Mr.
Leigh: I am very pleased with what the Minister has said
so far. She used the word “responsive”, which
is important. Does she also agree that a SIP appointed to a faith school
should, without having to be of the same denomination, be broadly
sympathetic to the concept of the faith
school?
Jacqui
Smith: The hon. Gentleman is pushing me to go slightly
further than I have gone. I think that I made it clear that we expect
all SIPs going through the accreditation process to be aware of the
significance of diversity in the English education system and to be
sympathetic to the diverse ethoi and religious characteristics of
schools, so that they understand how such features affect a school.
However, it would be difficult to go further and to expect a local
authority, for example, to collect and maintain information about the
religious convictions of its school improvement partners, or to
determine their employment on that basis.
I hope that I have gone far
enough to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we recognise the important
contribution that faith schools make to the education system and that
we have been willing to work alongside representatives of faith
organisations to ensure that we recognise their concerns and the
relevant issues as we develop the new relationship with schools policy
and the SIPs
policy.
Mr.
Leigh: I am very grateful for what the Minister has said.
This has been a useful short debate and we have made progress. As she
knows, there has been concern among some head teachers and in the
Catholic Education Service, but we have received some reassurances from
her. We know that the Minister believes that there should be a rich
diversity of schools; we all believe that. We know, as we have
presumably always known, that the Bill is designed to achieve that. She
has said today that she expects SIPs to understand that, and therefore,
presumably, not to have their own agenda. It would be wrong for a SIP
to have an agenda either in favour of or against a particular type of
school. The Minister
said that she wanted SIPs to be responsive to schools’
individual characteristics. I understand that she does not want to go
so far as to say in upcoming discussions that particular schools should
have a veto or that local education authorities should have resources
to investigate a SIP’s background, but she used an interesting
phrase. I hope that Hansard has an accurate record of her
response to me. I think that she said that she would expect SIPs to be
sympathetic to the religious characteristics of faith schools. I have
achieved quite a lot today, and I am happy with what we have achieved,
and so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave,
withdrawn. Clause
5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
6Functions
in respect of recreation
etc Mr.
David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab): I beg to move amendment
No. 183, in clause 6, page 4, line 13, leave out ‘adequate' and
insert ‘sufficient'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take the
following amendments: No. 185, in clause 6, page 4, line 13, leave out
‘adequate' and insert
‘such'. No.
184, in clause 6, page 4, line 14, at end
insert ‘as may be sufficient
according to their
needs'. No.
149, in clause 6, page 4, line 15, after ‘may',
insert ‘enter into partnerships
with other public, private or voluntary organisations in order
to'. No.
236, in clause 6, page 4, line 18, after ‘centres,', insert
‘field
centres,'. No. 64, in
clause 6, page 4, line 29, after ‘provision', insert ‘or
commissioning'. No.
150, in clause 6, page 5, line 30, at end
insert— ‘(d) a local
authority must have regard to the access requirements of qualifying
young persons with a
disability.'. No.
23, in clause 6, page 6, line 27, at end
add— ‘(3) Provision under
this section shall be restricted to that which can be funded by the
revenue support grant separately identified but not specifically
allocated or
ring-fenced.'.
Mr.
Chaytor: I am pleased to speak to the amendments,
particularly to amendments Nos. 183 to 185, which are probing
amendments designed to elicit the Minister’s response to clause
6 on local authority functions respecting recreation. I hope that the
debate will be slightly less controversial than the debate on probing
amendment No. 347. I
welcome the provisions in clause 6 that will strengthen and clarify
such functions and update the provisions of the Education Act 1996.
Local authorities’ role in providing recreational services for
young people is more important now than ever, especially in the context
of antisocial behaviour, a growing concern that all Committee members
have experienced. It is indisputably one of the most striking social
phenomena in the United Kingdom that for the past two to three years or
perhaps longer, as the level of serious crime has fallen, the level of
unpleasant, unacceptable antisocial behaviour—particularly but
not only among young people—has increased. It could be argued
that there is a link between the long-term decline in funding for youth
services, such as the provision of community recreation facilities, and
the declining capacity of some young people to occupy themselves
creatively and constructively without resorting to drugs, alcohol,
violence or personal abuse. That is the context in which clause 6 is
particularly
welcome. My
reservation about clause 6 is that it does not draw a sufficient link
between local authorities’ responsibility to provide
recreational services for young people and curriculum activities in
schools. We need to forge a stronger link between what individual
schools wish to provide for their young people as part of the national
curriculum and wider extra-curricular activities and what services and
facilities exist outside the school and need to be provided by local
authorities. We have not yet forged that
link. I shall make
four brief points. With luck, I shall make them before we break for
lunch, to provide a convenient point from which to continue the debate
this afternoon.
London’s
success in securing the 2012 Olympic games gives the UK a unique,
once-in-a-lifetime—arguably a
once-in-a-century—opportunity to encourage vastly greater
numbers of young people to take an interest in sport. The Government
recognise that and have already brought significant levels of new
investment into sport. I want to reinforce the absolute importance of
using the Olympic bid as the hook to transform attitudes to sport and
physical activity of a whole generation of young
people. The current
requirement in our schools is a minimum of two hours a week of sport
and physical education. I am not sure that that is enough. We need to
build on it, and strengthening local authorities’
responsibilities will be a small
encouragement.
Mr.
Gibb: The hon. Gentleman refers to the minimum two hours a
week of sport. Does he have a feeling of what proportion of schools are
achieving
that?
Mr.
Chaytor: I do not have a feeling of that, but the hon.
Gentleman asks an important question. It is something that we should
seek to flush out from the Minister. It is important to get an accurate
assessment, not just a feeling, of how many schools are fulfilling that
requirement and how many are falling short. Let us bear in mind that it
is a bare minimum requirement. If we are to transform attitudes among
our young people, two hours a week is not really enough. Of course, the
two hours a week in school needs to be supplemented by a number of
hours outside school. That is where the clause comes
in. My second point is
that within the national curriculum, to my recollection, there is an
intention that all young people will have learned to swim by the age of
11. I am not sure that we have yet achieved that. My feeling is that we
are some way short of it, but it is again important to identify
precisely the levels of achievement of young people. It is not just an
issue of recreation and pleasurable physical activity; it can be an
issue of life or death in certain extreme circumstances. The Olympics
give us an excellent opportunity to strengthen the role of swimming in
our schools. Thirdly,
I wish to draw attention to the report of the Select Committee on
Education and Skills published last year entitled “Education
Outside the Classroom”. It contains a number of positive
recommendations to strengthen the extra-curricular work done by
schools, and I hope that it has contributed to turning the tide in
favour of a much more positive attitude towards taking children outside
the school, not only on longer-term expeditions but using the immediate
environment as the content of educational experience. One or two of the
amendments in this group refer to that matter. We need to open a much
bigger debate on the way in which the immediate environment outside the
school, school visits to places of interest, outward bound centres and,
in certain circumstances, overseas visits, can enrich the curriculum
and young people’s
experience.
Mr.
Hayes: In talking about the important role of sport in
schools, the hon. Gentleman draws attention to the amount of time that
is available in the
curriculum. Will he also say a word about access to facilities? Many
school playing fields have been sold, not only under the present
Government, but under previous Governments, and I suspect that public
open spaces are declining. Many houses are being built with small or
non-existent gardens, and the chances of children accessing public or
other open space to engage in sport seem to be less than they once
were.
Mr.
Chaytor: That is correct. I stress that far fewer playing
fields have been sold off under the present Government than under the
Conservatives, because the
criteria for selling them off have been tightened, but the hon.
Gentleman makes an important point. We should also point out that in
every suburban housing estate, the streets in which children could at
one time play freely have been completely occupied by their
parents’ 4x4 vehicles. We need to look more carefully at the
question of land use
planning. It being
One o’clock, The Chairman
adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing
Order. Adjourned
till this day at Four
o’clock.
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