Annette
Brooke: I accept that correction, but would the Minister
not agree that there is a deficit in the skills of those 18 to
21-year-olds, so they need more than eight hours per
week?
Phil
Hope: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I was dealing
with the issue of people under school-leaving age—the 15 to
17-year-olds. Nevertheless, she is right: levels of illiteracy and
innumeracy among the prison population aged over 18 are high. To
address the point made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton, a major programme that the hon. Lady will know
about—our “skills for life” strategy, launched in
2001, for which I have responsibility—has led to dramatic
improvements. I have visited prisons and spoken to older offenders
working with other offenders to increase their literacy and numeracy
levels. However, there is a huge mountain to climb and it is important
that we do
that. I am
pleased that some 3.5 million adults took part in “skills for
life” courses and that 1.25 million have received their first
level 1 qualification since we launched the strategy. I will not go
into other figures now, but will try to stick to the new clause. There
is a huge need and there is work to do if we are to achieve our goals
of reducing illiteracy among the adult population as well as reducing
the numbers of young people, with poor levels of literacy and
numeracy. I
agree with the hon. Lady that there is a challenge, but there is
cross-party support for addressing it. However, simply removing the
sections in the Education Act 1996 which disapply the powers and duties
that the Act confers on the Secretary of State, local education
authorities and parents to anyone detained under the order of a court,
as has been proposed, is not the right way forward. A range of detailed
duties are already in place to condition the education provided to
children detained under an order of court, and those will require
substantial unpicking and reconsideration. Simply inserting the new
clause will not do that; in fact, it would create inconsistent and, in
some cases, conflicting duties for the Youth Justice Board and
LEAs. We
addressed the issue clearly in the Green Paper, “Reducing
Re-Offending Through Skills and Employment”, published jointly
by my Department, the Home Office and the Department for Work and
Pensions last December, with which I am sure the hon. Lady and other
Opposition Members will be familiar. We acknowledge that there are
problems with the current arrangements and we set out clearly as a key
priority our commitment to consider the issues affecting school-age
offenders and their education. We said that we will involve relevant
Departments and agencies in developing a new strategy to develop these
issues and that we would publish proposals in the
second half of this year. That commitment holds good and it is, I think,
a better way of addressing the issues raised than simply accepting the
new clause. We are
putting forward a comprehensive proposal that I hope will persuade the
hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment, knowing that we have an active
process under way, with proposals to be published later this
year.
Mr.
Hayes: I alluded to that document when I spoke. The
Minister will recall that the discussion that we had about it
highlighted the problem of disrupted provision. Often, people are moved
when they are on courses, or their regime or teacher may change, which
is particularly critical in respect of the younger people to whom the
hon. Lady referred. Will the Minister give us any perspective on
that?
Phil
Hope: The hon. Gentleman is right. The Green
Paper’s proposals are wide-reaching and will have a huge impact
throughout not only the prison system, but the probation service and
the new National Offender Management Service that is currently being
developed. There will be dramatic changes. A thorough educational
assessment programme will be carried out at the start for the small
proportion of young people who go into custody. On the basis of that
initial assessment, young people go through intensive programmes to
address the deficits that might well have developed as they have gone
out of school and into care or some form of
custody. 6.15
pm In 2002, the
Youth Justice Board produced the national specification for learning
and skills, which requires that the service provided in custody matches
that to which young people will be entitled in school or college
provision. The new investment that the Youth Justice Board has put into
prison education has improved the provision to achieve the change in
performance that I have mentioned.
I turn now to new clause 3. We
need to recognise the scale of the issues. Of the three immigration
removal centres that hold families with children, two hold families for
a maximum of 72 hours. One is in Scotland, and so the Bill does not
apply to it. The capacity of any local authority to react to the
frequent movements into and out of those centres and to provide a
personalised learning experience for the children held there is likely
to be extremely limited.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset
and North Poole referred to the immigration removal centre at
Yarl’s Wood. She is right that, where necessary in individual
cases, families with children are held there for longer periods. Most
will be held for just a few days prior to removal from the UK. As part
of the requirements on the operator, the centre provides education
based on the national curriculum, which is tailored to the needs of the
individual children in the centre. Efforts are made to link the
learning provided with that received by the children in the schools
they may have attended prior to detention in the centre. The
inspectorate of prisons’ inspections of Yarl’s Wood are
supported by Ofsted.
To extend local
authorities’ duties to the children held in those few
immigration removal centres would place a significant burden on a few
authorities. The arrangements for providing education in Yarl’s
Wood immigration removal centre are established through the contract by
which the centre is operated and run. Although the most recent
inspection report on the establishment identified some significant
areas for improvement, providing an education service specifically
tailored for the small but inevitably diverse population of the
immigration removal centre through the contract rather than as a small
adjunct to a local authority’s general responsibilities remains,
I believe, the better way forward.
I assure the hon. Member for
South Holland and The Deepings that of course all staff with access to
children have appropriate CRB checks, training and so on, so that they
can provide the services that are required. I hope that the new clause
will be withdrawn, on that
basis.
Annette
Brooke: I thank the Minister for his comments on new
clause 3. I said clearly that it was a probing clause, because it is
difficult to see how to solve the problem when we are still locking up
children who have done nothing wrong. It seems to me to be a mistake in
our society that we should do that at all. However, I look forward to
the next inspector’s report and hope to see those improvements
coming forth and achieving results. It is important that MPs
continually raise the issues that affect asylum-seeking children, who
can be forgotten children.
I accept that the wording of new
clause 2 might not be appropriate. However, the principle is so
important that we would like to push it to a vote. We do not wish to
withdraw the clause, on the premise that there is so much more to be
done. We would be failing in our duty if we did not keep highlighting
those problems and keeping them at the top of the agenda. It is good to
hear that things will improve in some months’ time, but since I
became an MP we have said many times, “Things will get better
when such and such happens”. We want to make the statement today
that the Bill should cover all our children and improve all their
educational prospects.
Question put,
That the clause be read a Second
time:— The
Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes
13.
Division
No.
6] Blackman-Woods,
Dr.
Roberta Smith,
Ms Angela C. (Sheffield,
Hillsborough)Question
accordingly negatived.
Clause 7
Invitation for proposals for
establishment of new
schools
Mr.
Gibb: I beg to move amendment No. 24, in clause 7, page 6,
line 34, at end
insert— ‘(1A) A local
authority shall publish a notice under subsection (1) in circumstances
where 35 per cent or more of school places are in schools that are
underperforming.'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments:
No. 179, in clause 7, page 6,
line 34, at end
insert— ‘(1A) A local
education authority must publish such a notice if they receive
representations from 50 or more parents of qualifying children in
connection with the establishment of a foundation, voluntary or
foundation special school or an
academy. (1B) In subsection
(1A) “qualifying child”, in relation to a local education
authority, means any child in the authority's area who is of or under
compulsory school
age.'. No.
193, in clause 7, page 6, line 34, at end
insert— ‘(1B) In subsection
(1A) a maintained school is “underperforming” if, in the
previous academic year, it was in the fourth quartile nationally of the
value added measure of school
performance.'. No.
25, in clause 7, page 7, line 1, after second ‘a', insert
‘reasonable'. No.
65, in clause 7, page 7, line 2, at end
insert— ‘(ca) specify
appropriate qualifications for persons other than local education
authorities wishing to establish the new
school,'. No.
27, in clause 7, page 7, line 20, at end
insert ‘, such time not to be less
than a period of two
months,'.
Mr.
Gibb: Clause 7 is probably the key provision of the Bill;
it is certainly the major factor in persuading the Opposition to
support it. During his speech on 24 October last year—the day
before the publication of the White Paper—the Prime Minister
said: “In our
schools, as I shall go on to describe, the system will finally be
opened up to real parent power. All schools will be able to have
Academy style freedoms. All schools will be able to take on external
partners. No one will be able to veto parents starting new schools or
new providers coming in, simply on the basis that there are local
surplus places. The role of the LEA will change
fundamentally.” In the
White Paper itself, the Prime Minister
stated: “While
parents can express a choice of school, there are not yet enough good
schools in urban areas; such restrictions are greatest for poor and
middle class families who cannot afford to opt for private education or
to live next to a good school, if they are dissatisfied with what the
state offers.” Many
parents are dissatisfied with what the state offers; the recent
National Audit Office report into improving schools
stated: “As at
July 2005, there were 1,557 poorly performing schools in England, which
represented around 4 per cent of primary schools and 23 per cent of
secondary schools...We estimate that these 1,557 schools educate
around 980,000 pupils, or 13 per cent of the school
population.” The
clause has been important in eliciting support from the Opposition, but
it is also a major reasonfor Labour rebels’ opposition
to the Bill. In their alternative White Paper, “Shaping the
Education Bill:
Reaching for Consensus”—I wonder how they got on trying to
reach that consensus—they
state: “We
propose that local authorities be empowered to assess and if necessary
refuse or restrain the expansion of schools where this would not be in
the overall interests of pupils in their area...Local authorities
should retain the power to decide whether to function solely as
commissioners, and not providers, of education...The Trust concept
must be more fully developed and discussed before it could be enshrined
in primary
legislation.” Before
Easter, I was accused by the Minister of doing her job for her in
citing the draft regulations in support of clause 3. In giving this
explanation of the reasons for amendment No. 24, I may be in danger of
being accused by the hon. Member for Bury, North—although he
voted for the Bill—of doing his job for him. The amendment adds
strength to the power of parents by triggering a competition for a new
school and inviting proposals in circumstances in which 35 per cent. of
school places are in schools that can be regarded as underperforming. I
cited the concerns given in the alternative White Paper about what the
provisions that became clause 7 do. Despite those concerns, the letter
from the Secretary of State to the Chairman of the Education and Skills
Committee still makes it clear:
“A key part of the vision
set out in the White Paper is that the local authority increasingly
acts as a commissioner, rather than a provider, of
schools.” Given
the huge majority, as the Minister indicated, that the Bill received on
Second Reading, I hope that that remains a key part of the vision. The
amendment seeks to strengthen that vision by creating an automatic
trigger for a notice to be issued under clause 7 inviting proposals for
the establishment of a new school when 35 per cent. of school places
are in schools that are underperforming. We defined underperforming
schools in amendment No. 193 as those schools that appear in the bottom
quartile of a value-added league table.
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