Q
222Mr.
David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): I want to ask you about the
other areas that may cause bureaucratic concerns. Before I do that,
however, can I finish off the issues that Nick has touched upon,
particularly on the recording and reporting of the use of force,
because I am not clear what “significant” means either?
In the situation that John Dunford was talking about—two
15-year-old boys are beating each other to death in a fight in the
playground and a teacher rushes out to break it up, intervenes and
there is a struggle for a few seconds in which one of the youngsters is
pulled to one side and the other is pulled to the other side and,
perhaps, trips and falls in the playground, maybe grazing the edge of
his elbow, but nothing too serious—would and should that
incident need to be documented and a letter sent to the parents? Can
John Dunford answer first?
John
Dunford: We would look to hold discussions with the
Government on the guidance on the Bill to ensure that head teachers
were protected by it in relation to any definition of the word
“significant”. If they are—to approximately quote
you—“beating each other to death”, it sounds like
quite a significant incident, especially if death
results.
Q
223Mr.
Laws: Let us make it more ambiguous and make it an
ordinary playground fight.
John
Dunford: If it is just an ordinary playground fight,
I do not think that it is a significant
incident.
Q
224Mr.
Laws: You would not want to record or report
it? John
Dunford: No, not as a general rule. The
point has been made by John, quite correctly, that it has to be the
head teacher’s judgment.
Mr.
Laws: To clarify, this is a medium-grade
fight.
Chris
Keates: I thought that your question was more complex
than that. I thought that you were referring to the use of force in the
teacher separating the
pupils.
Chris
Keates: First of all, as far as I am concerned, if
that kind of incident has occurred, it should be recorded anyway
because there are behaviour issues. On the use of force, the provisions
in the Bill are actually going to be helpful. At the moment, teachers
face the challenge every day of whether they are committing common
assault by intervening, often getting injured for their pains, but
still finding themselves faced with that issue. I agree that if we have
the provision in the Bill, it gives us an opportunity to start to
clarify the issues about teachers’ power to restrain pupils,
what constitutes the use of force and to ensure that we can give some
clear professional guidance. Everything will depend on the professional
judgment of the teacher and the head teacher dealing with those
incidents. They have to be clear about what their requirements are in
terms of ensuring that there is clarity around that incident and how it
will be dealt with.
Q
225Mr.
Laws: Are you not concerned though? In my scenario, in
which the teacher has broken up this medium-grade fight, under the
Bill, not only will they record it but they will have to write to the
parents, who may be very sympathetic to the school or not, who will get
a letter saying, “There was a significant incident in which a
member of my staff had to use force to separate your child from
somebody else. Unfortunately, he fell on the ground and grazed
himself.” Do you have no concerns that that might make teachers
quite reticent about getting involved in those incidents?
Chris
Keates: No more reticent than they are at the moment
and this might give some added protection. At the moment, that might
not be recorded or formally reported back to the parents, but you can
be absolutely sure that nine times out of 10 someone is going to raise
with the school that a member of staff has assaulted a pupil. Those
incidents take place very frequently. In the context of this, the
teachers have some clarity, protection and backing for something that,
at the moment, is quite wide and covers the judgments that they are
making every day. I do not think that there is any more danger of it
provoking that kind of complaint than there is at the moment, but, if
the complaint is provoked, at least the teacher has a statutory
provision and guidance on what is reasonable use of force and more
clarity on restraint.
Q
226Mr.
Laws: John Bangs, would it and should it?
John
Bangs: I am glad you asked that question. I taught in
a special school for 18 years. It was a secondary school for moderate
learning difficulties. It was a proxy for mild emotional, behavioural
difficulties. To prevent a child from running out of the classroom
door, you had to physically intervene. Did I have to record that every
time? No, because that was the nature of the children in the school.
The school had a restraint policy, which was understood consistently.
We also had a policy about intervening to help other members of staff,
not in terms of force, but behaviour.
The danger
with putting this into legislation and then identifying what is
significant is that the normal relationships that you have,
particularly with tough pupils, will be undermined because you
constantly have to check back to see whether you have to record it. As
John said, there has to be professional judgment in the context of the
behaviour and restraint policy of the
school. It
will always be the outliers that cause the problems. I am concerned
about emotional and behavioural difficulties schools and pupil referral
units, which are soon to be called short-stay schools. For example, I
am concerned about the large student with severe learning difficulties,
who sometimes acts out. You will be faced with a mountain of
bureaucracy because you have to consistently record your physical
intervention, which is sometimes necessary. Your example is right. I
probably would record it if there was a graze and report it to the
parent. That child would take the graze back to their parent and that
is an issue. As John says, there must be professional
judgment.
Q
227Mr.
Laws: May I move on to parental complaints, on which I
think there is unanimity between all three of you? New arrangements are
coming in that will allow people to refer some complaints to the local
government ombudsman. You have all been critical of that, but in
fairness to the Government—we are always fair to the
Government—the existing arrangements mean that some appeals can
go all the way up to the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and
Families. That does not seem particularly rational in the decentralised
world that we are supposed to be aiming for. What is wrong with the
Government proposal and what would be
better? Chris
Keates: We simply would not have
started from here on the issue of parental complaints. We were not
convinced that there was any evidence that the system for making
complaints was broken. I accept that some complaints were going to the
Secretary of State, but from the information we had, they seemed mainly
to concern special needs and not complaints on the wider basis that the
local government ombudsman will deal
with.
Q
228Mr.
Laws: What sort of special needs complaints were
there? Chris
Keates: I think that they were about special needs
provision. I think that there were about 800 a year, but I am not sure
about that figure. I am conscious that figures need to be
accurate.
Mr.
Laws: Ministers do not worry about those things—I
am only
joking. Chris
Keates: Once the Government decided to go down this
route, we were relieved that the external body would be the local
government ombudsman. At least the ombudsman has a background in
handling such complaints. To be perfectly honest, we did not see the
need for this external procedure. There might have been a need to
ensure that schools had consistent and clear processes for processing
complaints, but I never saw evidence to suggest that this was a real
issue or that parents were
dissatisfied. The
parents who are dissatisfied with complaints are those who will never
be satisfied unless the outcome is the one that they want. We face that
from casework in
our union. If there is a complaint about a teacher, the parent who has
made the complaint has only one satisfactory outcome, and if the
teacher is not sacked, the complaint has not been dealt with
appropriately. Those are likely to be the parents who will take
complaints through to the local government
ombudsman. We
have reservations about the practicality and manageability of vexatious
complaints, and with the direct access of pupils. There are ways in
which pupils can raise things already. However, the biggest issue for
us is the lack of clarity on ensuring that staff in schools do not face
double jeopardy when decisions—perhaps formal or
informal—have been made by the school management about incidents
that have occurred, and that is what we put in our briefing note. That
has to be made clear, so that the local government ombudsman is not
second-guessing the employer or manager’s decision about how
they have handled the particular issue, and so that the system does not
start to drive schools into saying, “Well, to protect ourselves
against a complaint, where we might have had a word with that teacher
about something, we will now do a formal procedure, because otherwise
we will get a complaint and the local government ombudsman might think
that a formal procedure is better.” That is a real issue for us
about this system.
Q
229Mr.
Laws: Thank you. John Bangs, could you say whether or not
you think that this measure will lead to more complaints and more
bureaucracy, which Chris has hinted might be the
case? John
Bangs: That is a good question. I am not sure where
the motivation for this particular section of the Bill has come from. I
suspect that it is because the assumption—I agree with Chris
that it is an erroneous assumption—is that there is a whole
log-jam of complaints out there, with frustrated parents who want to
make complaints, and that this is an easier way for them to make
complaints. I do not think that there is that log-jam, actually, and
the evidence from Ofsted does not show that there is either. In fact, a
complaints procedure already exists with Ofsted. There has to be a
complaints procedure for parents, obviously; that procedure is
important and it does exist. Our principal concern, which we mentioned
in our briefing, is this issue about vexatious and malicious
complaints.
I just want
to elaborate on the example that Chris gave. There are a number of
parents—we came across an instance of this—who, for
example, send their child to an autism unit in a mainstream school.
They may be in denial about the severity of their child’s needs
and they may see that route as a more convenient route for continually
pursuing the need for extra provision and for asking about the way that
the teacher relates to their child. Of course, that parent has a right
to complain through the special educational needs and disability
tribunal if they do not believe that the provision exists. What I am
anxious about is the increased potential for irrelevant vexatious and
malicious complaints with this system. If this measure is going to go
through, we need to be very clear and very careful about what
complaints are valid and what complaints are not
valid.
Q
230Mr.
Laws: Finally, John Dunford, can you say what you would
prefer to see if this measure does not go through?
John
Dunford: I echo the points that have been made by my
colleagues, particularly in relation to vexatious complaints. We think
that, although it may be slightly silly to have a process that must go
to the Secretary of State as the last part of that process, that is a
nut and this is a sledgehammer. We really think that this measure is an
unnecessary overreaction to that rather small problem.
We think
that, yes, parents need to be able to appeal. They appeal against the
head teacher’s judgment, generally to the governing body; that
is the next line of defence for them. There are parents who will go on
and on, whatever you give them. However many lines of process you give
them, they will go on and on through that process. In my experience,
those complaints are not the most justified complaints; they just tend
to be made by the most awkward parents, if I might put it that
way.
In answer to
your question, David, if parents get no joy from the governing body,
they will commonly write to the local authority and someone in the
local authority will deal with that complaint. However, what you have
here is a really huge bureaucratic process that I think is an
overreaction to a small problem. We are really quite worried about it,
particularly in relation to the time commitment that we know head
teachers will have to make to fill in all the forms and so on when you
have this kind of procedure. That is perhaps our major worry about this
Bill.
Q
231The
Minister for Schools and Learners (Jim Knight): I
apologise because I am going to go back over some of the things that we
have covered in the questioning, but we will probably end up in the
same place—with parental complaints—at the end of
it.
My first
question takes us back to burdens. I hope you agree that we have one of
the most delegated school systems in the world in terms of funding,
which comes with a certain amount of regulation in exchange; John
Dunford acknowledged that that was the case. Such a system makes it
tempting to view schools as isolated institutions which should compete
with each other. Do you think that competing in isolation is desirable,
or should schools co-operate and collaborate with each other and other
children’s services on issues such as behaviour
partnerships? John
Dunford: Thank you, Jim, for raising that as it
enables me to say something that I forgot to say at the beginning in
response to the general question about the behaviour section of the
Bill. I very much support the notion of school behaviour partnerships
put forward by Sir Alan Steer, who is a recently retired head teacher,
so he knows what it is like. Furthermore, he knows, as we do, that when
schools work together in a local area, solutions can be found to some
problems, which means that some youngsters need not be excluded from
schools and taught at home. Such issues are never easy to deal with,
but the vast majority of schools’ head teachers now have regular
meetings to look at individual cases involving pupils who might be in
danger of exclusion in one or other of those schools. Moreover, they
think about what is right for those pupils in relation to their future
in schools as a whole, not simply in that individual school. In my
view, that degree of collaboration, rather than competition, is the
right way forward for the education system.
However,
clause 235(2) states that a school may
“make
arrangements with at least one other relevant
partner”. On
the one hand, we are pleased that that covers all secondary
schools—maintained schools, academies and so on. That is good.
On the other hand, it creates an opportunity for a school that does not
really want to get into a proper partnership to find another school of
the same mind, and tick the box, as it were. We feel that guidance,
rather than a clause that might offer a way round for schools that do
not really want to collaborate, would be better in defining how
partnerships should work. But in general terms, we are very
supportive. Chris
Keates: I would like to comment briefly on behaviour
problem partnerships before answering the question on delegation. We
think that behaviour partnerships are a very good idea and would like
to see them extended to primary and special schools. We cannot see any
sense in schools not working in such partnerships, either across or
within
sectors. Our
one concern is that, although we want schools to be able to select the
partnerships and partners that they work with, we believe that the
legislation should contain a measure allowing local authorities to
intervene in circumstances where, for example, a hierarchy of schools
develops in which some people try to collaborate with particular
schools, and exclude schools with challenging behaviour problems which
would benefit from being in a behaviour partnership. With
self-selection, there is a danger that some schools end up outside a
partnership, so we think that there should be a provision for
that. I
absolutely agree that you delegate more than most other countries. You
constantly delegate too much, and there is too much autonomy for a
public service. But if you delegate to the extent that you do, there
has to be regulation. I think that we have got to be very careful not
to go down a track that says that all regulation and bureaucracy is
bad. Actually, it is unnecessary bureaucracy that is bad and we all
exist with some bureaucracy; I do not get paid if somebody does not
administer it, but we must ensure that there is no unnecessary
bureaucracy. If you are going to delegate to the extent that we do in
this country, with a public service and millions of pounds of
taxpayers’ money, you have to have a regulation framework that
ensures that people operate within the national framework in the
interests of both the public and the children and young people in the
service. John
Bangs: I welcome Jim Knight’s question. To
respond broadly, delegation of funding is one of the most significant
forms of delegation in an industrialised country, but delegation of
professional responsibility is not. I would say that that is still
incredibly centrally controlled and restrained. We need to make that
distinction. On
the specifics, I have already indicated the NUT’s support for
statutory behaviour partnerships, but I think that we need to move on
from there. This is a welcome opportunity to nail what is a very boring
debate about inclusion versus segregation of children with special
needs. Pupil referral units, special schools and SEN support services
based in particular schools can help partnerships out and can extend
beyond that. To answer the question positively, I think that the
development of clusters of schools over the past few years has been one
of the most positive developments because it utilises all the
expertise. It enables individual schools to use economies of scale and
to appoint, for
example, the proverbial Mandarin teacher for a number of
schools—you would not be able to afford one for just one
school. When
it comes to the section of the Bill on the Young People’s
Learning Agency, specifically chapter 4, clause
74—academy arrangements—there is a very strong argument
for codifying in legislation the equal responsibilities of academies
within these areas. We will seek to advise members of the Committee on
that basis, and on when, for example, academies should pick up those
responsibilities within the local authority family of schools and
within clusters. At the moment, there is a divide between some
academies and others that are influenced by guidance from the Secretary
of State and also the changing nature of funding agreements. We will
certainly seek the opportunity with this Bill to ensure that the kind
of clusters that Jim Knight is talking about apply to academies as
well.
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