorities lie?
Would they lie with the school that he or she had gone to work with, or
with the school of which he or she is the serving head teacher? There
are issues about that, which is why I am sticking closely to the White
Paper. As I have said, the White Paper makes it clear that SIPs are
really a
development of the idea of local collaboration and federation and good
communications showing best practice in a given area.
In the case of former head
teachers, there is likely to be a great deal more flexibility. They may
have retired or be working part time in rather different professional
circumstances and they may be able to move round more freely, allocate
more time and play a more dynamic role in the process, without
compromising the integrity of this important part of the Bill by
diluting the quality of the people
involved. Ms
Angela C. Smith (Sheffield, Hillsborough) (Lab): The
amendment is rather prescriptive. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it
is important that a school should be effectively challenged by its
school improvement partner and that there should be reasonable
flexibility about who should be accredited to do
that?
Mr.
Hayes: Challenge is important, but it must be based on a
good understanding of the issues faced by schools. That is critical. It
is important that school improvement partners retain a degree of
empiricism—they should be objective; they should be an
“honest friend”, as someone described them earlier. Yes,
there should be challenge, but it must be in the context of supporting
schools’ work in the areas where improvements need to be made.
The nature of that challenge will, to some extent, depend upon the
scale of the tasks faced by schools and their school improvement
partners. None of that, however, alters the essence of my argument that
school improvement partners should be of the highest quality. To make
the challenge that both the hon. Lady and I seek, school improvement
partners must have the respect of those whom they are challenging and
advising and with whom they seek to
work.
Ms
Smith: Does the hon. Gentleman consider that former
directors of education, who may have produced extremely efficient and
high-quality services in local authorities, may be fitted to the
challenge?
Mr.
Hayes: As a member of an education committee, I worked
with many local authority education officers and met many people of the
highest calibre. I do not disparage the expertise of and the good work
done by local government officers. Politicians too often go down that
road. However, it is important to make the case for school improvement
partners as persuasive as possible to schools that may be sceptical. In
coasting schools, for example, I suspect there will be a fair amount of
doubt that they need a school improvement partner at all. They are
coasting because they do not recognise the scale of the challenge that
they face. In making the case, the expertise of school improvement
partners in running schools and in, as it were, doing the business
locally, will be useful
tools. I understand
the hon. Lady’s point and I do not disregard it entirely. I am
not unsympathetic to the admiration she has for the good work that is
done by many education officers in local government. However, I do not
think that it is good enough to broaden the
net and trawl in a large number of people, not all of whom will be
equally competent in persuading the schools of the merit of school
improvement partners. If we are going to limit who can become a SIP, we
should limit it to head teachers—people with experience that is
highly relevant to the work that they are to do in and with the
school. 11.15
am It is worth
talking about, in the pilot, the successful school improvement
partnership between George Salter high school and Shireland language
college, which is highlighted in the White Paper. Performance at George
Salter high school in Sandwell was improved when Mr. Mark Grundy, the
head teacher at Shireland—I hasten to add that I do not know
him—took over the strategic running of both schools and devised
a recovery plan for George Salter. However, the Bill does not stipulate
that school improvement partners must have real-life experience of
running schools. There is a great danger that if we do not specify who
SIPs should be, we will not get the right people, and will not persuade
schools that this part of the Bill is warranted or that the work that
such people do is desirable.
According to The
Times Educational Supplement of 21 December 2005, heads who have
applied to become school improvement partners have complained about the
complex application process. I understand that it includes role-play
tests and a data evaluation examination that must be completed within
35 hours of opening the envelope. Will the Minister comment on that? We
must get the right people, and the criteria by which we test, appoint
and remove them should be rigorous, but if we are going to ask both
serving and former head teachers to be involved, we must make the
process by which they become engaged as clear and straightforward as
possible. We do not want to add bureaucracy where there is already too
much, particularly given that the point is made in the White Paper that
the Government’s “new relationship with schools”
policy is “designed to
reduce bureaucracy and streamline working
arrangements”, so as to
release more energy to focus on local priorities.
Our doubts about the
Government’s position are not doubts in principle. There is a
case for sharing good practice with underperforming or coasting schools
in which improvement is urgently needed. We are committed to the idea
that the people involved in that should be the best possible people and
that they should be able to perform their function by earning the
respect of the schools that they work with. That will in part depend on
their real-life practical experience, and I am therefore convinced that
it is desirable that they have run schools themselves as head
teachers. As more
children with special needs are educated in mainstream schools, the
need to ensure that teachers have appropriate training and advice on
how to meet their needs is increasing. In this Committee, we have made
a case for the role of special schools. I am a staunch advocate of
their virtues for children with all sorts of special needs, but I
acknowledge that many children who are integrated into mainstream
schools
do well there. There is a good deal of good practice in integrating
children in mainstream schools where that is the best place for them.
We believe that such matters should be determined by the choice of
parents and the needs of children. The best educational opportunities
for children should be the driver of policy in that respect. However, if that is to be how
we move forward, it is vital that school improvement partners have a
good understanding of the requirements of children with special
educational needs. Conservative Members will not hesitate to advocate
the case for special needs children, as my hon. Friend the Member for
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton has done throughout his tenure of his
current post, as I did when I held that post, and as I continue to do
in my current role. We should not allow children with special
educational needs to play second fiddle either in our consideration of
the Bill or more widely. SIPs should be well equipped to deal with the
needs of those children and amendment No. 191 would make that a
requirement of the
Bill. The fastest
growing area of special needs is children with emotional and
behavioural difficulties. Such children present real challenges to
schools and head teachers and will present significant challenges to
SIPs. EBD children bring with them all kinds of problems, so it is
important that SIPs are well equipped to deal with them. There are
worries within the profession that teachers and heads are not
necessarily receiving adequate training to deal with EBD children or
with children with special educational needs more generally. There are
real doubts about the level of expertise and therefore about the way
that some of those children are being handled in mainstream
schools. Amendment
No. 191 would require school improvement partners to have adequate
training. No doubt, the Minister will tell us why she thinks that they
should not be required to have such training and set out clearly how
she sees the alternative working out. If SIPs are not to be trained in
this area, we want to be absolutely certain that she has a plan
B—another way of dealing with the needs of those children in
underperforming schools.
Mrs.
Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): Does my hon.
Friend agree that the number of children with emotional and behavioural
difficulties and special needs is increasing rapidly? That is not
simply because we can now detect those problems at an earlier stage;
there are other reasons too. The amendment is therefore essential. The
lack of mention of children with special educational needs in both the
White Paper and the Bill is worrying.
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