Orders of the Day — Education Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:06 pm on 14 March 2005.

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Photo of Nick Gibb Nick Gibb Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton 6:06, 14 March 2005

It is a pleasure to follow Mr. Chaytor, but I have to shatter the illusion that no one objects to the Bill's provisions. I do object to some of them, particularly on inspection regimes and self-evaluation. It is terribly important to maintain a rigorous and independent inspectorate of our schools and I have serious concerns about the Bill in that respect. I share the view of Mr. Sheerman about the behaviour of the Secondary Heads Association at its recent conference. It reflects badly on their profession and if those heads cannot even set a decent example, it will make it more difficult for them to maintain discipline in their own schools.

I am continually struck by the cycle of decline in British education, which predates this Administration, but still flourishes, despite a lot of rhetoric to the contrary, under new Labour. How does the cycle of decline work? Those with an egalitarian viewpoint—alas, they still dominate policy making in the education world—introduce a reform, for example the AS-level as a component part of the A-level exam, in order to create an over-arching exam that blends two different ability levels. That over-burdens A-level students with too many exams, so to tackle the problem, they propose sweeping away external assessment at 16, replacing it with more self-evaluation and teacher assessment. Thank goodness the Secretary of State has rejected that proposal.

Another example was the introduction of GCSEs in the mid-80s. Again, it was an overarching exam to encompass both CSE and GCSEs with grades ranging from A and now A* to G. Predictably, grades D to G began to be regarded as fail grades, so it was then proposed to return to separate level 1 and level 2 qualifications within the Tomlinson diploma proposals—essentially a return to the old distinction. The worst clauses in the Bill propose making more of such reforms.

Ofsted was established in 1992 to tackle the very real concern that Her Majesty's inspectors were insufficiently robust in their opinions. There were concerns about the rigour and quality of their inspections. They were, as it was said at the time, the dog that did not bark in the night, and were too close to the Department of Education. That was why Ofsted was established as a non-ministerial department with, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, Her Majesty's chief inspector directly accountable to Parliament. I share his concerns about where that accountability rests under the Bill.

It soon became clear that Ofsted's reports were rigorous and led to many schools having to reassess their quality of teaching. Most inspections were carried out by independent inspectors who were trained and registered as Ofsted inspectors, but were sub-contractors. My concerns about the Bill are that it means smaller inspection teams, led by an inspector, and that the chief inspector will be able to amend its reports. It also proposes to reverse the requirement to tender for contractors in respect of each inspection and removes the requirement to maintain a register of authorised inspectors. All that looks to me like a move to take inspection back in house, and to return, in other words, to the bad old days of HMI and the days of the curious incident of the dog in the night.

I am concerned by the notion of the short, sharp inspection. Of course, over the years the bureaucracy of Ofsted inspections has increased, with schools being required by the Department and local education authorities to produce volumes of paper as preparation for an inspection. That was never the purpose of the rigorous inspection envisaged in the 1992 legislation. It is right, therefore, that the Bill introduces a shorter notice period for inspections to prevent that bureaucratic nonsense from occurring.

It is not right, however, to reduce either the number of inspectors or the length of the inspection. Inspectors will, under the Bill, as the Secretary of State has confirmed, take no more than two days and will have smaller inspection teams. We are told that the inspectors will focus on the school's own self-evaluation evidence. As Lord Filkin said in the other place, schools will feed in their self-evaluation evidence to the inspection team, then inspectors will engage with the schools in a professional dialogue examining the evidence in support of the self-evaluation. Yet because inspectors will see little actual teaching during their inspections, there is little that the inspections will add to the sum total of knowledge about the school, other than in reprinting already available exam result data.

In two days there will be very little time to obtain evidence to support or contradict self-evaluation. As Baroness Perry said:

"The framework which has been piloted in the current year for the light-touch inspections smacks too much of bureaucratic ticks in boxes".—[Hansard, House of Lords, 13 December 2004; Vol. 667, c. 1133.]

I share that concern. A rigorous, independent inspection of the quality of teaching in a school is to be replaced by a short bureaucratic box-ticking exercise.

So the cycle of decline will continue. Every form designed to deal with the over-bureaucratisation of Ofsted inspections, which was never intended, has been hijacked now to emasculate the rigour and independence of those inspections. That matters hugely. In our system, schools are, in practice, unaccountable. The only real accountability were the Ofsted inspections and reports that received widespread local coverage.

If a local parent is unhappy with the policies of his or her children's school, there is very little he or she can do. For example, if the head teacher of a comprehensive decides that all English lessons should be taught in mixed ability classes, who should local people lobby if they object? Do they lobby their Member of Parliament, who can then raise the matter with the Secretary of State? No. Questions of whether or not to stream are, it seems, matters for the profession—the head teacher and the governors of a particular school. Do parents raise the matter with their local councillor so that he or she can raise it with the council cabinet member responsible for education or with the director of education? No, and for the same reason.

Key policy decisions, such as the degree of setting or streaming, which directly affect the quality of teaching in a school, are totally outside the democratic structures of the state. The only thing parents can do is to become a governor of a school. Most simply do not have the time to take on such obligations. In any case, there is real doubt—I know of no examples—as to whether a parent-governor would be able to change key policies, such as whether the synthetic phonics programmes referred to by my hon. Friend Mr. Collins are used to teach reading in primary schools or whether streaming should be reintroduced in a comprehensive.

The only real accountability has rested with the Ofsted inspections, and the Bill effectively renders such inspections meaningless.