New Clause 12 - Abolition of Independent Appeals Panels
Education Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Mr Colin Pickthall (PPS (Rt Hon Jack Straw, Secretary of State), Foreign & Commonwealth Office; West Lancashire, Labour)
That does not surprise me. What worried me about the hon. Lady’s remarks was that she said that head teachers in general would not make catastrophic errors. Some heads do. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) told me a story about a school he knows where the head excluded a child for throwing the hat of another child out the window. The governors upheld the exclusion, although it was later turned down on appeal. That is perhaps an extreme example, but such reasons for exclusion are nonsense. Some heads will exclude. The pressure on heads from their school community and governors is sometimes quite strong. Sometimes the activities that pupils get up to that are not pleasant but are judged worthy of exclusion would not warrant such action in my experience of schools.
The schools exclusion appeals system is a good safeguard against the nonsense perpetrated by a small minority of head teachers, but perhaps any head teacher, however good, is liable to make a mistake. I am married to a head teacher. However good they are, they make mistakes. In conclusion, I agree with the hon. Member for Southport. He is absolutely right, and we would be foolish to agree to the new clause.