Education Bill [HL]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:00 pm on 21 February 2005.

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Photo of Baroness Walmsley Baroness Walmsley Shadow Minister, Home Affairs 7:00, 21 February 2005

My Lords, Amendment No. 25, which is tabled in my name, is almost the same as the noble Lord's amendment. I associate myself and these Benches with the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, in introducing this group of amendments.

My amendment is very similar to one tabled in Committee, when the Minister very patiently responded at length to my long list of questions. Despite his patience and thoroughness, I still wish to see concrete provision in the Bill to ensure a role for Ofsted as a "lever of influence", to use the Government's words, under the requirements of the Children Act 2004.

In his reply to me the Minister began with something with which I strongly agree:

"Earlier in our proceedings we stated that the well-being objectives are not separate from, in conflict with or irrelevant to the tradition of educational attainment. I think that there is a broad consensus in the Committee on that point".

Indeed there was and there still is. Unfortunately he went on to say something with which I do not agree:

"The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, attempts to include the contribution made by the school to working with the children's services authority and its relevant partners to improve the well-being of children and relevant young people within the authority's areas. That represents a substantial loss of focus away from the school and the work it does for its own pupils".

The words of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, earlier this evening are to be taken into consideration here. She said that the outcomes in relation to well-being of the Children Act 2004 are integral to every aspect of a school's work. I disagree with the Minister's suggestion that it would be removing the school's focus, because its focus is in fact on every aspect of children's well-being as it goes through its educational work with those children.

The Minister went on to illustrate his point by talking about the links with the wider community that Ofsted inspections already explore in several ways:

"first, the extent to which the curriculum meets the external needs; secondly, the way in which schools work with other services to guide, care for and support their pupils, and, thirdly, how well resources are managed and the effectiveness of any links with other providers of children's services".

He continued to talk about extended schools:

"In schools with extended services, which have been included in pilot inspections, inspectors report on how the services were selected to meet the needs of the community and what impact they have on the children's development".

That is all very well but extended schools are not the only way in which schools are broadening what they do in the community. There are, in particular, more and more links of one school with another. That is one of the aspects that the inspectors need to consider. In introducing the Education Act 2002, on which I worked with my noble friend Lady Sharp, the Government were keen on clusters of schools working together for innovation and various improvements.

Those partnerships are the sorts of things that the inspector needs to be looking at to see how well schools are engaging. The Minister talked about the school improvement partner—SIP—

"who will act as a critical friend. The school's engagement with the wider community and its effect on educational outcomes will feature in this single conversation between the SIP and the school".—[Hansard, 11/1/05; cols. 214–215.]

It occurs to me that the SIPs will have an awful lot of work to do; they have been mentioned four or five times this evening already. They are new. Therefore, we cannot rely on whatever they think they might be going to do. The matter is so important—and we all know how important it is to the Government as well as to these Benches and the Conservative Benches—that I cannot understand the Government's resistance to putting it in the Bill.