Clause 5
Education and Inspections Bill
10:30 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
It is nice to be back after our short Easter break. My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) ably set out our concerns about imposing school improvement partners on all schools, including highly performing schools. One thing that irritates teachers and head teachers alike is time-consuming bureaucratic demands, whether they involve form-filling, reading the latest lever-arch file of partially relevant or irrelevant advice or attending meetings with local authorities or imposed school improvement partners.
School improvement partners are a good idea for raising standards in underperforming schools, but they will put a huge burden on good schools. I met the head teacher of one of the best-performing secondary schools in London, who found her school improvement partner to be an irritant that she could have done without. As far as she was concerned, it brought no added value to the school. Sir Kevin Satchwell, headmaster of Thomas Telford school, said to me that one of the best things about his school being a technology college is that he does not have to attend interminable meetings with the local authority. He believes that a head teacher should be in the school, focusing on raising and maintaining standards.
If all schools are to have school improvement partners, those partners should at least be well qualified and competent. Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 would introduce a mechanism to remove the accreditation of SIPs who are not fulfilling their role effectively and whose advice is not resulting in improvements to the school. Under amendment No. 19, if a school did not improve within two years of the appointment of a particular SIP, he would be replaced. If a SIP were replaced twice, he would lose his accreditation. Nothing can be worse than being advised by someone who is not up to the job. Amendment No. 19 would give the SIP a second chance. To fail once may be regarded as a misfortune; to fail twice looks like carelessness.
Amendment No. 20 specifies that the Department should publish policies on school improvement partners. I am delighted that the Government have published a statement of policy intent, and I shall speak to that policy when we debate amendments Nos. 190 and 191.