Children, Schools and Families Bill

Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2010.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

Good morning, everyone. Before we begin consideration of amendment 39, I wish to alert members of the Committee to the fact that I am currently not minded to allow a clause stand part debate, for obvious reasons. I take the view that the issues have already been debated thoroughly.

Clause 1

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment 39, in clause 1, page 2, line 25, at end insert

‘, the signing of which shall be a condition of admission to the school;’.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 43, in clause 4, page 6, line 33, at end add—

‘(12) Section 111 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 is amended as follows.

(13) For subsection (4) there shall be substituted—

“(4) The governing body of a school to which section 110(1) applies or the local authority where it is the admissions authority for such a school may—

(a) invite a parent or carer to sign the parental declaration at a time when the child in question has not been admitted to the school; and

(b) make it a condition of a child being admitted to a school that the parental declaration is signed in respect of the child.

and in this subsection “admission authority” has the meaning given by section 88(1).”.

(14) Subsection (5) shall be repealed.’.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Welcome back to the Chair, Mr. Amess. Amendment 39 amends clause 1(5) on parent guarantees, paragraph (b) of which introduces the guarantee of a home-school agreement. It would change the provision so that such a home-school agreement

“shall be a condition of admission to the school”.

Amendment 43 would amend clause 4 on home-school agreements and would enable a school or admission authority to make them a condition of admission. The Bill acknowledges that home-school agreements have not been an effective means of ensuring compliance with school rules or of ensuring good behaviour. They are good in that they set out the ethos of a school and what is expected of pupils, but because schools are not permitted to make the signing of such an agreement a condition of admission, they lack enforcement.

According to the explanatory notes, clauses 4 and 5 explicitly acknowledge that, by tying the

“discharge by parents of their responsibilities under home-school agreements to parenting contracts and orders”.

They say that the legislation will be amended so that, in every parenting contract,

“there is a statement by the parent that they agree to discharge their responsibilities set out in the home-school agreement”.

The concern about the effectiveness of home-school agreements was made even clearer in the impact assessment, which states on page 8 that

“existing HSA legislation is ineffective in underpinning parent/school relationships.”

As the hon. Member for Yeovil said on Tuesday, the assessment goes on to say that

“HSAs are largely ineffective at present: bureaucratic process with few real benefits.”

It is clear that the Government share our view about the lack of enforcement provisions of home-school agreements, but their proposals to tackle the problem seem extreme and unlikely to be realised.

Invoking the parenting contract and parenting order legislation when parents or pupils fail to comply with the home-school agreement seems to be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Paragraphs 2.8 and 2.9 of the White Paper state:

“At the moment, all schools have a Home School Agreement, but not all parents sign on. So we will now strengthen Home School Agreements so that all parents and pupils understand their responsibilities to follow the school rules and support good behaviour from the outset.”

So far, so good, but the White Paper goes on to say that

“We will therefore ensure that when applying for schools for their child, all parents will receive each school’s behaviour policy as it will appear in their Home School Agreement. In applying for a school place every parent will now agree to adhere to these rules. If parents have difficulty understanding the requirements, we will ensure that they get the support they need.”

That sounds like a requirement to sign a home-school agreement, as a condition of admission, except that it then states:

“It would be wrong to make signing the Home School Agreement a condition of admission, as this could unfairly deny a child a school place. However, once their child is in school the parents will be expected to sign the Home School Agreement each year, and parents will face real consequences if they fail to live up to the responsibilities set out within.”—

that is all very tough, but—

“We will bring forward changes to the law so that parents’ unwillingness to sign up and support their school’s behaviour policy can be used by schools to support applications to the courts for Parenting Contracts and Parenting Orders.”

So the Government do not want to make signing a home-school agreement a condition of admission to a school, but if a parent refuses to sign the agreement, the school should take those parents to court. That is an extreme approach to take.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Let us envisage a hypothetical situation. If it were made an absolute condition of admission to a school that a home-school contract should be signed, what school would a pupil go to if a parent refused?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I shall come on to that, but I shall touch on it now to the extent of saying that that is a sign, is it not, of a problem with parenting. The Government’s approach is rather bizarre. Surely it is more sensible to make signing a home-school agreement a condition of admission to a school. That would encourage the vast majority of parents to sign and would make all the parents fully cognisant of the fact that their child’s continued place at the school depended on their fulfilling the obligations in the agreement, including on behaviour and homework.

If the parents refused to sign, thereby, as the White Paper said, unfairly denying their own child a place at the school, that would surely be the point at which to question their parenting skills—not when a child swore in class or acted out in the school.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I accept the point about parents, and the necessity for parental responsibility. No one would disagree with that. I am raising the sheer practicality of making it an absolute condition for admission to a school that the parent should sign the home-school contract. What would happen if the parent had not signed it by the time the child was due to start school?

It is all very well to say that the parent should have done so, but that does not overcome the point that a child would have been prevented from going to school by his parents’ failure to sign a home-school agreement. That would be the consequence of the amendment, even though we all agree about the necessity for responsible parenting.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

That is the advantage of the independent sector over the state sector at the moment. If parents do not sign up to the ethos of the school, the child cannot go to it. That means that the leadership of those schools has real power in enforcing the school rules.

The Minister raises a good point in asking what would happen to the children of parents who refused to sign. There is no reason why they should not sign. Why should they refuse to sign the home-school agreement? If they do not sign, it is an early warning sign of parenting problems in those schools.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Yes, in a moment.

The Government’s approach is to say, “You do not need to sign, but when you get into the school you are expected to comply with the agreement; and then we will go to court to seek parenting orders and parenting contracts when a child or parent disobeys the rules in the home-school agreement. However, that is a very large task.

Many children, including children of parents who have signed the home-school agreement, will breach the rules by messing up in class, not doing their homework, or persistently behaving poorly; and the Government’s approach means that court action will be taken to obtain parenting contracts in relation to thousands of children. That seems extreme and onerous; and consequently it will not happen. Head teachers will not do that in the numbers envisaged.

It is far better to say, “We expect parents to sign the home-school agreement as a condition of their children coming to the school”; 99 per cent. of parents will do that. It would then be possible to isolate a tiny minority of parents who refused to sign the agreement. Why do they refuse to say that their child will behave in class, or that their child will do their homework on time? It is an early indication of problems.

It is better to focus the resources of the state on the tiny minority of parents who clearly show early signs of poor parenting.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that there is a considerable difference between the attitude of parents who are in a position, and willing, to spend thousands of pounds on a private education, and the small proportion of parents who are likely to be in the group we are talking about, whose children go to state schools and, for all sorts of reasons, perhaps including mental health reasons, may not be willing to sign the agreements?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Of course there is a difference; but the key similarity is that the ability to refuse admission to a child due to problems with behaviour will be the same in both sectors. That will level the playing field to some extent between the state and independent sectors. The hon. Gentleman made a good point. If there is a minority of parents—and there will be—who refuse to sign these agreements, we have to find out their reasons and tackle them. Whatever the problem with a child’s learning—be it dyslexia or other learning difficulties—it is better to identify it early. In that respect, phonics is a good way of teaching children to read, because it identifies children with problems early on, and the same is true here. If we require parents to sign a home-school agreement before their child is admitted to the school, and they refuse for mental health reasons or simply as a result of poor parenting, we will have a good way of picking up problems early.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

The hon. Gentleman may not agree, but we had a short debate earlier in the week about home-school agreements including an individual learning plan, so it would be difficult in practical terms for parents to sign the more general home-school agreement in advance if they have not had an opportunity in school to discuss how the personalised plan will work alongside it. I know that the hon. Gentleman is against including a personalised plan, but it is part of the debate, and if it goes forward, it is difficult to see how parents could sign in advance. However, I agree that they should sign, and they should sign quickly.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I do not agree with that approach to home-school agreements, so the right hon. Lady answered her own question. That is one reason why they should not be personalised. Personalising a child’s pastoral care is an issue for the personal tutor to decide on a one-to-one basis with the pupil; it is not an issue for the home-school agreement, which is about the school’s general ethos, rules and behaviour policy.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Before the debate goes any further, I want to be clear about what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. He seems to be suggesting that no child whose parent has not signed an agreement should be admitted to a state-funded school.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Yes, indeed. There is no reason why they should not sign. What is the reason why they should not sign? The hon. Gentleman cites mental health difficulties, but if the parent’s mental health problems prevent them from signing a contract, what else are they preventing them from doing in parenting their child? A refusal to sign the agreement will be a good early indication to the social services that they need to keep an eye on the family and perhaps help them and give them support.

If the parents refuse to sign because they simply do not agree that their child should turn up on time for school, complete their homework and behave in the class, there are, again, problems with their parenting. Those parenting problems should not be foisted on the school and left for staff to sort out; they need to be sorted out by those in the system who have specialist knowledge and expertise in helping parents with parenting skills.

We have covered the arguments in favour of the amendments. The key point is that the Conservative approach to admissions will enable social services to give the tiny minority of parents who refuse to sign an agreement the help and support that they need. The Government’s approach would condemn tens of thousands of parents to parenting orders and parenting contracts and to involvement in the courts, simply because their children would not adhere to the school ethos. That is an absurd way of conducting home-school agreements in our education system.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Welcome back to the Chair, Mr. Amess. I am afraid that my colleagues and I cannot support these two linked amendments, because we are concerned that they would have a very adverse impact in a small number of cases. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, who is a pleasant, charming and responsible person, assumes that everybody else in society is the same. There is a small minority of parents whose behaviour is not so bad or damaging that their children are taken out of the family home and into custody, but who are not always responsible and who may, for reasons that he and I cannot predict, decide that they will not sign the agreement. I have seen a small number of people at my advice centre recently who have custody of their children, but who have mental health and other problems that mean that their approach to parenting is a good deal further from what the hon. Gentleman, and perhaps I, would like. Nevertheless, they have custody of their children, and it is extremely unlikely in those circumstances that social services would take the children out of their custody.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Does the hon. Gentleman think that such problems should become the school’s problem, given that schools are staffed by teachers, who are academics and are not trained in improving parenting skills? I realise, as he says, that such problems are not sufficiently serious to warrant taking children out of their parents’ custody, but none the less, ought they not more properly to be dealt with by people with the right specialism, namely, social services?

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Gentleman’s proposal would make it less likely that the problems were dealt with, because the children would then not be in a school environment and would not receive direct support from the school and linked services. He will know that this Government have tried—so far, the aspirations have not been met on the ground, but at least we are moving in that direction—to establish more services for children in order to deal with the absence from their home environment of precisely the support that he wants. However, I fear that if we exclude a small number of children from education because their parents—for whatever reason, however irrational it might seem to him—are not willing to sign the contracts, it will condemn those youngsters to even greater disadvantage.

The hon. Gentleman gave a couple of linked reasons for objecting to the Bill as it stands. One, which does not stand up, is the suggestion that if a young person is effectively excluded from school, at least something will happen to trigger communication with their family in order to get to the bottom of the problems. I agree that early warning signs of parental irresponsibility are important, but paragraph 25 of the Government policy statement that has been issued alongside the Bill gives a clear indication that the Government intend that action will be taken if a parent decides not to sign an agreement. Paragraph 25 specifically says:

“If agreement cannot be reached, and the HSA was not complied with by the parents or the child, the school would trigger further discussion, for instance through a Parent Support Adviser, and then possibly early intervention by other professionals if there was cause for concern.”

That is precisely the type of intervention that the hon. Gentleman is trying to trigger through his suggestion that the child be excluded from school, but it will not lead to the draconian effect of excluding a child from education from which they could benefit. Such a thing might leave children in a home environment in which I do not think that he would want them to be left, particularly if the parent was not prepared to sign the agreement for reasons that would appear irrational to him and me.

This is the critical issue raised by the amendment. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, there are concerns about whether home-school agreements are effective. However, if they are to be effective, there must be a mechanism for taking action against breaches, and that mechanism should surely apply equally to parents who have and who have not signed. I agree that it would be totally wrong if parents who were irresponsible enough not to sign the agreements could not be held to account in the same way as parents who had signed.

Paragraph 44 of the Department’s policy statement says:

“In cases where children misbehave, or their attendance is poor, there will be an explicit link between non-compliance with the HSA, and parenting contracts and orders. It will be a legal requirement for a parenting contract to include a statement by the parent that they will comply with the provisions of the relevant HSA and the school will provide support to the parent to help manage the child’s behaviour. Non-compliance with an HSA will be something that a court can take into account when deciding to make a parenting order.”

Will the Minister clarify whether that means that the courts will be able to act more effectively and decisively and with greater strength when an HSA has been signed than when it has not? I suggest that if the powers are equivalent, it should give us comfort, although it raises the question of precisely what is the point of signing the agreements. If a failure to sign made it more difficult for the courts to take action, there would be a loophole. That would require an amendment to the Bill, albeit not along the lines proposed in amendment 39, to ensure that the irresponsible minority of parents were not able to make it more difficult to enforce home-school agreements, and parenting contracts and orders. We look for some reassurance from the Minister that irresponsible parents who fail to sign will not be in an advantageous position when it comes to taking action.

For the reasons that I have given, we would be unwilling to support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. The amendment makes an assumption about the world out there, but we cannot legislate on the basis that everyone is as nice, responsible, reasonable and sensible as the hon. Gentleman without taking serious risks.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

Whenever I see such amendments, I am instinctively attracted to them, because it would be nice to think that everything could be so straightforward. At present, the vast majority of parents sign home-school agreements without quibbling, but things sometimes go wrong. Most of this morning’s debate has been about the parents who wilfully choose not to sign such agreements, but we need to address the underlying issues, and that will have to be done somewhere along the way because children leaving year 6 will sooner or later have to attend another educational establishment.

The other aspect of the debate is that mistakes can be made—people lose forms or do not send them in. I would be worried if parents who, to all intents and purposes, were well-meaning and wanted to do the best by their children had someone from the school or the local authority chasing them for a form. That could lead to them being wrapped up in a series of official consequences, but it would be due to nothing more than a mistake or an oversight in the hustle and bustle of real life. Can any member of the Committee honestly say, as an MP or otherwise, that they have always filled in forms correctly—that subject has been quite topical over the past year or so? We are all vulnerable and frail.

The important thing, however, is what happens when the child enters school. Schools can support parents who, for one reason or another, decide that they do not want to sign the forms. Some people might not sign because they do not care enough about the ethos of school or their role as parents, while others might be anarchists who do not want to sign such forms.

Supporting schools is important. I would say to my hon. Friend the Minister that throughout these debates, we must remember that we want schools to have a greater idea of what action they can take on home-school agreements. Some forms might not be signed, but the more worrying problem for schools is that although most people sign them, not all abide by them.

I have said to my hon. Friend before that there seems to be ignorance among head teachers—ignorance is a not sin—about how to use the current powers on parenting orders, and perhaps a cultural unwillingness to use them. We set benchmarks and rules, but people ultimately end up wringing their hands because they want someone else to take a decision or more affirmative action to deal with the problem. We should not forget that when such problems occur in schools, it is not just about a single family, because the negativity often has an impact on other children in the class and elsewhere.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will deal with those matters. Although I am attracted to the simple way forward suggested by the amendment, it is fraught with problems. However, once a child enters a school, it is important that the home-school agreement is discussed with parents, whether they have signed it or not. We should also remember that people can just sign things and then put them to the back of their mind, never thinking about them again until a crisis emerges. I hope that that will not happen.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Good morning to you, Mr. Amess, and all members of the Committee.

We have had an important little debate, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley hit the nail on the head. The idea of not signing a home-school agreement probably does not seem reasonable to any of us. In an ideal world, we would all come together, discuss the home-school agreement and sign it, but in the real world, although we all want that to happen and we have to take every action to try to ensure that it happens, it simply does not happen, for some of the reasons given by the hon. Member for Yeovil and my right hon. Friend. For those reasons, Ian Craig, the chief schools adjudicator, has said:

“I welcome your intention to strengthen...such agreements, and also your continued view that the statement in section 1.55 of the current School Admissions Code that ‘admission to school must not be conditional on parents signing home-school agreements’ must remain in force. I am certain that the ‘outlawing’ of conditionality is essential to ensure that the admissions system remains as fair as possible, and readily accessible to all parents and carers.

That is the nub of the debate, although we can go round and round on this. No one disagrees with the intent behind what the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton is trying to do. He says that he wants parents to take responsibility—that this is about parenting skills. That is absolutely right. I agree with him and share the frustration that he, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and all of us have about some parents’ unwillingness to support the school or work with it in a way that we would think acceptable.

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton is right to say that the system should try to address problem and that there are other issues that need to be considered, but we come back to two central points. First, I do not know the figures, but let us say that we got to a point where the parents of x number of children in this country simply refused to sign a home-school agreement. If the amendment were accepted, it would then mean that x number of children in this country would not be able to go to school.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Does the Minister think that local authority social services should keep an eye on parents who refuse to sign a home-school agreement, and perhaps intervene and pay a visit to that family, or does he think that they should leave them alone and the consequences should be left to the family?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I do not think that such parents should necessarily just be left alone, but it is a good job that the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness is not here when his colleague is talking about keeping registers of people who have not signed home-school agreements and the question of whether they could be the subject to home visits and checks. I shall keep schtum, however. I will not share what the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, and nor will I mention it when the home-education debate comes up.

However, I take the serious point made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. It might be that the issue under discussion should be taken into account. We are trying to say that we cannot predict all the different reasons why people do not sign. There might be wilful non-signing, and some people might have an objection in principle. All I am saying to the hon. Gentleman is that his proposal would mean that a number of children would not have a school place, and I would also be concerned that some schools might use such a measure as a back-door method of selection.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Can the Minister imagine what social services departments throughout the country would say to the proposal that they should be tracking children whose parents are not abiding by and signing home-school agreements? Social services departments can barely do their existing job of child protection and already concentrate on the very small proportion of children with welfare concerns. The idea that they can extend their role into education when, in my view, they are not even able to do their existing child protection job is simply not realistic.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

There are practical consequences to the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, but part of the thrust of the Government’s agenda is to try to ensure a greater joined-up delivery of services between schools, social services, children’s services, health, police and so on. We ought to use all the information that we get to try to ensure that the different parts of the system work together to address the problems. Parental responsibility is important for society, but simply requiring someone to sign a home-school agreement is not the right way to generate such responsibility. We all share a frustration when some people do not act reasonably.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

As we are discussing the role of social services in education, will the Minister say what role home-school agreements will play when an education supervision order is made?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The education supervision order is one aspect of the system; alongside it will run the home-school agreement—an agreement between the school and the parent. The supervision order aims to enforce certain requirements. The home-school agreement is valuable, but there will be no legal requirement for parents to sign it.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful to the Minister for being so generous in accepting interventions. The hon. Member for Yeovil spoke of social services being involved when parents do not abide by the home-school agreement, but they would be involved in only a tiny minority of cases when a parent refuses to sign a home-school agreement. The hon. Gentleman implied that, because social services departments are stretched and lacking resources, responsibility should pass to schools, which do not have the expertise in parenting and dealing with families who are in difficulty. That would be an absurd way for our system to function. If there are problems in social services departments, and they have capacity constraints, we need to deal with them and not pass responsibility to head teachers.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I think that the hon. Gentleman answers the point made by the hon. Member for Yeovil. Of course schools will not always have the expertise necessary to deal with the problems that a parent or family might have, which is why we need to ensure greater clarity about the different roles in the system and that they are better joined-up. That is the point of the schools agenda.

The hon. Member for Yeovil made a point about non-compliance. Parenting contracts and parenting orders are available for any parent. As my right hon. Friend for Don Valley said, someone can sign a home-school agreement, but not really mean it—they can just tick it and comply for an easy life. Parenting contracts and parenting orders will be available for anyone to deal with any parent, but the courts should consider them when deciding whether to grant a parenting order. That is not the case at the moment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Is the Minister therefore saying that, in trying to enforce the home-school agreements or taking action against parents who are not abiding by them, it would not in practice make any difference whether the home-school agreement had been signed or whether the parent had refused to sign it? Would the enforcement powers and the attitudes of the court be exactly the same under both circumstances?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

We are saying that parenting contracts—the voluntary agreements—are available to schools, local authorities and others. Parenting orders are available to the courts, irrespective of whether someone has signed a home-school agreement. The fact that the parent has not signed the home-school agreement may be a consideration for the court in determining whether to grant a parenting order or what its terms should be. The home-school agreement aims to put some teeth into the system by saying that there may be a consequence for parents who do not sign the agreement.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am still a bit confused, because I assume that the point of the parent signing the home-school agreement is to give it some greater enforceability and meaning, and to provide for follow-through if it is breached. If, however, somebody refuses to sign them, does that make it more difficult to achieve the enforcement that the signature is designed to reinforce?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

No, the actions of the parent, including whether they have signed the agreement, will determine whether a parenting contract or parenting order will be pursued. If a contract is not signed, the court might want to take that fact into account in determining whether to impose an order.

Ann Cryer (Labour, Keighley)

I am sure that my hon. Friend has many grandparents coming to him, as I do, about problems with their grandchildren, because the parents are on drugs. Parents on drugs will not sign any form, because they will not understand it. Is there provision in the Bill that I have missed whereby grandparents can sign instead of parents and can effectively act as a parent? The Bill certainly says that a child can sign an agreement if the school is satisfied that the child understands what they are signing. I want to ensure that we will not take parents to court just because they are under the influence of drugs, when there is a perfectly adequate set of grandparents who can sign the agreement for them.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I can reassure my hon. Friend on that point. The people who sign the home-school agreement have parental responsibility for the child or young person, but a parenting order is the last step; before that, there would be a parenting contract. The court does not have to grant a parenting order because somebody has not signed a home-school agreement.

One would expect the circumstances that my hon. Friend describes to be dealt with in other ways. If parents are under the influence of drugs and therefore are not caring for their child, one would expect that grandparents to step in and all sorts of other things would happen.

This measure is not about trying to penalise those people who are trying to deal with difficult circumstances and who are trying to bring up their children properly. It is about trying to deal with people who are wilfully not seeking to work with a school to improve standards of behaviour and support the ethos of the school.

Mr. Lawsrose—

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

Order. I am listening very carefully to the exchanges, but the debate is getting very wide of the amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I hope that my question is related to the amendment, Mr. Amess. The amendment covers what happens if the home-school agreement is not signed. My assumption is that these measures are in the Bill to try to give home-school agreements greater enforceability, through the requirement for a parent’s signature. However, the problem is that the Minister implies that, if people do not bother to sign the agreement, it makes no difference to the ability to enforce the agreement. Will the parent’s supposedly compulsory or semi-compulsory signature improve the enforceability of home-school agreements, compared with the present situation?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Of course it will and the expectation is that the vast majority of parents will sign and that schools will work closely with parents who will not sign. There might be different reasons why some people do not sign, but the home-school agreement has been broadly welcomed. Everywhere I go, head teachers, teachers and parents of pupils who sign the agreement welcome the fact that an attempt is being made to try to deal with parents who do not sign, not for the reasons mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, regarding those who have mental health problems or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley mentioned, issues with alcohol or drug addiction, but because they refuse to work with the school or seek to undermine the school’s ethos. We are trying to make available a measure to deal with that problem.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. This is the first time I have intervened in this Committee, and, rather than go another day without appearing in Hansard, I would like to ask how the important question of parental responsibility will apply to children in care. Will the placing authority be responsible for signing the contract for the child? Will it be a foster carer if the child is in foster care? In special guardianship orders, who will have the ultimate responsibility to sign and maintain the agreement?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I understand that it will be the person or body that has responsibility for the child.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

What about special guardianship?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Whoever has the parental, day-to-day responsibility for the young person will be responsible for the agreement. If that is not correct, I will correct myself in due course.

I believe that the amendments are well intentioned, but they would have unintended consequences, so I ask the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton to withdraw them.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

This has been an illuminating debate, but, the Minister has not answered the key question that is in the White Paper. It states that during the application process,

“all parents will receive each school’s behaviour policy as it will appear in their home-school agreement. In applying for a school place every parent will now agree to adhere to these rules.”

I cannot see the distinction between what it says in the White Paper and amendments 39 and 43, which simply say that unless a parent signs the home-school agreement their child will not be admitted to the school. I do not see the difference between that and a school uniform policy that says that unless the child turns up in school uniform, according to the school rules, they will not be admitted to the school. Schools have those rules, and they need to be obeyed by parents and the pupils attending the school. The amendments shift the balance back to the head teacher and teachers. The power to instil good behaviour and the ethos of the school should rest with the head teacher and teachers.

In the past 10 to 20 years, for all kinds of reasons, that power has shifted from the head teacher and teachers, particularly in schools serving the most deprived and challenging parts of our country. The amendment, which reflects a wider Conservative approach to education policy, will help schools in the most challenging areas the most, as they, generally speaking, have the poorest behaviour policies, which let down children in those schools to a greater extent—although I could give examples of schools in leafy suburbs that have equally or more difficult behaviour problems.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, the number of permanent exclusions has gradually declined, but the number of repeat suspensions has increased alarmingly. There are now almost 14,000 children a year who are suspended from school five or more times in a single year. Those children are not being helped—they are not receiving specialist help. All that is happening to them is that they are spending five or six days roaming the streets before going back to the school and repeating poor behaviour.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I confirm that, for children in care, the person with parental responsibility will sign—for example, the local authority. A guardianship order gives parental responsibility, and the guardian appointed by the court signs. Under all circumstances, the person with parental responsibility signs the home-school agreement. Having checked the matter, I confirm that what I said was right.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful for that intervention, which will reassure Opposition Members, especially my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.

Tackling poor behaviour in our schools must be the primary objective of any education policy today. There is not too much difference between what we and the Government want to achieve in clause 4, but I do not believe that the Government’s approach will work. Head teachers do not want to become involved in issuing parenting orders and parenting contracts wholesale in the courts. The reality is that the provision will not be used if it gets on to the statute book, so we will be in the same position as we are now. Given the importance of the issue, I would like to withdraw the amendment so that we can debate the issues more fully later and with a wider cross-section of Members of Parliament. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment 40, in clause 1, page 3, line 3, at end add—

‘(11) A pupil or parent guarantee shall not be capable of creating any obligation in respect of whose breach any liability arises in contract or tort.’.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 154, in clause 1, page 3, line 3, at end add—

‘(11) A parent who believes that a pupil or parent guarantee is not being delivered may appeal to the head teacher in the first instance, and if not satisfied to the governing body, and thereafter to the local authority within whose area the school is located. There will be no further appeal to the Secretary of State or to the Local Government Ombudsman, and no obligation shall arise from the guarantee whose breach would create the basis for a challenge through the courts.’.

Amendment 128, in clause 3, page 3, line 28, leave out subsection (1).

Amendment 118, in clause 3, page 3, line 29, leave out from ‘after’ to the end of line 35 and insert ‘subsection (1) there is inserted—

“(1A) A failure by the headteacher of a school to comply with any requirement (including a requirement to have a regard to guidance) imposed on the head teacher by virtue of subsection (2) of section 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 (pupil and parent guarantees) shall not be a complaint to which this Chapter applies;

(1B) A complaint to which subsection (1A) applies shall be made to the governing body of the school about which the complaint arises.”’.

Amendment 119, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out subsections (2) to (5).

Amendment 129, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out subsection (2).

Amendment 156, in clause 3, page 5, line 20, at end add—

‘(6) The Local Government Ombudsman will not investigate complaints relating to the Pupil and Parent Guarantees which are regarded by the Ombudsman as unreasonable or vexatious.’.

Amendment 181, in clause 3, page 5, line 20, at end add—

‘( ) Any complaint made about the performance of a pupil guarantee or a parent guarantee shall be considered taking into account the resources made available to the school or the local authority to be able to comply with the guarantee.

( ) It is not intended to grant the pupil or parent a right to monetary compensation for any failings to comply with, or comply fully with, any pupil guarantee or parent guarantee.’.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Amendment 40 would make it clear in the Bill that pupil and parent guarantees are not intended to create legal obligations that can be enforced in the courts under tort or breach of contract. The amendment’s wording is lifted from section 111(6) of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, which was Labour’s first key education legislation after the 1997 election. Subsection (6) prevented home-school agreements from being enforceable in the courts, and it makes sense to add such a provision to the clause that introduces pupil and parent guarantees.

The biggest fear of all the critics of pupil and parent guarantees is that people will end up in the courts. One union, the Association of School and College Leaders, said in its brief to the Committee:

”ASCL believes that the creation of these guarantees will open the flood gates for increased litigation against schools.”

The National Union of Teachers told us:

“NUT head teachers are concerned that without adequate resources or provision for staff training these proposals may leave schools vulnerable to litigious parents or over-eager lawyers who have misinterpreted the Government’s intentions. The NUT is concerned that any breaches of the guarantees should not be treated as akin to breaches of statutory duty in the health and safety sphere granting persons distinct rights to legal action and monetary compensation.”

In his evidence to the Committee last week, John Dunford, the ASCL’s general secretary, said:

“Our main concerns about the Bill are around the guarantees and potential in an increasingly litigious society for parents to take up an awful lot of head teachers’ time in disputing what are rather uncertain and woolly guarantees.”——[Official Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2010; c. 4.]

Mick Brookes said:

“I think that some of the measures, if we are not careful, will give licence to vexatious parents or parents with frivolous complaints. That is one danger if the measures stay.”

Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said:

“Where we have worries...is on what the rights mean when they are translated into legislation.”

She went on to say:

“It is important that we do not get what John Dunford called a whinger’s charter or serial complaints.”——[Official Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2010; c. 29-30, Q38.]

It would be far better if we could make it clear in the Bill that court action is not possible as a result of the guarantees introduced by clause 1.

Amendments 118 and 119 would direct complaints about the school under the pupil and parent guarantees to the governing body. When I complain about a service provided to me it is the board of directors of the company to whom I ultimately complain, and the amendment parallels that approach and would avoid the consumption of vast amounts of head teachers’ and courts’ time.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Having had to diverge from the views of the hon. Gentleman on the previous group of amendments, I am pleased to say that I am back on side with him on the present group, many of which were tabled by Liberal Democrat Members. We are very concerned about the complaints mechanisms that will be established as a consequence of clause 3.

The hon. Gentleman has quoted many of the observations of professional bodies and teaching unions about clause 3 and the powers given under clause 1. He will be pleased to know that I was going to use exactly the same quotations. However, in his brief speech he missed out the contribution of the Local Government Association, which gives me something to say, because it is very concerned about the proposed complaints mechanism. It said that the proposals

“will create an extensive system of rights of appeals for parents and pupils against head teachers, governing bodies and local councils if they feel they have not complied with the requirements of the guarantees.”

It continued:

“The LGA would like to be assured that these rights will actually help schools improve and will not just create unnecessary additional burdens for schools and councils.”

It goes so far as to say it would like the removal of subsection (2), right to the end of the clause, and has explicitly supported amendments 118, 119, 156 and 177. I think that the last of those is not in the group.

It is worth stepping back for a second and thinking about the complaints mechanisms for parents. A parent or pupil who is concerned about whether the guarantees are being observed by a school will presumably be able to complain to the class teacher, as the first point of contact, and then to the head teacher about the same issue, if they feel that their concerns have not been dealt with.

If they are not happy with the head teacher’s response they will be able to complain to the governing body. If they are not satisfied with its response they can presumably still exercise a right to go to the local authority, if the school in question is under its strategic oversight. If they are not satisfied with the response of the local authority they will, under the new proposals, be able to go to the local government ombudsman. If the ombudsman supports the parents and pupil but is not successful in securing from the school the changes they desire, there will be a further potential appeal to the Secretary of State, who may then underpin the recommendation of the ombudsman. In addition to all that there is the potential threat of legal action.

There are six or seven potential layers of complaint. We all want complaint mechanisms for people who use and depend on public services and who feel that they are getting a raw deal. It is right that there should be complaint mechanisms; it would be wrong to assume that we should have a take-it-or-leave-it system of public services where people cannot do anything about poor quality of service. However, there must be some balance and proportionality. To have six or seven layers of appeal is hugely time-consuming and potentially expensive, and there is a worry that the new complaint mechanisms might make vexatious complaints difficult to palm off.

The Minister and I had this debate in the context of the last education Act, so I will not rehearse it entirely, but I suggest that the standards of evidence collection likely to be required by an ombudsman service and the extent of ombudsmen’s inquiries into complaints are of a different order of magnitude and involve much less discretion than the complaint mechanisms of schools, head teachers, governing bodies and local authorities.

I do not say that the idea has no value, because many people clearly feel that their complaints are not taken seriously at “lower” levels, but considerable bureaucracy and cost will be involved. Schools will be extremely nervous at the prospect of having complaints investigated by an ombudsman and will feel compelled to collect much more evidence to show that they have attempted to deliver the guarantees, which are often vaguely phrased, making it difficult to prove that they have been met. The prospect of being taken to court will be an even greater concern.

All that could make schools extremely cautious and could lead them to keep vast amounts of records and documentation, try to anticipate potential problems and complaints early on and spend a lot of their time fending them off or preparing to do so. The proposed complaints mechanism could run out of control and prove counter-productive for schools, parents and pupils, the vast majority of whom will probably not need to use it.

The amendments would prevent complaints about pupil and parent guarantees from moving up to higher levels. We do not want them to go to the local government ombudsman. We expressed concern during debate on the last education Bill about involving the local government ombudsman in school complaints, and we opposed measures to do so. We do not want these complaints to go to the local government ombudsman either. We think that in many cases, the ombudsman will struggle to understand what the guarantees are and establish meaningfully whether they have been met. We certainly do not want vexatious complaints to be pursued. I am sure that the Minister will agree with that; I hope that he will agree to put it on the face of the Bill, because it would reassure many people.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I will restate this in my remarks, but it is already in legislation that the local government ombudsman has the power not to hear complaints that he considers vexatious, so we do not need to put it in the Bill.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister. He has reminded me that the same issue arose when we debated the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill. I need to reflect whether it needs underlining in this part of the Bill. I think that people would be reassured by it, but they will also be grateful to hear from the Minister that the previous Bill covers the issue.

The amendments also seek to deal with the potential for court challenges. I am not sure whether that is what the Government want, but we need to be clear about it. Amendment 40 would make that clear, as would amendment 154 by removing the potential for appeals going to higher levels. Amendment 128 would have a similar effect. Amendment 118, which we and the Local Government Association support, is a Conservative amendment and would also achieve that result, as would amendments 119 and 129.

Amendment 156 is supported by the Local Government Association. It would give the local government ombudsman greater flexibility when deciding which complaints to pursue relating to the pupil and parent guarantees. It would allow him not to pursue complaints that he regarded as unreasonable or vexatious.

I should be grateful for the Minister’s clarification, because I cannot remember whether the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 covers unreasonable as well as vexatious behaviour. There is clearly a difference between the two and, given our concerns about the way in which complaints may multiply under the new system and the cost, we want the widest possible flexibility for the ombudsman not to have to pursue complaints that fall into those categories.

Finally, amendment 181 would ensure that any investigations into complaints about the pupil and parent guarantees would be required to consider the resources available to local schools and the local authorities in question, and would prevent complaints from leading to monetary compensation. Both matters are important, and it would be sensible if the ombudsman, the courts and any other bodies involved could take into account the practical ability of schools to deliver on some of the guarantees that the Government have already planned to put in place—of course, the guarantees could change in the future. It is possible that a Government might get carried away with the guarantee concept, if it were successfully implemented under the Bill, and could then put in place all sorts of proposals that it might not be possible to fund, particularly if the school budgets are cut by a future Government. Many people would therefore welcome such reassurance.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I shall first comment on the debate and follow that with an explanation.

I agree with the sentiments of the hon. Members for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton and for Yeovil. None of us wants the sort of problems to occur for head teachers, schools or local authorities that they have outlined, whatever our view about the necessity for guarantees and whether they are good or a bad thing. We do not want to create the problems to which both hon. Gentlemen have alluded. I will reflect on the points made, but I ask the hon. Gentlemen not to press the amendments. I have put on record that we will look at the issue and see whether we need to deal with the points more directly.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The amendments raise a range of different issues from vexatious complaints to the complexity of the ombudsman making judgments. Will the Minister explain which parts of the amendments he feels more and less sympathetic to? As he has said, the ASCL Act already includes the ombudsman mechanisms, so I assume that he is not planning to delete that in respect of the guarantees.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Not necessarily. I want to answer the hon. Gentleman’s point about the ASCL Act, but I cannot do that during this sitting because I need to go away and properly reflect on it. He made a reasonable point when he asked whether the ASCL Act, as currently drafted, includes the word “unreasonable”. Luckily, I have the Act with me and it does not mention the word “unreasonable”. It states:

“A Local Commissioner may in particular decide not to investigate a complaint...if satisfied that the complaint is vexatious.”

I will need legal advice on any difference that adding the word “unreasonable” would make. However, I have heard what he has said and I have also taken on board the points made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. I need to reflect on them, take advice and then come back, if necessary, with the reassurances that the hon. Gentlemen seek. The Government might need to clarify the position to prevent the problems highlighted by Opposition Members, which Labour Members would not want to occur either.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Is it the Minister’s view that the guarantees in clause 1 will not create any obligation or liability in tort or contract that could be challenged in court?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Yes; the legal advice that I have been given is that that is the case.

I would not normally do this, but because this is a legal argument, I shall read my script, as it is important to ensure that there is clarity. My statement will answer one or two of the points made by the hon. Gentleman in respect of contractual obligations, and by the hon. Member for Yeovil in respect of compensation. I put it in context, not only because it will answer the questions, but because it is extremely important for those who read our deliberations. Before reading this statement, I want to say that I have taken on board the comments made by both hon. Gentlemen. I will reflect on them and, if necessary, we will make changes to the Bill on Report. I wish to take proper account of their points and ensure that the situation is clear.

The guarantee document does not create a contract between parents or pupils and the school, because it is a public law document. Guarantee documents can impose public law duties on local authorities, governing bodies and head teachers. A redress mechanism for breach is contained in the Bill. The Bill is not intended to create private law rights on which parents or pupils could sue. The guarantees do not affect existing common law duties.

The guarantees create public law benefits as part of the education system. We consider it extremely unlikely that they would create the kind of rights that parents or pupils could use to claim compensation through the courts. The courts would regard these as public law entitlements. It must be remembered that quite a number of them are already statutory duties.

Many of the entitlements contained in the document are pre-existing and could, in theory, already be the subject of litigation. Some of them are the subject of complaints to the Secretary of State, but the Secretary of State is not judicially reviewed by these parents. Judicial review might be available for breaches of mandatory duties imposed by the document, or against the local government ombudsman, but that would be expensive, and the vast majority of parents do not do that now. The existence of a redress mechanism makes that less likely, not more. Any public law duty could in theory give rise to litigation, but rarely does so in practice. The guarantees are no different from any other duties imposed by legislation.

The amendments would challenge or amend the system of redress available beyond the individual school level. Clause 3, to which the majority of the amendments relate, provides for the system of redress that supports pupil and parent guarantees by putting the guarantees within the scope of the parental complaints service created under the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. If pupils are not receiving their clearly defined entitlements, and if that cannot be resolved with the school or other provider, we believe that it is right to have a straightforward route of redress. A guarantee without the possibility of redress is no guarantee at all.

Amendment 40 would ensure that the guarantees would not form a contractual relationship between schools and their pupils and parents that would enable parents to take action in the courts, and would not otherwise expose schools and local authorities to civil claims such as for breach of statutory duty. As I said, I am pleased to agree with the sentiment behind the amendment, and I make it clear that it is not the Government’s intention for the guarantees to create new obligations that might lead to parents or pupils suing in the county courts.

The Bill, together with the ASCL Act, sets out a clear route for pupils and parents to seek redress through the local government ombudsman for the failure of a school to deliver the guarantee; or, for academies, through the Young People’s Learning Agency. Rather than seeking to encourage litigation of any sort, the provisions intend the opposite. They offer a mechanism for redress that keeps such matters out of the courts.

Parents and pupils are unlikely to want, or be advised, to take public law claims to judicial review when they have such a mechanism, even in the limited circumstances where that might be available. I confirm that the guarantees will not lead to contractual relations between schools and parents that could found claims. In our judgment, it is exceedingly unlikely that any other claim would arise in tort, in the absence of a pre-existing duty of care. On that basis, we consider the amendment to be unnecessary.

Amendment 154 would remove the system of redress that supports the pupil and parent guarantees. It would also prevent parents from complaining to the Secretary of State, which they currently have the option of doing, or taking a case to court if they believed that a duty outlined in the guarantees document had not been fulfilled. Our expectation is that schools and local authorities will take seriously their legal responsibilities to deliver the guarantees. We expect that almost all complaints under the guarantees will be resolved at school level, as at present.

However, the role of the LGO and the YPLA in the case of academies provides a final, transparent point of redress where the pupil or parent does not receive that to which they are entitled. That form of redress places the guarantees firmly within the scope of the parental complaints service created by the ASCL Act. The ombudsman’s powers work effectively as he deals with local authorities at present, and he will bring those powers and knowledge to the schools sector. He will have the power to investigate complaints, to report and to make recommendations in cases in which he believes that there has been injustice resulting from a failure by the head teacher, governing body or local authority to comply with the requirements of the guarantees. Even if the amendment were passed, parents and pupils would still be able to complain to the LGO about acts of governing bodies by virtue of the existing ASCL Act.

We consider it unlikely that parents will take a litigious route with their complaints, even when that might be possible. Even when judicial review might in principle be available, it would be unlikely that the time or expense would be justifiable. As I have said, the guarantees will not create contractual relations between schools and parents that found claims.

Amendment 156 relates to vexatious complaints. In considering any complaint, the ombudsman will think carefully about whether an individual has genuinely suffered an injustice before taking action and whether there is merit in the complaint. In fact, the ombudsman already has the ability, under section 207(5) of the ASCL Act, to decline to investigate or to discontinue an investigation into a vexatious complaint, or one on which the governing body has satisfied the LGO of its proposed action. Therefore the amendment is unnecessary, but as I have said, I will consider the issue again in the light of the comments that the hon. Member for Yeovil has made. The ombudsman himself is clear that he will investigate cases only if he believes that there has been an injustice to an individual, and he has processes in place to ensure that over-persistent complainants are identified and are not allowed to tie up his or others’ resources indefinitely.

Amendments 128 and 118 would prevent parents from escalating complaints about a head teacher to the LGO under the ASCL Act, meaning that they could not seek redress with anyone beyond the school’s governing body. The only exception would be where a head teacher’s action was already prescribed for the purposes of the parental complaints system. Pupils and parents need to be able to make effective complaints that relate to a head teacher, because a number of the guarantees relate to parts of education where the duties fall on the head teacher rather than on governors. Those include guarantee 3.5, which entitles every secondary pupil to a personal tutor, and the guarantees about the introduction of the new home-school agreements.

The way in which schools handle complaints is also relevant. Complaints in most cases start with the child’s teacher, personal tutor or subject head, and they will then be escalated to the head teacher before reaching the governing body. The governing body will make a judgment about whether the school, including the head teacher, has complied with the guarantee. A school’s head teacher is the leader of that organisation and a vital decision maker in the way in which complaints are handled. We must not discount the contributions that heads make by excluding them from the guarantees.

Amendment 118 would provide that complaints about the head teacher should be handled by the governing body—we endorse that view. School governing bodies have a vital role in handling complaints, and we will encourage the development of a link governor for handling complaints. We have put on record a number of times that our expectation is that most complaints under the guarantees will be resolved at school level.

Amendments 119 and 129 would leave out clause 3(2), leaving a gap in the ombudsman’s power to investigate complaints from pupils and parents about local authorities. Subsection (2) is essential for ensuring that there are no gaps or anomalies in the way in which pupil and parent guarantees operate. It amends the Local Government Act 1974 so that pupils and parents will be able to make complaints about local authorities in connection with the guarantees. The subsection expands the powers that the LGO has had since 1974 to investigate acts of the local authority.

Amendment 119 would further omit subsections (3) to (5). These subsections restrict the operation of the Secretary of State’s direction-making powers so as to prevent the Secretary of State from giving a direction to a local authority on the basis of a breach of a guarantee, unless a complaint has first been made to and disposed of by the ombudsman, or the circumstances are such that the Secretary of State considers it appropriate to give a direction without the process being followed.

For the sake of simplicity, clarity and efficiency, there should be a single route of redress for pupils and parents to follow when they have a complaint, and that should be through the local government ombudsman. Subsections (3) to (5) will avoid the possibility of the Secretary of State being asked to determine complaints about the guarantees or, worse still, being asked to do so at the same time as the LGO. By omitting subsections (3) to (5), which would remove any qualification on the Secretary of State’s direction-making powers, amendment 119 would open the way to confusion.

The first provision in amendment 181 would reduce the strength of the pupil and parent guarantees so that all decisions arising from complaints relating to the guarantees would be subject to considerations about resources. That would dilute the mandatory effect of the individual guarantees. Where we have specified that governing bodies, head teachers or local authorities “must” do something, it is because we believe the actions ought to be an entitlement for every pupil or parent, not just the ones in schools that choose to honour the guarantees. Having said that, we believe that schools should have flexibility in the way in which they allocate their resources and organise themselves to provide for their pupils, and the pupil and parent guarantees are framed with that in mind.

The second provision in amendment 181 relates to an important point made by both the hon. Members for Yeovil and for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. It sets out that pupils and parents would not have a right to monetary compensation if there was a failure by a governing body, head teacher or local authority to comply with any element of the pupil and parent guarantee. The ASCL Act does not include a right for the ombudsman to award financial compensation in relation to the acts of head teachers and governing bodies, and that is therefore also true for the guarantees. However, the ombudsman has a long-standing power to require local authorities to provide financial compensation, and he would be able to do so in relation to a breach of any of the guarantees when it is the local authority’s responsibility to deliver. We expect the ombudsman to be sensitive in the way in which he uses that power, but it would be inconsistent if the ombudsman did not have the power to require local authorities to award financial redress for an issue relating to a guarantee when he did in all other matters. For the local authorities, there is an existing power.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

This is very interesting, because the Minister is effectively saying that he expects there to be awards of monetary compensation for breaches of the guarantee from time to time.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I am saying that the local government ombudsman has the power to require compensation as legislation currently stands. That power simply continues. The LGO’s existing power with respect to local authorities does not apply to schools or governing bodies, and we do not intend to give the LGO that power under the Bill.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Ah. Will the Minister clarify his second point? I thought that he said that the power already exists and will continue to do so. Will he confirm that the power will continue in so far as the guarantees are concerned? If monetary compensation can be awarded against a school for breaching one of the guarantees, will he issue revised guidance in relation to the financial management of schools stating that schools would need to consider whether, if the measure goes on to the statute book, they would need to make provision in their accounts for the possibility of having to pay out compensation awarded against them?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The situation is that the LGO has a power to order the payment of compensation by local authorities relating to their remit, which he has had since 1974. The ASCL Act, however, does not allow him to use that power for schools. We took the view that schools should not be subject to financial penalties.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The Minister is being extremely helpful, and I understand his point. Will he clarify, in relation to the guarantees, which aspects of the existing proposed guarantees the Government think are the responsibility of local authorities, and therefore on which compensation might end up being paid?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

One-to-one tuition might be a particular guarantee, but I will return to the hon. Gentleman after checking some of the specifics. The principle is that where the local authority is responsible for ensuring that something is provided under a guarantee, the local government ombudsman has the power to go down the compensation route, but he does not have that power with respect to schools, and we do not intend to give him that power.

I will conclude my speech now. I am sorry to have taken such a laborious route, but I hope that the Committee will understand why, given that a lot of what we have been discussing is legal, technical and extremely important. I have just been informed that the provider of last resort for one-to-one tuition is the local authority. In that sense, there is an obligation, so I was correct, even if the hon. Member for Yeovil does not agree. In the light of what I have said, I would ask hon. Members not to press their amendments.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for his helpful reply and conciliatory tone. My colleagues and I will certainly not press our amendments, given that he has undertaken to look at some of these matters. However, I am aware that he has signalled an intention to look at certain issues and not others, and I fear that we might need to bring back some of the substantive amendments.

My understanding is that the Minister does not want the guarantees to be legally enforceable, that he does not want vexatious complaints to be pursued, and that he is considering whether unreasonable complaints might also not have to be pursued. His comments on those issues were helpful. However, he is giving no ground on the proposals in amendments 118 and 119 to exempt guarantees from the local government ombudsman process. We still have considerable concerns about that, because the ombudsman is not qualified to enforce and oversee guarantees, particularly when they are so vaguely defined. That is what we are most concerned about, because we believe that the process could be expensive and bureaucratic.

I was also disappointed that the Minister gave no indication that he has considered the fact that we have to see the guarantees in the context of available resources. If a future Government cut education funding but were not willing explicitly to drop the guarantees, because that would be politically embarrassing, schools and local authorities might be obliged to deliver guarantees because of the potential penalties against them, but without the money to do so. Surely that would not be fair.

In that regard—this is my last point—I was relieved for a while that there would potentially be no monetary compensation awards against schools, which would be even more serious if schools did not have the resources to deliver the guarantees. However, I was worried when the Minister said that what is in many ways the most important guarantee—the one-to-one tuition guarantee, which is surely most closely linked to funding—will be enforceable against local authorities, even though a lot of the money will presumably be disbursed directly to schools. I think that that will also worry local authorities, given the spectre over the next few years of considerable cutbacks that might mean that authorities do not have the resources to implement some of the guarantees. I say that particularly in light of the potential change of Government.

At this stage, however, my colleagues and I will not press our amendments. We are grateful for some of the Minister’s conciliatory indications, but some of our biggest concerns are still in our minds, and we will need to return to them on Report.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I was pleased that the Minister started by saying that he agreed with the sentiments behind the amendments that my colleagues and I tabled, as well as those tabled by the hon. Member for Yeovil. I was also pleased when he said that he would reflect on what has been said.

The Minister said that the guarantee document was a public law document and that its redress mechanism was contained in the Bill. As such, he said that it did not, in his opinion, give rise to private law rights. He then said that he would confirm that guarantees would not lead to contractual obligations. However, he also said that they were unlikely to lead to liabilities in tort. We therefore need explicit reassurance, confirmation and clarification in the Bill that the guarantees in clause 1 will not lead to such liabilities. The same issues apply to the home-school agreements introduced by the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Given that it was felt in 1998 that there was an advantage—

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

On a point of order, Mr. Amess, that, I think, will help the Committee. This morning, responding to amendment 181, which provides that pupils and parents would not have a right to monetary compensation where a governing body, head teacher or local authority failed to comply with any element of the pupil and parent guarantee, I said that the ombudsman has a long-standing power to require local authorities to provide financial compensation and that he would be able to do so in relation to a breach of any of the guarantees where it was the local authority’s responsibility to deliver the guarantee. In fact, that is not entirely accurate, and I apologise to the Committee.

The local government ombudsman has a long-standing power to make recommendations to a local authority about how to remedy an injustice sustained by a complainant, and the local authority can, on considering the report, decide for itself whether it wishes to make a payment to the complainant. However, contrary to what I said this morning, under the Local Government Act 1974 the local government ombudsman cannot make an award against a local authority; nor can he recommend directly that it make financial compensation. That is also true of the provisions in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. On that basis, it is even less likely that a parent could seek to gain compensation from pursuing a complaint through the ombudsman, even in relation to matters such as one-to-one tuition, which are also the responsibility of the local authority. I hope that helps every member of the Committee.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

It certainly does, and I thank the Minister for that.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following: amendment 154, in clause 1, page 3, line 3, at end add—

‘(11) A parent who believes that a pupil or parent guarantee is not being delivered may appeal to the head teacher in the first instance, and if not satisfied to the governing body, and thereafter to the local authority within whose area the school is located. There will be no further appeal to the Secretary of State or to the Local Government Ombudsman, and no obligation shall arise from the guarantee whose breach would create the basis for a challenge through the courts.’.

Amendment 128, in clause 3, page 3, line 28, leave out subsection (1).

Amendment 118, in clause 3, page 3, line 29, leave out from ‘after’ to the end of line 35 and insert ‘subsection (1) there is inserted—

“(1A) A failure by the headteacher of a school to comply with any requirement (including a requirement to have a regard to guidance) imposed on the head teacher by virtue of subsection (2) of section 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 (pupil and parent guarantees) shall not be a complaint to which this Chapter applies;

(1B) A complaint to which subsection (1A) applies shall be made to the governing body of the school about which the complaint arises.”’.

Amendment 119, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out subsections (2) to (5).

Amendment 129, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out subsection (2).

Amendment 156, in clause 3, page 5, line 20, at end add—

‘(6) The Local Government Ombudsman will not investigate complaints relating to the Pupil and Parent Guarantees which are regarded by the Ombudsman as unreasonable or vexatious.’.

Amendment 181, in clause 3, page 5, line 20, at end add—

‘( ) Any complaint made about the performance of a pupil guarantee or a parent guarantee shall be considered taking into account the resources made available to the school or the local authority to be able to comply with the guarantee.

( ) It is not intended to grant the pupil or parent a right to monetary compensation for any failings to comply with, or comply fully with, any pupil guarantee or parent guarantee.’.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I thank the Minister for the clarification. It does not, however, deal with the point about whether complainants can take legal action themselves in court. I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say in response to amendment 40 and was reassured to an extent that it is not the intention of the Minister in charge of the Bill for members of the public or parents to be able to take legal action either under the law of contract or under tort in the courts. However, I think that it would not detract from the Bill if we had an explicit clause along the lines of provisions in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 to make it clear beyond doubt that this is not a guarantee that can be challenged or enforced in a court of law. I do not believe that that would in any way detract from the thrust of what the Minister hopes to achieve by clause 1. What I had feared when I tabled the amendments was that the Government’s response to them would be that we have to leave that as a possibility in order to make the guarantees bite. That was not the Minister’s response and therefore I do not believe that it is the thrust of the policy behind the guarantee.

Given that there is no intention behind the policy or no expectation that in a minority of cases parents will take schools to court, and given that a clause along the lines of section 111(6) of the 1998 Act would not therefore detract from the Government’s policy objective, I cannot see why together we cannot work out such a clause, along the lines of amendment 40, and return to the matter on Report.

Given the reassurance from the Minister and given those thoughts, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 2

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I beg to move amendment 180, in clause 2, page 3, line 8, leave out subsection (2) and insert—

‘(2) The Secretary of State must consult with whatever persons he or she thinks appropriate about the draft, such persons normally to include the following—

(a) associations of local education authorities,

(b) local education authorities,

(c) bodies representing the interests of schools,

(d) bodies representing the interests of parents and pupils,

(e) bodies representing the interests of teachers, and must consider any representations made by them.’.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 85, in clause 2, page 3, line 8, after ‘consult’, insert

‘the House of Commons Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families and’.

Amendment 126, in clause 2, page 3, line 25, after ‘may’, insert ‘only’.

Amendment 127, in clause 2, page 3, line 25, leave out ‘before’ and insert ‘after’.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

It is a pleasure to have reached the end of clause 1. We have given it a reasonable amount of scrutiny. I hope that we will not need to take as much time on clause 2, as the amendments are not as complex or significant.

Amendment 180 would require the Secretary of State to consult others on the issuing and revising of pupil and parent guarantees. At the moment, the undertakings in the Bill are rather loose in relation to the Secretary of State’s responsibilities. Clause 2(2) states:

“The Secretary of State must consult whatever persons he or she thinks appropriate about the draft and must consider any representations made by them.”

We would like a little more clarity about who precisely is to be consulted. We do not want it be only special advisers, people from the Department or a few selected friends of the Secretary of State. We believe that, as a minimum, it should include local education authorities, associations of local education authorities, bodies representing the interests of schools, and bodies representing the interests of parents, pupils and teachers. In amendment 85, we go on to say that the Secretary of State should have the explicit responsibility of consulting the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families—or whatever it is called whenever the legislation is passed. I hope that the Minister will say whether he is willing to include in the Bill more meaningful measures to ensure consultation.

Amendments 126 and 127, which go together, seek to ensure that consultation on the precise drafting of pupil and parent guarantees is undertaken after the Bill’s enactment—if, indeed, it passes into law. The pupil and parent guarantees are, in many cases, not well defined. It seems that the Government cobbled them together rather quickly. It would be a matter for concern if the existing draft pupil and parent guarantees were to be implemented. We would much rather that a proper process of consultation and consideration of the guarantees took place after enactment.

I hope that the Minister will address those two concerns in his response.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Amendment 180 lists bodies that should be consulted, but it is not necessary. I know that the hon. Gentleman would like a list, but clause 2(2) states:

“The Secretary of State must consult whatever persons he or she thinks appropriate about the draft and must consider any representations made by them.”

The list proposed by the hon. Gentleman includes exactly those people whom we would consult in any case. As I said, I do not think that a list is necessary, although I know that the obvious question will be, “Can you name one?” One problem with making a list is finding that someone has been missed. I do not see the need for the amendment. The other amendments would require us to invalidate the current consultation on pupil and parent guarantees.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

On a cautionary note, I agree generally that we would expect the Secretary of State to consult widely and not to be confined to the names given in the amendment, but strange things happen. My hon. Friend may recall that a certain Secretary of State for Education fell out badly with one of the trade unions representing teachers’ interests, which one would think would have been consulted along with all the others. We must be wary so that on some future occasion, an equally stroppy Secretary of State for Education does not take it in mind not to consult on the basis of a falling out.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

To be fair, my hon. Friend is right to caution us against what might happen. He is right to point out that it is important that a wide range of bodies are consulted. My intention—I will read it into the record—is that all the people and bodies listed in the amendment are exactly the sort that I would expect to be consulted on any pupil and parent guarantee, so I do not think that the amendment is necessary.

The hon. Gentleman thinks that there are drafting problems and issues with which people might disagree, including many of the bodies that he included on the list. That is the whole purpose of the consultation. It is a 12-week consultation that started in the middle of January. After 12 weeks, people will come back to us with their views on the guarantees to ensure that the consultation is meaningful rather than just being one consultation followed by another. The hon. Gentleman is right that we should consult with a wide range of bodies. Consultation improves Government policy. Our current consultation is a real one, so I do not see any need for his group of amendments. I hope that with those reassurances he will withdraw his amendments.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. Perhaps I will get half or one third of a point for trying. Nevertheless, I will make the same point as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, albeit in a different way. There is a great difference between one Government wanting to consult in a particular way and future Governments wanting to consult in the same way.

There is also a big difference between two phrases that the Minister used in relation to the consultation. At the start of his reply, he said that the Government will consult with the list of bodies; later, in response to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, he said that he would expect the Government to consult with the bodies on the list. There can be a big difference between an expectation and what happens in reality. However, it has at least been put on record that the Minister accepts that those bodies—I assume that that includes the departmental Select Committee—should be consulted.

I regret that consultation on pupil and parent guarantees will not be re-opened after the Bill is enacted because the existing guarantees are very deficient and will be difficult to implement, but I accept that I have not changed the Minister’s mind.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The results of the consultation will be taken into account and I suspect that there will be changes to the document on the basis of the representations that we receive. The point of a consultation exercise is to listen to what people say and to improve the documentation.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification. Will he inform the Committee of the time scale for completion of the consultation, when we can expect to know the results and whether they will become available while we are scrutinising the Bill?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Consultation began on 11 January and will run for a standard 12-week period. It will conclude at the end of March. It is difficult to say precisely when the results of the consultation will be published, and what will happen.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister, but his answer underlines the fact that we are debating an important part of a far-reaching Bill, yet do not understand what the guarantees will comprise. We shall probably end up with the results of the consultation not even being supplied to Parliament before the general election. If Parliament is dissolved by the time the consultation has finished, presumably the results will not be announced until after the election. We are being expected to legislate on the basis of guarantees that we do not understand. That is regrettable and it broadens our worries about clause 1 and the parent and pupil guarantees. Having made tiny progress—slightly less than I had hoped for—I shall not press the amendment to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 3

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I have no comments to make other than to request that the Minister introduce the clause.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I apologise to the Committee—I did not realise it wanted me to say something as a starting point for the clause.

The clause provides for the system of redress that supports pupil and parent guarantees by putting the guarantees within the scope of the parental complaints service created under the ASCL Act 2009. If pupils at maintained schools or their parents consider that they are not receiving an element of the pupil and parent guarantee, and have not been able to resolve the problem with the school and governing body, they will be able to ask the local government ombudsman to investigate. As the provisions of pupil and parent guarantees are so important, it is our expectation that schools and local authorities will take seriously their legal responsibilities to deliver the guarantees, and we expect almost all complaints to be resolved at school level, as at present.

By their very existence, the guarantees will drive improvements and schools will know what is expected of them. However, when a school or local authority does not deliver an entitlement to a child or parent, a guarantee without the possibility of redress is no guarantee at all. Pupils at maintained schools and their parents will already be able to complain about an act or omission by the governing body to fulfil a guarantee requirement by virtue of the ASCL Act complaints system. The clause will extend the complaints process to allow pupils and parents to complain about an injustice sustained by a pupil or parent as a consequence of a head teacher’s failure to comply with a requirement imposed by the pupil and parent guarantee.

The clause amends the Local Government Act 1974 so that pupils at maintained schools and their parents can make complaints about local authorities in connection with any functions they might have under the guarantees. As a consequence, a parent or pupil at a maintained school can make complaints to the local government ombudsman when there is an injustice to them resulting from a failure by the head teacher, governing body or local authority to comply with the requirement of the guarantees. The ombudsman will have the power to investigate complaints and reports, and make recommendations.

It is clear from our debates on clause 1 that redress is an important part of the guarantee system.

Clause 4

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I beg to move amendment 132, in clause 4, page 5, line 33, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

‘(3) The head teacher may not provide different parents of the same pupil with different home-school agreements.’.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 44, in clause 4, page 5, leave out lines 33 to 35.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Clause 4 takes us back to the debate on home-school agreements, which we touched on in Tuesday afternoon’s sitting. Because we had quite a wide-ranging debate, and because I assumed we would have a brief stand part debate, I will restrict my comments to amendment 132 and amendment 44, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. The amendments have a similar effect. They question whether it is really necessary for head teachers to have the discretion to provide different parents of the same pupil with different home-school agreements. I accept the spirit of much of what was said previously—we believe that schools and head teachers should have as much flexibility and freedom as possible. Our criticism of home-school agreements concerns central prescription and head teachers being told to do things even if they do not want to.

Amendment 132 is a probing amendment. It invites the Minister to tell us under what circumstances he thinks it would be sensible for head teachers to take the time and energy to provide different parents of the same pupil with different home-school agreements. It tests out, in the interests of parents, whether there is a clear benefit in two parents of one child being required to sign up to different agreements. Depending on the nature of the differences, parents who expect equality of treatment might feel aggrieved to discover that there are two separate home-school agreements. I want to hear from the Minister whether there is a clear justification for that particular freedom

in the Bill.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Clause 4 replaces section 110 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 with new section 109A. Section 110 is left to apply to Wales only, which is nice for them because new section 109A changes the whole nature of home-school agreements, though not in a good way. I have rehearsed the arguments about the lack of effectiveness of home-school agreements, which is acknowledged by the Government, and I do not intend to rehearse them again now. The lack of effectiveness could be remedied by making the signing of a home-school agreement a condition of admission to the school. Again, I do not want to go over that argument.

Amendment 44 removes subsection (3) from the Bill. That subsection says:

“Where the head teacher considers it appropriate to do so, the head teacher may provide different parents of the same pupil with different home-school agreements.”

Not only is clause 4, in the words of the explanatory note,

“intended to increase the personalisation of home-school agreements”

for each child in the school, but some pupils may actually have two home-school agreements—one for each parent. Paragraph 15 of the policy statement says:

“HSAs must capture each child’s personalised goals and targets around learning, and the child’s wider well being. Instead of the whole school HSAs which currently exist, every child will have their own HSA, which sets out how schools, parents and children will work together to achieve both whole school and key personalised goals and targets; and which is renewed annually to reflect the child’s progress — from the time they enter reception until they leave secondary school.”

The subsection goes on to say:

“In some cases, HSAs will need to be reviewed more frequently”—

that is, more frequently than annually. Perhaps if a child has a stepfather or a stepmother, there will be more than two agreements as they will incorporate all the adults involved in the child’s upbringing.

As the Association of School and College Leaders says in its brief,

“it is unrealistic to require home-school agreements to be personalised for each individual pupil. Such a proposal will be wholly impractical in secondary schools, which may have over 1,000 pupils, and will consume a great deal of school resources.”

John Dunford said in his evidence to our Committee last week:

“A requirement that the home-school agreement should be personalised seems to place an impossible task on a secondary school with 1,500 pupils.”

The school is getting bigger, but so is the concern. Mr. Dunford continues:

“Surely a home-school agreement sets out the ethos of the school to parents, and to which parents should sign up. It is not a matter of negotiation between the school and the parent or the school and the pupil.”——[Official Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2010; c. 17, Q25.]

Dr. Daniel Moynihan of the Harris Federation said:

“I think that home-school agreements are a good idea. The issue for me is that their personalisation seems completely unnecessary, and far too much effort and work. Heads should be working with staff to improve the quality of teaching and learning, not worrying about personalising the home-school agreement.”

That is why, no doubt, the Harris Academy at Crystal Palace was recently graded as perfect by Ofsted—some 99 per cent. of its pupils achieved GCSEs grade C and above, and the school has 2,000 applications for just 180 places every year. Dr. Moynihan continued:

“The thing that you want people to sign up to is the common approach to discipline, to pastoral care and so on. Those are things that are in common for the school. I think it is difficult to have home-school agreements that are personalised, because it is a common ethos that you want people to sign up to.”——[Official Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2010; c. 34, Q45.]

Picking up the point made by the ASCL about the personalisation of home-school agreements consuming a great deal of resources, the impact assessment states that the policy will result in additional, mainly transitional costs

“from staff training...following implementation; and admin time to amend HSA templates.”—

all in all, £12.5 million, including just £127,000 to amend all templates in all 17,000 primary schools and 3,400 secondary schools. John Dunford was asked about the likely costs. His response was:

“I do not have a figure for the cost because it would largely be the time of senior staff in the school. As I say, in large schools, that would be massive.”——[Official Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 19 January 2010; c. 18, Q26.]

We need to get away from the idea of bespoke home-school agreements, which offends against the whole notion of the agreements. The amendment would take out the even more absurd position of a different home-school agreement for each parent of a child. The tailored lists of objectives and targets for a pupil to aim for in their academic work, personal development and sport should be matters between the pupil and their tutor or teacher, not a matter for home-school agreements.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

I would welcome it if the Minister clarified the meaning behind different parents of a child being provided with separate home-school agreements. Given our earlier discussion about whether parents will or will not sign the agreement and the consequences either way—if they do not sign it, or if they sign it but do not comply—how will the measure work in practice? I would have thought that in most circumstances, it is the resident parent with care who would be ultimately responsible. For example, if a child was playing truant from school, that would be followed up by the education and welfare officers and others.

If the motivation behind the measure is a recognition that, in today’s world, unfortunately families break down, but both parents still want to be involved in and contribute to their child’s education, I understand it. Where it is appropriate, providing information about parents’ evenings or school report cards to the non-resident parent is worth while, with the caveat that there can be particularly sensitive issues if the non-resident parent does not have custody, or if there is a protection order for the resident parent and the children—I have known such cases myself, and it can create many difficulties. When a non-resident parent asks for information, there can sometimes be a wider story of concern that makes it quite difficult, undermining other injunctions against that non-resident parent.

I would welcome clarification of the purpose of subsection (3). Will the Minister say, as he has in earlier debates, that he will consider the wording and what it might mean? I cannot see the reason anywhere in the statement or explanatory notes.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Some important points have been made. To begin with, allowing different home-school agreements for resident and non-resident parents is entirely at the discretion of the head teacher. I would think that the hon. Member for Yeovil would welcome that, because most of his later amendments berate us for not allowing discretion, and the clause provides for discretion.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The Minister is right that proposed new subsection (3) allows discretion:

“Where the head teacher considers it appropriate to do so, the head teacher may provide different parents of the same pupil with different home-school agreements.”

However, it is compulsory for the school to

“provide each registered parent of the pupil...with a home-school agreement”,

which must be tailored. Proposed new subsection (1) says that each head teacher “shall” issue home-school agreements.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The desire and intention behind the Bill is that a head teacher may decide whether it is appropriate to give a home-school agreement to the resident or non-resident parent. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley made a point about information sharing. There is specific protection to ensure that the home-school agreement can be tailored to prevent inappropriate sharing of information. That is why there might be different home-school agreements for each parent.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

Will my hon. Friend give me an example of inappropriate information?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Well, the resident parent might not want the non-resident parent to know exactly where the child is or the various things that they are doing with the school, but the non-resident parent might still want to be involved in their son’s or daughter’s education. My right hon. Friend makes an important point when she says that there are considerable difficulties now. There are many different types of families. The intention of the arrangements that we are discussing is to ensure that people with parental responsibility and those without direct responsibility who are non-resident can still be involved appropriately in their son’s or daughter’s education.

My experience in schools shows that there are sometimes huge tensions between the natural mother and natural father, to the extent that they will hardly speak to each other, yet they are both devoted to their son or daughter and want to help them with their education. That is what the measures will allow for, and that is why we have provided discretion.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

That is absolutely admirable, and the many different relationships that we see in society today make us wonder how to gain clear consensus about who should know what, when and why. Will my hon. Friend assure me that it need not be the head teacher who does all the explaining, perhaps to obstreperous parents who would disagree in any event about which direction matters should take, but that such a task can be delegated to someone with the time to do it?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

In practice, the head teacher would make a decision whether such action was a good thing but, of course, others might work with the non-resident parents to draw up the home-school agreements. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We cannot expect the head teacher to be involved in drawing up the agreements in each circumstance, but they are in a position to decide what agreements should be drawn up, because they understand the needs of a particular child, while others will help in drawing up the details.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

I want to give my hon. Friend an example. My youngest daughter is now in her 40s, but when she was in her final year at primary school, she was the only child in a class of more than 30 children with two parents extant. I am sure that he can understand the work load that could be involved with non-resident parents.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I cannot agree more with my hon. Friend. Notwithstanding the parents’ difficulties, most of them still want to be involved in the education of their son or daughter, and we frame measures with that in mind. The home-school agreement could be difficult in such circumstances, and I absolutely accept my hon. Friend’s point about the challenge that it could bring. He was right and proper to cite such an example from his personal experience but, from my professional experience, it was really difficult to ensure that we involved both natural parents who could not stand the sight of each other, but who both wanted to be part of their son’s or daughter’s education. It is important when framing provisions for home-school agreements to recognise that they must be sensible and proportionate. I take into account what my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said about the sharing of information, and that should be allowed. That is why such matters should be discretionary.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The right hon. Member for Don Valley referred to an important matter that I was about to bring to the Minister’s attention. Notwithstanding the pertinent comments made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East about spending a lot of time on the agreements, the Government need to issue clearer guidance. I have had to write to a school on behalf of a non-resident father to ask it to release his child’s report, to which he was entitled. There was some confusion in the school about what it could release because of what the resident parent had told it, which might not have been within the confines of a court order.

Surely the default position must be that, unless there is a protection order set by the courts, non-resident parents should be entitled to a record of what is going on with their child at school. Concomitant with that, they should be involved in some form of the home-school agreement so that they are providing their side of the bargain, particularly when the child might occasionally be resident with that parent.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I agree. Is that consistent with the amendment? Amendment 44 would remove the provision enabling head teachers to provide

“different parents of the same pupil with different home-school agreements.”

That is, if the head teacher considers it “appropriate to do so.” We are trying to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman outlined. Of course, home-school agreements should be appropriate for resident parents as well as non-resident parents. This is about sharing information. Of course we want to involve non-resident parents. They have an absolute right to be involved. However, if there are protection or child safety issues, of course information should not be shared. He is right to make that point.

However, I thought that the hon. Gentleman was making the point—if I am mistaken, he can reply—that provision should be made for separate home-school agreements, because different information for the resident and non-resident parent might be wanted.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

There are two completely different issues. My hon. Friend’s amendment seeks conformity in home-school agreements. Children should be treated differently within the same school. My point, which is an adjunct to that, is that there is a clear problem about non-resident parents’ involvement and entitlement to information about their children. This debate has not clarified the matter, so my plea to the Government, aside from the clause but relevant to it, is to think further and give clearer instructions so that parents know exactly what their entitlements are—that feeds into home-school agreements—in order to avoid ding-dong battles between parents within the school where the child is in the middle yet again, being used as a pawn. That is the problem at the moment in too many cases.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Nobody disagrees with that. Interestingly, what we are debating is how to make home-school agreements for different parents appropriate while ensuring that those with parental interest and responsibility can be involved with their children. Of course we will take on board the hon. Gentlemen’s comments about clarification and guidance, but this debate is not about having separate home-school agreements for different people.

I was asked to justify having different home-school agreements. Maybe resident and non-resident parents will have different agreements, but the fundamental principle is to keep people involved in their son’s or daughter’s education. All the evidence points to the fact that that is good for fathers and for the young people themselves. It is interesting that as this debate has gone on, we have begun to debate how to make different home-school agreements for different people work rather than debating the principle.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

The Minister is being open and helpful with his answers, but I return to my earlier point. Our previous debate was about what happens when somebody does not sign a home-school agreement and what that might lead to in terms of further action and the courts getting involved. What if one parent signs, whether before or after the child starts school, and the other parent does not? Who will the head teacher decide is primarily responsible for the delivery of the home-school agreement?

It seems to me that part of the home-school agreement will be standard—getting to school on time, good behaviour and what the school offers to the parent and pupil. The other part is personalised. For want of a better phrase, I call it an individualised learning plan. The agreement gives information, but there is also a responsibility to help deliver it.

In an ideal world it would be great for parents to come together to agree on the personalised home-school agreement, whether or not they were together. I am again trying to think of a scenario. The resident parent might agree with the plan, which could include provisions to meet the child’s special educational needs, for example, but the other parent might not, even though they are not there every day to look after the child, check homework and ensure that they get to school on time. That is a bit worrying.

In my wildest imagination, we might end up in a situation where one parent has signed and the other has not, and a head teacher could be accused of deciding that they do not like the child, going for the parent who has not signed and does not live with the child and commencing proceedings to exclude the child from school. There are some issues tied up with how the home-school agreements are made, and I hope that my hon. Friend will deal with them.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Many of the points that have just been made are reasonable. In the end, there will be issues regarding who is responsible for signing home-school agreements, but that will be easy to deal with when it is clear who has parental responsibility.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

I hate to be awkward, and the Minister is doing a wonderful job of replying, but the material that he has to work with might, in this instance, defeat even him.

I have already referred to my youngest daughter’s school experience with regard to children with only one parent extant. We all know of many instances in which the father has managed to dodge the column for any number of years and has not paid maintenance of any kind, but has suddenly turned up and said that he is interested in his child. We have to try to level that and say that there is something in the old-fashioned idea that people stay together for the benefit of the children. It is tough in the modern world, and the pressures are far different from when that saying had real meaning. No one expects people, with all the social pressures of modern life, to stay together just for the benefit of the children, but I wonder whether we are running a little too far away from the idea that children must come first. We should think about that before we get to this stage.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

That is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. There will be guidance alongside the provision. I appreciate the compliments that my hon. Friend paid me, and I take his serious point. I think that all of us agree with the point about people staying together for the benefit of the child, whenever that is possible and it makes sense. I am trying to articulate to the Committee that notwithstanding the difficulties of the modern world, in which some people unfortunately split up, there will be a parent with whom the child is resident. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley makes the perfectly reasonable point that such a parent has responsibilities, such as getting the child to school and in relation to homework, that a non-resident parent does not have, for obvious reasons. The parent with whom the child resides will have a home-school agreement and will be involved in their child’s education, but that does not mean that that does not apply to the non-resident parent. If we can find a way of doing this—that is why it is discretionary—all the evidence shows that it will help with the education and growing-up of the young child. Our attempt to meet this challenge throws up the sorts of problems that have been articulated by Committee members. However, the question is whether we say that we will not try to address the matter because it is difficult and challenging—even though we know that it is better if both parents are involved with their children.

I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East that we have to live in the real world—he is right to remind us of that. This is not wishy-washy liberal thinking about being nice to each other and getting involved. We are saying that having different home-school agreements for the mother and the father—if that is appropriate and if it can be done—would improve the educational entitlement of their child in school. If it is not possible to achieve that, however, the head teacher will decide that it is not worth doing, and it will not be done.

That proposal represents a social policy challenge and a strategic choice. This is difficult, but we should not make the system over-bureaucratic. We must ensure that only the right information is shared. If we can do that, however, we will make a significant contribution to educational opportunity, as well as making some people face up to their responsibilities.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am still grappling with how home-school agreements might differ for the same child, and why one would make them different. Under the old arrangements, the assumption was that the agreements just implied a set of general rights and responsibilities. Will the Minister give us two or three examples, leaving aside issues of privacy and where parents may live, of why someone would want to—[Interruption.] Well, if that is the major reason, I am pleased to have that information, but I am still struggling to understand how a school would wish two home-school agreements to differ.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The only reason I shrugged was because it is so easy to say, “I know there has been one example but can we have some more?” I would do the same in the hon. Gentleman’s place, and if he was in my place, he would have shrugged as well.

Let me try to explain. Imagine being a head teacher, or the person whom the head teacher delegates to draw up a home-school agreement. Imagine a home-school agreement that for most people would be a generic document about the ethos of the school and the various other bits that my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley talked about, alongside which is the individual learning. The resident parent sees the child every day of the week—sees them home from school, gets them off to school, packs their lunch and is responsible for their uniform. Let us say that the resident parent is the mother, while the father is 180 miles away—I am exaggerating to make the point. The home-school agreement drawn up for that father would be significantly different because he might not see the child from one month to the next. However, the important point is that we would still be trying to involve that non-resident parent in the education of their son or daughter. I hope that that practical example at least attempts to answer the question that the hon. Member for Yeovil posed.

Ann Cryer (Labour, Keighley)

In all such cases a custody order will have been made by a court. This might not work, but if there is a dispute that the head teacher is unable to resolve, perhaps he could ask for sight of the custody order to deal with the difficult situation of one parent being 1,000 miles away yet insisting on the same rights as the parent with custody.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I am not sure what the law is in that respect, but I think that we should look at anything that would help to overcome the difficulty that we are trying to address.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

It is clear from the consensus in the room that grappling with modern families and keeping absent parents in the loop is vital. I hope that the amendment will not be pressed to a Division, but I also hope that my hon. Friend will hold further discussions with his colleagues in the Department about how the policy will work in practice, given the seriousness of the responsibility on both parents if further action has to be taken against them. They should also consider the way in which the agreements will fit in with other information that should be provided when appropriate, such as school report cards, notification of parents’ meetings and so on, because there is a lack of clarity in that area, too. If he can assure the Committee that he will hold such further discussions, perhaps that will help us to move on and return to the matter at a later date.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The social policy challenge is as I laid it out, but the practical details of how it is met are a matter for debate. I am perfectly happy to hold discussions with whoever to get things right and to ensure that we achieve our aspiration and policy objective to which, I am sure, no member of the Committee is opposed. People are concerned about the detail of how the system will work and the practical consequences.

The intention behind the amendments is to move away from the concept that the head teacher might decide, for the educational benefit of the young person, that different home-school agreements for the parents would benefit their son or daughter. I do not want to lose that flexibility—it is the prize. However, if we need discussions to understand better how this will work in practice, I am happy to go along with that.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for being so patient with hon. Members. Will he clarify that the issue will arise only when a non-resident parent requests that he or she should be party to a home-school agreement? I assume that there will be no element of compulsion in respect of a non-resident parent.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The policy is a bit more proactive than the hon. Gentleman’s describes. It will be about contacting and working with the non-resident parent. The crucial point is discretion, and we shall consider what he said about that. I am grateful for the latitude that has been allowed in respect of our debate on the amendment. We have had an important discussion and lots of pertinent issues have been raised.

I go back to what I have just said in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley. I want to achieve the social policy objective of ensuring that, when appropriate, both parents are involved with their children’s education at school. Notwithstanding the difficulties, what a prize that would be. Of course there are practical difficulties that we need to understand and, as I said when I gave my commitment to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and the Committee more generally, I am happy to consider how the policy will work in practice. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Yeovil to withdraw the amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for his response and for his usual patience in taking a wide range of questions. Although I still have a few worries about the way in which the provision will work in practice, I accept two of the hon. Gentleman’s points: first, that this is one of the few aspects of the clause that is an option and that a duty will not be placed on head teachers and schools, which is at least one welcome thing; and, secondly, that all of us accept that so many original parents have broken up that there is a real problem with involving them in their child’s education and encouraging them to be part of it. We obviously want to do that, but I am still struggling with a number of issues.

Although the provision is an enabling power, there might be expectations among parents that they should be able to have individualised home-school agreements—different ones for different parents. Schools will be expected to consider that, so they will need a clear understanding of what is intended and how they should respond. Parents might worry when they understand that the home-school agreement of which they have sight is not the same agreement that the other parent has seen, and that might cause a lot of resentment. I would like the Minister to ponder these points and respond to them today or in writing.

Will the Minister tell us as clearly as possible when such a possibility will arise? I assume that the duty that we have been talking about is one to supply a home-school agreement to every “registered pupil”, but I am not quite sure what that means. Is that presumed to be the parent with care, or is there possibility, as the Minister indicated, that schools will have to be proactive by tracking down non-resident parents throughout the country to give them an option of a personalised home-school agreement? That would represent a pretty horrendous bureaucratic burden. If there was an expectation for both parents to sign different agreements, things could get complicated. Indeed, under a Conservative amendment, if one parent signed the home-school agreement and the other did not, we would not know whether the child would be able to attend any school at all. There are some serious concerns.

I would also like to know whether there will be an entitlement for a parent to see the home-school agreement that the other parent has signed—although I assume that the answer is no. However, if I was a parent in such circumstances, I would want to know the arrangements and understandings relating to my child during the part of the week that they were not with me, but with the other parent. I would be quite concerned about things being kept secret, and the process could end up being part of a war between parents who have broken up, which is often pursued through a number of different routes, such as the Child Support Agency. The process could get messy and complex, so we need to be clear about the expectations and entitlements.

I am still quite nervous about why the measure is in the Bill. I do not believe that it is there simply so that the addresses of parents should be kept secret, for reasons that many of us will understand—because of the disagreements that may arise. I assume that there would be some sort of provision to deal with that. I can only assume that the matter has arisen because of the Government’s intention for the home-school agreements to be personalised and to have all sorts of detailed information about expectations. However, are we really going to encourage head teachers to break down the parents’ responsibilities for delivering the expectations so that the agreement states that one parent will be responsible for delivering them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and the other parent on for the other days, because a child is with one parent for part of the week and with the other for a different proportion? Will there be an expectation that one parent will do a bit more maths or English, with the other doing geography? That sounds rather silly, but I do not understand why we would want to get down to that degree of distinct personalisation between parents, because it would create a nightmarish, complex mess. While head teachers could opt out of the process, they might decide to opt in, or be encouraged by parents to do so, and once they have opted in, they might face such problems regarding the responsibilities of a non-resident parent. This seems to be a bit of a minefield that needs clarification.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I would like to confirm what I said at the end of my speech. Many members of the Committee agree with the hon. Gentleman about some of the difficulties that he is raising. I agreed that I would look at them and see what we could do. As with the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, I will look at his points. For me, the prize is not saying in Committee, “We will need to look at this to see how we can deliver it in a more practical and sensible way,” but delivering the social policy objective of involving both parents as successfully as possible.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

That is helpful. Will the Minister write to members of the Committee before the Bill is considered on Report so that we can decide whether to table further amendments?

Mr. Coakerindicated assent.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

That is also helpful.

I would like to underline the issues that we particularly need to understand: the possible extent of the personalisation; whether the non-resident parent has to opt in or whether there is any compulsion to try to get them to sign home-school agreements; and whether a parent is entitled to see the other parent’s home-school agreement. Given the Minister’s helpful assurance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment 45, in clause 4, page 6, leave out lines 20 to 26.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 135, in clause 4, page 6, line 22, leave out ‘shall’ and insert ‘may’.

Amendment 136, in clause 4, page 6, line 25, leave out ‘must’ and insert ‘may’.

Amendment 46, in clause 4, page 6, leave out line 33.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Amendment 45 would remove subsections (8) and (9) of proposed new section 109A of the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998, which clause 4 introduces. Subsection (8) states:

“The head teacher...(a) may review a home-school agreement from time to time, and shall review each home-school agreement at least once in every school year after the one in which it was first provided... (b) may revise an agreement following a review.”

Subsection (9) states that consultations with parents

“must form part of any review”.

The NASUWT brief summarises its position and ours:

“The Union is...concerned about the potential for these agreements to become a hugely bureaucratic and unmanageable process and is particularly concerned by the proposal that they should be reviewed annually and signed following the review. The administration of the home school agreements must not place excessive and unreasonable burdens on schools. Therefore the provision to review every agreement annually should be on the basis of change in circumstances.”

Not only do home-school agreements have to be bespoke for every child—there might be more than one for every child, as we have just debated—but they need to be reviewed every year, perhaps redrafted every year, and signed every year. The absurdity becomes more and more obvious as the debate continues.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley made an interesting point about personal learning plans. Will the Minister tell the Committee what kind of things will be in a personalised home-school agreement? Will they relate to the behaviour of the child or their educational achievement? Paragraph 15 of the policy statement says:

“HSAs must capture each child’s personalised goals and targets around learning”.

Does that mean that every piece of curriculum knowledge—in history, geography, the sciences, maths and English—will be set out in the home-school agreement? Will a particular year’s home-school agreement state that we expect the child to have learned about Bismarck, or that we will be disappointed if he has not learned quadratic equations by the time he is 15? Will they address all the knowledge in the curriculum? I suspect not.

The policy is wrong not just because of its bureaucratic nature, but because it is an extension of a wider approach to education that has been tried time and again in this country, Australia and America. It is called outcomes-based education, and it is a progressive approach to education in which what matters is not the knowledge of the child, but their outcomes and their skills, so it is a skills-based approach rather than a knowledge-based approach. Kevin Donnelly talks about the complaints about an outcomes-based education in one of his excellent books, stating:

“The excessive number of curriculum outcomes, especially at the primary school level...overwhelm teachers and promote a check list mentality in deciding what should be taught”.

He says that the outcomes are “jargon-ridden” and generalised too much, that they are “superficial and patchy” and that the

“nature of the outcome statements...work against students learning essential knowledge, understanding and skills associated with”

traditional subjects. We will come back to that when we talk about the primary curriculum.

The concern here is that the statement goals will have nothing to do with the curriculum knowledge that children are expected to learn by a certain date. They will be amorphous targets for skills that are understood by very few people—parents, teachers and children. Even if the targets are understood, they do not relate to the actual curriculum knowledge of the child. The approach is not only bureaucratically heavy on schools, but something that has failed children wherever and whenever it has been tried around the world, and of course it always fails children from the least privileged backgrounds the most.

Amendment 45 would remove the requirement for an annual review. Amendment 46 would remove from the Bill the provision that the home-school agreement lapses when the pupil

“ceases to be of compulsory school age”.

I do not understand the need for that provision. Surely the home-school agreement lapses only when the pupil ceases to be a pupil at the school, whether that is at the age of 13 because they move house, the age of 16 because they leave school, or the age of 18 because they are going on to further education. Surely a 17-year-old in a sixth form needs to conform to the rules of their school every bit as much as a pupil below the age of 16.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

As the hon. Gentleman explained, amendment 45 would remove proposed new subsections (8) and (9), which relate to the head teacher reviewing the home-school agreement and having to consult parents. We have tried to achieve something similar with amendments 135 and 136, by turning a “shall” into a “may” and a “must” into a “may”. In other words, we do not see why head teachers should, under such a bureaucratic, dreadful and centralising provision, be compelled to review the home-school agreements each year for the sake of it, and nor do we understand why it is necessary for them to consult parents about that as a matter of course. In an education system in which we have some faith in head teachers, such things should be devolved to them.

We agree that amendment 46 raises interesting issues about whether the home-school agreements should lapse when pupils cease to be of compulsory school age, and we will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to what has been said.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I want to say a couple of things before I read out some information to the Committee. On amendment 46 and the idea of home-school agreements, there is an interesting debate around when a home-school agreement should finish. The maximum impact of a home-school agreement and parental involvement comes at compulsory school age. We have to judge whether a home-school agreement is as effective and necessary for students of 17 and 18. I draw the Committee’s attention to the maturity of those 17 and 18-year-olds. Notwithstanding the important parental involvement that we would expect to continue, part of what we are trying to achieve with education at that age is individual responsibility rather than parents always trying to support their children.

The hon. Member for Yeovil might disagree with me, but at what age is it appropriate to say that a young person has responsibility for their own education? We would always want parents to be involved, but is the correct way of doing so through a home-school agreement when a 17 or 18-year-old is in the sixth form? As for the age of compulsory education, while of course we want parents to be involved in the education of young people, part of their education experience is the individual responsibility that they should take for themselves. I know that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole always talks about the importance of listening to what young people say. The voice of young people is clear at the ages of 17 and 18. Of course, the involvement of parents is important, but young people always have the desire to be seen as responsible for themselves.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thought that the Minister would have heard my quiet comment that there would be issues other than the home-school agreement when a student was 18. A school might want pupils who were not fulfilling expectations in the sixth form to sign up to something, but such a policy would be difficult to undertake at about the age of 18, given all the work that they have to do generally.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

This is an interesting discussion—

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The amendment that the Minister is talking about is a Conservative one, not one that we tabled. What I said is that I was interested in his response. There are some interesting issues that arise between our expectations of pupils and of parents. We are not necessarily dealing with one unit. There is no reason why we cannot regard a young person as having reached adult age at 16 or 18, but we might still have some expectations of their parents.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I know that it is a Conservative amendment. However, I have just heard the sound of retreat. I made my remarks because the hon. Gentleman appeared to be supporting the Conservative position. If I have misrepresented him, I apologise profusely. We are saying that home-school agreements should be for pupils of compulsory school age for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman gave.

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked what would be laid out in home-school agreements. He will no doubt have read new section 109A(4), which lays out the sort of things that one would expect in a home-school agreement, such as the school’s aims, values and responsibilities and parents’ responsibilities. Sub-paragraph (d) mentions the school’s expectations of the pupil. That is the interesting part of the discussion, where there will be considerable differences between pupils and personalisation. It is about the school’s expectations of the pupil—their conduct and education.

I do not agree with the view of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that schools ignore and do not want to teach knowledge—they want to teach knowledge and skills. Schools are about both those things, not about one to the exclusion of the other. They are both important parts of an education for young people.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am not talking about what schools want, but the general direction of this Government’s policy and of the education administrators who advise the Government. The general thrust of policy has been towards an outcomes-based education. The early years foundation stage and the revisions to the key stage 3 curriculum are all outcomes-based. When we come to debate clause 10 and go through the curriculum objectives in lesson plans, we will see that they are all outcomes-based objectives, and have nothing to do with curriculum knowledge, skills or development of literacy—they are all to do with broader outcomes. I think that that is a retrograde step, and the measure is part and parcel of that policy.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

That is an interesting point, with which most of the teachers in the country will disagree. They see that the way in which the curriculum is laid out ensures that we do things not at the expense of other equally important things.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The Minister misunderstands me. It is not a debate between skills and knowledge in that sense. Of course, if someone is learning to read, they have to develop the skills of reading, and in maths, they learn the skills of maths. However, there is a division in the profession and in the public about the outcomes-based approach. That is what is so distressing about the Government’s centralising approach. They foist the method on the large number of teachers and head teachers who do not agree with that philosophical approach to education. That is why there is such hostility to a centralising approach to education out there, and what we have before us is part of that.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

It will be interesting to see what the hon. Gentleman does if he takes up that position on the teaching of phonics. I understood that he was very much in favour of central direction in respect of phonics. If he were schools Minister, it would be interesting to see how he responded if all the schools in the country decided not to teach reading by phonics. No doubt he will tell us that it is up to each individual school, even if they do not do phonics.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The schools would be expected to use best practice, and they simply would not get their children—[Laughter.] That is the policy. All the evidence from the States, this country and Scotland shows that phonics is absolutely the best method of teaching children to read. Schools will not be able to pass the test that we are proposing unless they use best practice. If schools can teach children to read within several months using another method, fine; they are very welcome to do so. We can learn from that and the children will do well in the tests. However, if they do not use best practice, they will not get through the tests.

Mr. Lawsrose—

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I think that the hon. Gentleman is about to intervene on me and say something about the interesting comment of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Yes. Does the Minister think that the counter-proposal in the hon. Gentleman’s policy is that synthetic phonics should be compulsory or compulsory only if things go wrong?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

It was unclear exactly what the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton was saying. I do not intend to be disrespectful, and I mean it in the nicest possible way, but we all know that the hon. Gentleman is a fanatic about synthetic phonics. He believes with a passion that synthetic phonics should be used in all classrooms in every situation. He was chiding me about central direction. I hope that it never happens, but if he was Minister I wonder what his position would be if schools up and down the land rejected his approach. Would he say that that was fine and tell them to get on with it? Hopefully, he will not be able to make such a decision, but it is an interesting thought.

There will be an annual review of the home-school agreement, but the agreement will not necessarily be changed as a consequence. It is reasonable to require schools to review home-school agreement along with the individualised learning plan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley describes it, once a year to see what progress has been made and to discuss it with the parent at the parents’ evening or whatever. Most parents sign home-school agreements and, if individualised learning plans were part of them, most parents would expect somewhere along the line—if the documents were to mean anything—to have a discussion about the progress that their son or daughter had made. It is reasonable to review the agreement at least annually, which will be the case for the majority of pupils. I put the caveat to the Committee again: just because the agreement will be reviewed annually, it does not mean that it has to be changed.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Will the individual learning plans in the home-school agreements have a plan for each curriculum subject?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The fact that the learning plan is individualised will mean that it will be put together in the best interests of the children in order for them to learn at the school. The priorities might be in different subjects or they might be behavioural objectives, but the words “individual” and “personalised” make it difficult for me to say what would be set out in each plan. The school would put something in the plan that was appropriate and relevant to the individual child. It would be discussed and agreed with the parents, reviewed annually and, as we know from discussions with parents, it would be popular and make a significant difference. With those remarks, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I will move swiftly over amendments 45, 135 and 136 because I do not agree with what the Minister said about the degree of compulsion, and I might bore the Committee if I repeat my arguments about that now. We shall have a stand part debate in a moment.

The Minister was teasing me about amendment 46. I did not say that I supported it, but that I would be extremely interested to hear his reply to it. Given that he has tried to divide me from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, from whom I cannot be divided on any issue, I want to throw back at least a couple of matters. He said that, when young people reach the age of 16, they should be treated as adults and have no obligation to be part of the home-school agreement policy. But, as the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton pointed out, the participation age will go up to 18 from 16 under the Government’s plans, so I am unclear whether that changes the Minister’s view.

The Bill states:

“A home-school agreement lapses when the pupil to whom it relates...ceases to be of compulsory school age.”

When the participation age goes up, will the home-school agreements be extended up to 18 by default, which is what the Minister appeared to suggest might not be necessary? What are our and the Government’s expectations of whoever takes responsibility under a home-school agreement post-16? Is prime responsibility expected to transfer from the parent to the child? Should the child then be expected to sign the home-school agreement? We would not want that to be compulsory. Should they be taking over from the parent? Do the parents’ rights and responsibilities, as have been stated up until then in the home-school agreement, simply come to an end because the pupil happens to be at an age at which they start to acquire adult rights? Much of what is embedded in the home-school agreements is presumably about parents accepting the responsibility that they actually have. Do we really want them to drop all responsibilities simply because the young person has reached an age beyond 16?

In spite of the Minister’s teasing, there are questions that the Government must answer. I hope that there may be an opportunity today to tease out the solutions to those questions.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Perhaps I will come back to that in the clause stand part debate.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

We have not had satisfactory responses from the Minister on any of the amendments. It is a huge burden on schools around the country to require them not only to produce bespoke agreements but to review each one every year, and potentially more than once a year if there are changes in the child’s circumstances. The Minister has not revealed an understanding of the burden that the clause places on schools already burdened by weekly missives from his Department, which head teachers and teachers are meant to read, absorb and apply.

The Minister has not answered the question about what happens after a child reaches the end of compulsory schooling. As the hon. Member for Yeovil pointed out, the ASCL Act 2009 extended the compulsory participation age to 18. Under that Act, from my memory of it, many responsibilities remain with the parents. It seems inconsistent for home-school agreement requirements not to apply until a child leaves school.

However, I do not intend to press amendment 45. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

This is a terrible clause, as we explained on Tuesday. It builds on a policy that is already, according to the impact assessment, and in contrast to what the Minister told us previously, a complete flop. The home-school agreement is bureaucratic and not worth the paper it is written on, which is more or less a paraphrase of the impact assessment. The clause succeeds in making matters much worse. It imposes an obligation on every head and make agreements compulsory; it ensures that home-school agreements have to be personalised for every child; it obliges head teachers to review them annually, even if they think them a waste of time; it obliges every home-school agreement to be signed, even if that is considered a waste of time; agreements might or might not go up to 18—we will find that out shortly; and there might or might not have to be separate personalised agreements for different parents. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and a complete waste of money. The context in which we are debating the Bill is one in which every political party is considering what cuts it must make to services that are valued by our constituents. In that new environment, we should not be legislating for anything that will not make an impact for the better on the front line.

We should bear in mind when called to debate measures involving additional costs, as the clause does, whether those costs are worth bearing in the current financial environment, considering all the other things that we want to fund. We should bear in mind the impact assessment and the Government’s own estimate that the clause will require schools to spend an additional half hour on bureaucracy for 7.3 million pupils, for gains that seem highly debatable. For all those reasons, I will seek to divide the Committee on the clause.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

We have had an interesting debate. I will make a couple of points before I make my more formal comments. With respect to the compulsory school age, we are trying to give ourselves a bit of time. The age of participation does not go up to 17 until 2013 or to 18 until—[Interruption.] It is 2013 for 17 and 2015 for 18; that is what I thought I said. In terms of considering how the measures relate to that, we will obviously need to consider—

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Having teased me earlier about the issue, saying that it would not be sensible to extend the home-school agreement duty beyond 16, is the Minister now saying that that might be done?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. However, in the context of the discussion of the Bill, I am saying that given the changed circumstances—the rise in participation age in 2013 and 2015—it is only right and proper to consider whether that is the right thing to do. All that I am saying to the hon. Gentleman is that I think that there is an issue involving young people at school.

As we will see later when we come to the right to withdraw children from personal, social, health and economic education, there is a debate to be had about when young people are competent to take decisions for themselves and accept responsibility. That debate is difficult and serious. Home-school agreements are not insulated from that debate, but as the participation age will rise, the hon. Gentleman is certainly right to ask what difference that will make to home-school agreements.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Given that we have already legislated to raise the participation age to 17 and 18, and that we in the House spent a lot of time doing so, it seems absurd to say now that we still have not considered the implications of that legislation for home-school agreements, given the link between the two. That seems to reveal poor policy development and a failure to consider the issue when officials drafted clause 4.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

The position is as I have stated. Clause 4 is important and will improve educational outcomes in this country.

Parents’ influence is crucial to children’s well-being, behaviour and attainment. It outstrips factors such as social class, ethnicity and disability for its impact in the classroom. Activities such as reading with children, talking to them and their teachers about what they are doing at school, helping with their homework, and discussing subjects and career options can make a difference.

Most parents want to help their children to do well at school, but many find it difficult to engage effectively with their children’s learning. Some parents might lack time or confidence in their own skills, or might not realise how they can help. Others might lack sufficient knowledge about what their child is doing at school or how they can help to reinforce the learning. Those who had negative experiences at school can often find it difficult to connect meaningfully with their child’s school. The Government are committed to helping parents and schools to become more effective partners in children’s learning and have set out a range of parental engagement commitments in “The Children’s Plan One Year On: a progress report”, which followed on from the White Paper “Your child, your schools, our future: building a 21st century schools system”, which was published in June 2009. We said that we would strengthen the legislation underpinning partnerships between parents and schools. The clause strengthens home-school agreements so that all parents understand better their responsibilities to follow the school rules, help their child to learn and support good behaviour.

All schools are legally required to have home-school agreements which, when used effectively, can establish trust and understanding between parents and schools. Most schools have generic whole-school agreements that parents are asked to sign once when their child is admitted to the school. They are not always regularly reviewed, so they do not always reflect properly changing expectations as children develop and progress through schools, and they do not outline the significant support parents can provide.

The new home-school agreements will build on the existing processes that all schools have in place for sharing personalised information on children’s behaviour, learning and wider well-being with parents, and they will continue to include the whole-school policies and strategies that all parents will be expected to agree to abide by. In addition, each child’s home-school agreement will be personalised so that it clearly sets out their key behavioural, learning and well-being goals and targets, together with the support the parents and school can reasonably be expected to provide to help the child work towards those targets.

Clause 4, notwithstanding our discussions on it, is an important part of the educational reforms that we intend to take forward, and it will help us to improve educational outcomes. I will always reflect on the points that hon. Members make to see whether more can or should be done, and to look the aspects of proposals that we discuss in relation to amendments. However, I think that, overall, clause 4 sets out an important objective.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

The Minister is making his case valiantly, and he is right to say that an important aspect of children’s welfare is their parents’ constructive involvement in their education. However, I honestly believe that the clause has not been thought through properly and that it has all the hallmarks of something that has been written by people without much life experience. His promise to reflect, cogitate and think again about how it might be made workable to achieve the excellent objective must be seen in the context of the vote on the clause, if there is to be one. I would like him to reassure me once more that he will rethink the outcomes of the clause as it stands and consider carefully how it might be made workable in the light of our discussions today and hon. Members’ experiences.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Of course I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance, which I tried to give before made his intervention.

We have had a helpful debate. There are differences of opinion on one or two of the principles involved, but there is also a desire to ensure that the way in which we try to attain our social policy objectives is practical and workable.

I have taken several Bills through Parliament, and I will adopt the same approach for this Bill that I took for the others. One of the important aspects of parliamentary scrutiny obviously takes place on the Floor of the House, but the detailed, line-by-line scrutiny that takes place in Committee tests legislation and, in a way, aims to make it better. If amendments can be made without sacrificing the social policy objectives that we all want to achieve, which in this case is to ensure that all young people achieve the educational outcomes that they should and to involve parents in that as much as possible—because that helps—we will of course consider them.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, as it will save me from having to make a speech at the end.

In relation to the interesting issue of how long the home-school agreements will last, will it be possible for the Minister to update the Committee on the Government’s thinking about whether they will move upwards with the participation age before Report so that our debate can be informed by a clear understanding of their intentions?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Of course that is one of a number of issues that has arisen, as has the practical consequences of having different home-school agreements for parents. I am sorry to repeat myself but this is such an important point for me. With the clause, my desire is to have something that is practical and workable. If we can deliver that, however difficult it is and whatever the challenges, we will be able to improve educational outcomes for young people in this country. I have already given a commitment to my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East that we will reflect on the matter and take it forward. The hon. Member for Yeovil has raised a number of different points that I am happy to consider, and I will come back to the Committee in due course, if necessary.

Clause 5

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I beg to move amendment 137, in clause 5, page 7, leave out lines 1 to 3.

Clause 5 ties the discharge by parents of their responsibilities under home-school agreements to parenting contracts and orders under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. Amendment 137 is a probing amendment to explore the significance of local authorities and governing bodies being given responsibility in relation to the parenting contracts, because proposed new subsection (6A) of section 19 of the 2003 Act makes it clear that a parenting contract will impose a duty on the parent in relation to the discharge of the home-school agreement, but will also need to include a statement by the local authority or governing body that it agrees to provide support to the parent for the purposes of discharging those responsibilities. Although that is understandable, I want to test the Government’s expectation of the level of support that will be provided by local authorities or governing bodies and the circumstances in which that support is likely to be necessary.

I want the Minister to reassure us that in circumstances in which there are seriously negligent parents who have not been supporting the school or abiding by the home-school agreement, they will not simply be able to evade their responsibilities as a consequence of making an excuse about the support that the local authority or governing body is supposed to be giving under this provision. Clearly, the prime responsibility needs to be placed on the parents to abide by the home-school agreement. We do not want to create a system of policing the statements that allows people to unreasonably blame other agencies. Will the Minister explain the extent of the support that will be required under the proposal and the extent to which parents who are seen not to be delivering on their responsibilities will be able to argue for no action to be taken against them because the local authority or governing body has not given the support?

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

This is a useful probing amendment, and I want to explore what the Minister means and who is covered by the agreement and the statement by the local authority or governing body. In the case of academies, and possibly of foundation trusts, it might well be that the local authority has no locus whatsoever in the school. Therefore, it might not be able to offer its services to the individuals concerned because the governing body will take on the task, although it might be singularly unsuited to do so. Would a local authority have the right to intervene on behalf of the parent or child so that the child could get the full and proper counselling and assistance from the local authority to which a child in a community school would be automatically entitled?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Amendment 137 would remove the duty on local authorities or school governing bodies to provide support to parents who had entered into parenting contracts following non-compliance with the behavioural expectations set out in their home-school agreement. I know that all hon. Members will agree that all children should be able to learn in an environment free from disruption. Pupils, school staff and parents share responsibility for ensuring that that is the case. All parents need to understand how they can help schools to manage poor behaviour in the classroom and what schools in turn will do.

Sir Alan Steer’s recent review of behaviour in school notes the fundamental importance of the engagement of parents in the education of their child, particularly when the child is experiencing or causing problems in school. To help with that, parents need to be able to understand how they can help schools to manage poor behaviour in the classroom. Once their child has been admitted to a school, parents will be expected to sign the home-school agreement every year, and they will face consequences if they fail to live up to the responsibilities set out in it. As long as the child behaves well and attends school regularly, no further action will be required.

However, a small minority of children can cause difficulties for schools and distress for teachers, and disproportionately affect the learning of other children in their class. Parents who do not fully understand their own and the school’s respective responsibilities can contribute to poor behaviour in the classroom. Clause 4 makes new provisions for the personalisation of home-school agreements that will allow schools to include behavioural and attendance concerns in the agreements as soon as they emerge, and outline parents’ responsibilities in helping schools to address them. If parents fail to adhere to the commitments that they have made to address those issues, and their child’s poor behaviour or attendance continues, the school can ask the parents to enter into a voluntary parenting contract. Clause 5 will amend the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 so that the personalised home-school agreement will form part of that contract, alongside any other action expected of the parent.

Parenting contracts are voluntary, two-way arrangements between parents and the school or the local authority, and the duty to provide support is dependant on which party signs the home-school agreement. We have not prescribed in legislation the type of support that a parent might require, and have left it to the individual local authority or governing body to decide. Our guidance on parenting contracts provides information on the type of support that could be provided to parents. It would be for academies to provide support to their pupils because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East knows, academies must have home-school agreements. It is also the case that we do not want people to evade their responsibilities in the way in which the hon. Member for Yeovil suggests. Citing parental support advisers or the offer of support as a way of trying to evade responsibility is not acceptable, and we do not want that to happen. However, we understand that some parents might need support to fulfil the obligations of a contract or the obligations that the home-school agreement sets out.

Whether children are in an academy or an ordinary school, there are parents who might wish to support them but struggle to do so. They deserve some additional support to help them fulfil the terms of the home-schools agreement. I realise—as, I am sure, do my hon. Friends and other members of the Committee—that there is a fundamental difference between parents who wilfully do not try to support their children in school, and those who go out of their way to support their son or daughter but, despite their best intentions, struggle to do so. I have met such parents, as I am sure we all have. They use all the different means at their disposal, yet there are problems with that young person.

In such a situation, despite all the efforts that that parent has made, it would be appalling simply to say, “You have failed to honour the home-school agreement.” In some circumstances—when a mother or father has tried everything possible to ensure that their child goes to school, and has worked with the school with respect to homework, uniform and any of the other issues—it is only right and proper to provide support. There is a clear difference between those parents and others who simply do not give a damn. It would be irresponsible for us to ignore that difference, because we have all seen it ourselves. We are trying to say that parents sometimes need support to deal with the problem.

Providing parental support is a good thing—not so parents can evade their responsibility under the contract, as the hon. Member for Yeovil suggested, but because sometimes people need support to be able to deal with such situations. As parents, I am sure that we have all sometimes experienced that difficulty ourselves. That is what we are trying to deal with. This issue is really important, and we try to make that distinction all the way through the Bill.

Sometimes people’s responsible parenting does not achieve the desired outcome. Those people need support and help—sometimes not from the state, but from friends. There are other people who do not really put themselves out and a parenting contract and then a parenting order is appropriate for them. We would not want to see those who try, but have difficulties, made subject to a parenting order. We want a parenting support adviser or other type of support provider to work with them to try to help with the difficulties they have had, and that is the purpose of the measure.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

I do not disagree with a word the Minister is saying. The objectives are fine and proper. However, I would like him to explain a little more clearly why there is a dichotomy in that it must be the

“local authority or governing body”.

I put it to him that in a foundation or an academy with which the local authority might already be involved, there might be a conflict of interest. The role that the local authority plays in the governing body of the school—not in a community school—could be compromised by the view it has to take about involving other departments of the local authority. However, it would be more likely that when the local authority has no role—as in many of the academies now established across the nation—it will not necessarily have a role in assisting the parent to overcome such difficulties. That would lead to a two-tier service between those who automatically receive assistance from the local authority—perhaps in a community school—and those who could be entirely at the mercy of a governing body that might or might not have anyone remotely qualified to deal with the kind of problem outlined by the hon. Member for Yeovil, which he rightly brought to our attention.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

My hon. Friend knows that local authorities have no formal involvement in academies in that sense. Academies must have home-school agreements. We have deliberately ensured that these provisions apply to academies, as is the case for other measures in the Bill. For example, local authorities obviously still have responsibility for pupils with special educational needs at academies. My expectation would be that even if the local authority was not involved, if a child at an academy was experiencing the sort of difficulties that we were discussing earlier—poor behaviour, being a victim of bullying or even doing the bullying—other services would need to be involved to support that child.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

Proposed new subsection (6A)(b) provides for

“a statement by the local authority or governing body”.

Without being too pernickety, in some situations we might need “and” instead of “or”. There may be occasions when something comes up and the governing body will need to talk about what the school should do, but it could be something on which the local authority would also have a part to play. For example, cases of truancy or special educational needs would not be an either/or situation; both bodies would need to make a contribution to the parenting contract. I wonder whether my hon. Friend will consider that with his officials; he might wish to deal with the issue in later proceedings.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

My right hon. Friend makes a reasonable point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East knows the local authority’s power with respect to academies. We are trying to ensure that certain things apply to academies as much as to the rest of the education system and to the structure for secondary education. I am reading into the record—I hope that it is of some help to my hon. Friend—the importance for young people who may find themselves in difficulty of the support that can be given by services outside the school. Schools are often seen as the only way to resolve a situation but sometimes, when working with parents, they need the involvement of other services. As I say, one would expect that to be the case for academies as well as other schools.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

And so would I. Problematically, the record shows that schools that are not community schools have a much higher rate of expulsions. That might be a temporary phenomenon or things could be set—I am not making a judgment. However, that is the reality at the moment.

Many foundation schools have a basis in religion. We support that, but regrettably some of them believe that they are the only true voice when it comes to helping people through their difficulties, and they might be very reluctant to involve the local authority, perhaps because it does not carry out the kind of work with which the school foundation would agree, given its religious standpoint. The provision ought to require a statement by the local authority that it agrees to provide support, whether the child is in a community school or not. Religious schools, in particular, will deliberately want to keep local authorities out of the equation.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

As I say, I know that I have not totally satisfied my hon. Friend. I agree with him in principle; it is important to ensure that young people get the support that they deserve when they have particular problems. His concern is that that support might not always be available, and he referred earlier to the possibility of a two-tier system.

I cannot stress enough the importance I put on the involvement of other services to support the school in delivering home-school agreements, standards of behaviour in schools and support for parents. It goes back to what I said to the hon. Member for Yeovil. I think he said that this was a probing amendment, but I hope that he understands the fundamental point that I made at the beginning. There is a real difference between people who deserve support in order to achieve what they want to achieve, but who despite all of their hard work and best intentions are finding it difficult to do so, and those who simply refuse to engage with the system, do not care and dump the problem on the school and say, “You sort it out”. That is not acceptable and goes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton about parental responsibility. Parents have a responsibility to look after their children, to try and bring them up properly and to work with the school. The state and the system also have a responsibility to support those who, despite their best intentions, need help with health problems, mental health issues, or basic parenting skills. That is what we seek to do by saying that in some situations it may be appropriate for somebody—instead of having a contract, or indeed even an order—to receive support and help through some sort of adviser, or other mechanism. That should take place in local authority maintained schools and elsewhere in the system as well.

I hope that with that reassurance, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for that response. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

I think that this is a very important part of the Bill. If we are to have home-school agreements, it is really important to understand what will happen when they break down. The feedback from schools in my constituency sometimes reflects a lack of understanding, and concern and frustration about what they should do when home-school agreements break down.

The Committee has received representations from a variety of organisations, and I take on board their concerns, particularly about children with autism, enforcement of the agreements, sensitivity to the needs of autistic children and the challenges their parents face, and the support that they need. At the same time, we must not allow that to get in the way of addressing the really serious problems of poor behaviour and its impact on others in school, and the rights of other children and parents to some of the guarantees that we talked about in clause 1.

The voluntary parenting contract is one of the things that should be addressed. The guidance that accompanies the Bill will be important in defining how far a local authority or governing body should go in supporting the parents. I have been out with the police in my community, in safer neighbourhood teams. I am afraid that they told me stories about how some parents in our community think that it is the job of the police to bring their children, who are way below the age of 16, home at night. I would hate it if a parent of a child who was not getting to school on time said that they expected—I am not suggesting that this would happen—someone from the local authority to turn up at 8 am to wake the child up, dress them, wash them, give them their breakfast and take them to school.

Some parents in receipt of carer’s allowance have put it to me that, even though they are not at work, they would like the local authority to take their child to school. I accept that such people represent only a minority, but unfortunately we have to appreciate that some parents choose to play the system in whatever way they can. I hope that the guidance that accompanies the Bill will cover what is practical, realistic and reasonable to expect from a governing body or a local authority.

Having said that, there are plenty of examples of good steps that can be taken. On behalf of schools, I draw attention to the way in which children’s services work with schools. Only too often, based on the behaviour of children, schools have voiced concerns to me, local authorities and children’s services about the fact that they are putting in information and raising the alarm, yet are not receiving feedback about what action is being taken on the ground. Such a position must be resolved, as it is important to make sure that we get the Bill as right as is practically possible and that appropriate support is given to parents. At the same time, schools must expect other partners in the profession to work with them and keep them fully informed.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

I return to the issue of getting children into school. Ofsted makes a fuss about attendance and, rightly so. Many schools in my constituency, anxious to please Ofsted —I would not be surprised if the same applies in Don Valley—send teachers and assistants to gather children and take them to school. That is an example of the difficulties of modern teaching and attendance. Not many members of the Committee will remember the days when a school board man rounded up the kids. It is not exactly a new phenomenon. It is still happening although in a different form but, to be honest, it is an important task for some schools just to get the children into school. If children are not at school, they learn nothing. The fact that they are at school, however they get there, should form part of the contract.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Thankfully, he refers to a small number of children, but there is some sense in local authorities taking such action. Organisations like Home-Start do fantastic work with families, but such services should be a temporary measure while making sure that the parents get up to speed with what they are expected to do, rather than an ongoing commitment. Clause 5 is an important part of the Bill. How it works in practice and is interpreted on the ground will be connected with whatever guidance is given, which I am sure will be sensible, practical and outcome-focused.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

My right hon. Friend made a powerful speech, which was reinforced by the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East. Under clause 5, we are tackling the complaint that, if people do not abide by the agreements—as the majority do—nothing happens. It goes back to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Yeovil. We do not want to get the good with the bad. In areas of social policy, the position is difficult. If we are not careful, we will have unintended consequences.

However, it is important, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said, that we try as a Government to wrestle with particular difficulties. Some parents completely evade their responsibilities and the point made by my right hon. Friend as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East and, to be fair, to which Opposition Members alluded is difficult and sometimes requires cultural and attitudinal change. Alongside that, Governments can signal through legislation what they think is appropriate and right. Most people expect parents to do their best to ensure that their children conform to school rules, do not act violently, do not disrespect others, do not steal and do their best educationally.

There are difficulties. My right hon. Friend cited the example of children with autism. There will be others with learning difficulties or other challenges. Of course we want to support them and help them. Any home-school agreement would take their needs into account.

We want parents to act responsibly. We want home-school agreements to work, but for that to happen people have to know that alongside the carrot of support and advice is a little bit of stick in that we will tell them that if they evade responsibilities, the state is entitled to do something about it. That is what the clause is about. I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend that it is a significant piece of the Bill.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I agree with everything the Minister said about the state having a right here, but who in the state sector does he expect to enforce clause 5? It seems to me that it is all on the school and quite a large burden for a school when it really ought to be the local authority.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I take a completely different view. I think that schools would relish the opportunity of knowing that there was something in place that gave the home-school agreement some teeth and that the state supported them in dealing with the small number of parents who simply refuse to conform to and abide by the rules. It would be a bit of work for the school, but from my experience most schools would welcome that because it would give them a new tool to deal with irresponsible parenting. In that respect, of course, it would be the school working with others, but it may be one bit of bureaucracy that is important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East pointed out on Tuesday, there is good bureaucracy as well as bad bureaucracy. Most people would see bureaucracy that helps tackle parental irresponsibility as good bureaucracy.

Clause 6

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I beg to move amendment 138, in clause 6, page 7, line 17, leave out ‘Each calendar year’ and insert ‘At least once every four years’.

Sir David Amess (Conservative, Southend West)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 86, in clause 6, page 7, line 17, leave out ‘shall’ and insert ‘may’.

Amendment 139, in clause 6, page 7, line 19, at end insert

‘provided that the local authority judges that such a survey provides good value for money in helping to deliver school improvement.’.

Amendment 47, in clause 6, page 7, line 23, at end insert

‘but shall not include schools that have had a full Ofsted inspection during the 12 months prior to the survey being carried out.’.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The Minister finished on some words that are rather relevant to clause 6. He said that there was good bureaucracy and bad bureaucracy. I fear that what we are coming to here is rather bad bureaucracy. According to the explanatory notes, clause 6 amends the Education Act 1996 so as to require local authorities in England to seek and assess parents’ views on the provision of schools in their area. Where there is material dissatisfaction with existing provision, a local authority is required to consult with parents and develop a response plan that addresses the dissatisfaction. This is another of the clauses in the Bill that has caused a lot of concern about whether this additional bureaucracy is justified.

The NASUWT, in its submission to the Committee, said:

“it remains to be convinced of the need for parental satisfaction surveys”.

The Local Government Association said that it had concerns about the measures in this part of the Bill and believed that responsibility for responding to parental concerns about the provision of schools should rest with councils and that they did not support a right of appeal to the adjudicator. They have supported a lot of the amendments to this part of the Bill, including amendments 86 and 139.

There is one thing that the LGA says in its submission that I do not agree with and where I have some sympathy with the Government. It says:

“Councils are held to account by local electors through direct elections; the accountability of the ballot box provides an effective recourse for parents who are dissatisfied with councils’ plans for the provision of school places locally.”

The truth is that the ballot box has proved across the country and for many years to be an extremely ineffective way to deal with discontent about school performance and the provision of places. Many parts of the country have what are essentially rotten boroughs, where one party has been in power for a long period. They are often complacent about educational standards, and aspirations are low among elected members, and often officers as well, but because of the party’s strength, some parents’ concerns are not expressed effectively at the ballot box. I put it to Committee members, who will have a great deal of experience of local elections, that the performance of local schools, even when performance is low, is rarely an issue in such elections.

I am sympathetic to any Government who seek to implement intelligent accountability in a monopoly state system where people have a limited choice of provider. It is sensible that we should try to make the system as responsible as possible, understand the concerns, appoint an inspectorate to hold schools to account and have some kind of inspection mechanism to hold local authorities to account when they are doing a thoroughly bad job and the ballot box is not proving effective. However, the issue here is whether the parental satisfaction survey and all that comes with it is really a sensible way to deliver school improvement. In our view, it is not. Our amendments seek to remove the compulsion and bureaucracy involved in the proposed parental consultations.

In some ways, the most important amendment that we have tabled is not the lead amendment; it is amendment 86, which would make the parental satisfaction surveys voluntary by allowing local authorities to decide whether they would be useful. That raises a question about the clause. If you will excuse me, Mr. Amess, I will put the case for amendment 86 now instead of speaking at great length later about the clause as a whole.

Some of the other amendments were also designed to moderate the worst effects of the provisions. For example, amendment 138 would remove the obligation on local authorities to consult annually, which is surely excessive, even for those who feel that parental satisfaction surveys might be useful. Amendment 139 would also give local authorities a different kind of flexibility by ensuring that the use of parental satisfaction surveys was conditional on the local authority’s having judged that the survey provided good value for money and helped deliver school improvement.

The Conservative party has also tabled an amendment in the group. Amendment 47 suggests that a parental satisfaction survey should not be necessary in schools that have had a full Ofsted inspection within the past 12 months. In other words, the survey should not replicate a review of school performance.

Mr. Amess, I do not know whether you have had the chance on a dull evening to read through the full horrors of what is involved in the clause, but Members who have read the paper circulated by the Department on the parental responsiveness trial will have a sense of what a bizarre and bureaucratic set of requirements are about to be imposed on schools if the Bill is passed. The clause is one of the many parts of the Bill that must be taken seriously, because it will affect many people and involve great expenditure of public funds.

The policy is set out clearly in paragraph 2.3 on the first page of the report on the parental responsiveness trial, which has already been carried out. I am afraid that I will have to quote a bit to prove my point that the provisions are excessively bureaucratic and should not be a duty. The policy is described as follows. First, every local authority in England will be required

“to ask parents of children in Year 6 their views on secondary school provision in their area, alongside the annual admissions process, and act on those views.”

John Dunford, the respected leader of the Association of School and College Leaders, noted in his evidence to the Committee that that is already striking, because the Government will require every local authority to consult parents whose children are not yet in secondary school. In other words, the secondary schools are going to be held to account by parents whose children do not yet attend them. As a consequence parents, whose children may be going on to secondary school, will be giving feedback based on what they have heard locally. Although I am not suggesting that the views of such parents on secondary provision have no value—parents often have some sense of the quality of schools in their area—that is a serious deficiency in the suggested policy.

The second part of the policy is that views should be gathered via a—needless to say—nationally prescribed survey that will ask parents how happy they are with the local provision. The survey is designed to yield quantitative results and we have been sent a copy by the Department. The key question that parents will be asked to answer is how happy they are with the secondary schools in their area. Parents will have the stunning choice of being able to say that they are either very happy, happy, neither happy nor unhappy, unhappy or very unhappy.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

That is the alternative vote system.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Gentleman makes the first argument I have heard in favour of this particular paper, but I do not want to intrude into matters that the Labour party may currently be debating.

From what I have said, we may already think that the survey is bizarre, intrusive and wasteful. However, the report on the parental responsiveness trial goes on to say:

“Where there is ‘material dissatisfaction’”—

I am not sure whether that has been defined yet, but we will come back to it no doubt—

“LAs will be required to address those concerns in a published plan.”

Therefore, if the response is high enough—we will come back to that in later amendments—there is enough material dissatisfaction and parents have said that they are unhappy or quite unhappy, there will be a plan. Local authorities will then be required to consult again

“with parents of children in Key Stage 2 (i.e. Years 3, 4, 5 and 6) to formulate the plan.”

That is not enough, however, because the document goes on to note:

“If a proportion of parents think that their views have not been considered fully or the proposals offered do not address their concerns, they will have the right for the plan to be referred...to the Schools Adjudicator.”

The schools adjudicator, however, lies outside the local authority. The document continues:

“In such cases, the Schools Adjudicator will review the process and outcome and say whether the plan is reasonable. He can accept or reject the plan or direct the LA to make changes to it.”

That is the case even though the schools adjudicator is not an elected individual. There is even more, but I really would be testing your patience, Mr. Amess, if I described what has to happen if the local authority responds other than in a positive way, and how there can be further appeals and counter-appeals.

All sorts of questions are raised by the survey, such as whether it will be value for money, whether we are consulting the right people, whether we have to consult in such a rigid way and whether it is right that we should give away democratic control to the schools adjudicator. Could such a device be used effectively to block any challenging changes that the local authority had to make to local provision due to an over-supply of places? Some hon. Members might say that that would be a good thing, but others might say that it would make it impossible for local authorities ever to deliver difficult changes in their area, even when they are regarded as being democratically accountable.

We have some idea about whether the survey will be welcomed and relished by parents, because pilots are already ongoing around the country. A number of local authorities were approached and were going to take part, but it seems that many of them fell away, presumably when they realised what was involved. The Government ended up with five local authorities taking part in the survey. In the impact assessment, which I assume was prepared before the trials took place, a 65 per cent. response rate to the surveys was assumed, and the costing was done on that basis.

The Committee will be interested to know the actual response rates in the five local authorities. In local authority 1 the response rate was 4 per cent.; in local authority 2 it was 14 per cent.; in local authority 3 it was 4 per cent.; local authority 4 did fantastically well and reached 20 per cent.; and local authority 5 reached 4 per cent. So the average response to the surveys, as I read the Government’s own case for such surveys, was 6.6 per cent. In other words, out of every 20 parents, almost 19 did not even bother to send the survey back. That is against a 65 per cent. planned response rate in the impact assessment. So far the Government have had a tenth of the response they were expecting.

Paragraph 10.2 of the report says:

“The response rate and numbers of responses are low, but not unexpected. Indeed, the trial LAs said they were ‘pleasantly surprised’ at their response rates”,

even those with response rates as low as 4 per cent. I find that degree of optimism quite extraordinary.

There are all sorts of other issues that we could raise, which we will obviously have to come back to when we debate other amendments. But I want to ask whether the Government have made the case for this additional level of bureaucracy. With all the other elements of school accountability that have been looked at—with Ofsted, with the report card, with league tables—there is a case for ensuring we know what parents think. There is a case for improving the accountability of schools and for holding local authorities more effectively to account. This highly bureaucratic part of the Bill is not the way to do it. It will impose additional costs on local authorities at a time when they can ill afford it, given the economic climate.

Even the Government do not really believe that the policy is worth bothering with, if we look at the impact assessment again. Normally we know how optimistic such things are, because Governments have to prove that policies are worth while, and we know that the annual benefits are often inflated and wildly exaggerated. But when we look at the costs and benefits of this policy, as described in the Government’s own paper, signed off by the Secretary of State, we discover that the net cost of the policy in present value terms is expected to be between £21 million and £22 million per year. The net benefit is estimated to be between £9 million and £23 million. In other words, the mid-point for the benefit is expected to be £15 million or £16 million per year against a cost of £21 million or £22 million.

Even the Government seem to think that the policy is a complete waste of money. Given the pathetically inadequate response to the pilots, the fact that even the Government seem to think it is a waste of money, the state of current public finances and the bizarre way in which the survey has been constructed, this is one part of the Bill that the Government should take back to the drawing board and think on again.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

It is interesting to discuss how we can give more parents a say in planning local schools services. With the current range of choice, which some members of the Committee may disagree with, whether it is specialist schools, academies, community schools or faith schools, it has become a more complicated landscape, though not necessarily in a bad way. It has always seemed to me that parents are not involved in planning school services as much as they should be. In the past, most planning was based on population and whether schools should stay open, and that determined how a local authority might plan its schools services. That was not always easy for Members of Parliament when faced with a local authority suggesting that a primary or secondary school might be shut because of the falling birth rate, although I understand the problem is the other way round now with the birth rate going up in more recent times. It is an important discussion to have, but I have to say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I have concerns about how the matter will be dealt with in practice.

On planning school services, the survey has to be more rounded than is provided for in the Bill. We have to think about how, having done a survey in a particular year, the local authority or others in a school community are going to plan services. There are not going to be any changes in that year. Basically, parents who fill in the survey will have what is on offer.

Given that it has been established by the trials that it is best to have the questionnaire alongside the application for a school place, there are not going to be any changes at the end of that year. One wonders whether parents will be left rather dissatisfied over their input into the debate. Taking regular soundings in different forms—questionnaires are one way to do it, but sampling and meeting parents in the community and in smaller groups are also helpful—to aid a longer term strategy of change, perhaps over three to five years, would be the way forward.

I have concerns about how empowered different groups of parents will be to take part in the surveys. We can look at the response rates by local authority, as has been indicated. I would be interested to know in which local authority the response rate was 20 per cent. as opposed to 4 per cent. We have to be mindful of the fact that sometimes it is the better educated, more articulate and confident parents who will fill in the forms; other parents, who are equally interested in their children’s schooling, may not feel that they have the wherewithal to answer the questions.

Coming from a family where I was the first to go into further and higher education, I know that it is difficult for parents to talk about something when, sometimes, their experience of it is very limited. I do not want to say it in a patronising way, which is why I referred to my personal circumstances, but that is a reality. Among some parents there is a great deal of deference to the school and a belief that teacher knows best. Sometimes teacher does not know best, but the parent may not feel equipped to challenge a teacher in the way other parents feel enabled to.

On the response rate, I raised on Second Reading which parts of the local authorities the responses came from. If they were from the wealthier parts, where people are more likely to be in professional jobs and be more highly educated, then even that 4 per cent. may represent a distortion of the parents of the year 6 group across the local authority area. At a time when we are all concerned about social mobility and the opportunities for people to get on, we need to be mindful of a distortion in the survey and in how it works. The amendment is about how often the survey is done and the pressures on local authorities. Whether it is done once a year or once every four years, the question should also be about the quality of the engagement.

I would like to refer back to choice. Some parents are able, through their own means, to transport their children to a school further away because they feel that it meets the needs of their child, perhaps because of its specialism. On Second Reading, I referred to local authorities cutting school transport for some children. I have had that problem in my area, and it has particularly affected faith schools. Public transport has been cut and parents—often with low incomes and working shifts—of year 6 pupils have realised that they will not be able rely on their children being helped with transport to a faith school, which may be more then 3 to 5 miles away.

When we talk about satisfaction, we should be talking about choice. Choice can be easier for some than for others, when choosing the school that they want their child to go to. Involving parents in how local and school services are planned is absolutely important, but we have to look at whether the measure will deliver the Government’s best intentions.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

As has been alluded to already, clause 6 creates another set of machinery under which the level and standard of education provision is assessed, this time by means of a parental satisfaction survey. According to the policy statement the Minister sent us on 19 January, it will be a survey of

“parents of year 6 pupils, as they apply to secondary schools for their children, about their view of secondary school provision in the area.”

Under this machinery, if the survey reveals that a majority of parents are unhappy with the provision locally, the local authority must publish a plan setting out its proposals for responding to that dissatisfaction.

I suppose that this policy is devised on the assumption that local authorities do not know about parental dissatisfaction in their area and that, once they are made aware of that dissatisfaction through this survey, they will replace the director of children’s services and their education advisers, and they will set out a brand new plan to sort out the poor provision. I doubt very much that any of that will happen.

That new plan is then meant to be put out for consultation and “eligible” parents—defined by the hon. Member for Yeovil as parents of pupils in years 3, 4, 5 and 6—will be able to refer the plan to the schools adjudicator, who either approves, modifies or rejects it. And so it goes on, but I will not rehearse the saga of events that is meant to follow.

If we had schools adjudicators before us today, no doubt they would tell us, as the local government ombudsman did, that their expertise is in admissions and that they dare not tread into the fields of pedagogy or the curriculum.

Amendment 47 is simply a probing amendment to make the point that the new Ofsted framework contains:

“A short parent’s questionnaire that will be sent when the school is notified of an inspection.”

So there appears to be an element of duplication, albeit that the Ofsted survey covers only one school and is aimed only at the parents of pupils attending that school. Nevertheless, the survey will have been carried out and it will contain extensive data that should, if an Osted inspection has been carried out recently, serve to inform the local authority of the views of at least some parents in the area.

It is a particular area that matters, rather than the whole local authority area. For example, in West Sussex, which covers a very large geographical area, there may well be pockets of high degrees of satisfaction, but in other parts there may be far less satisfaction. The net effect may be overall satisfaction, but when the data are broken down by localities a different picture may emerge.

This issue was touched on briefly in the report on the parental responsiveness trial, which was sent by Ministers to members of the Committee on Monday. In paragraph 12.2, it says:

“Local authorities were asked to analyse the data by ward... However, LAs felt the ward level analysis was possibly not correct either, as they no longer work at ward level. Some suggested school catchment areas were more useful but these can be quite large, are subject to change and may focus too narrowly on school-specific issues...All felt it was useful, however, to look at the geographical distribution of responses, not least because it contextualises the qualitative responses (the reasons why parents are satisfied/dissatisfied).”

It would be helpful if the Minister said a little more about the geographical issues relating to such surveys in very large local authority areas.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

This issue is very difficult. I am a great believer in democracy at all levels. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I believe that in my lifetime democracy has proved to be the greatest force for progress the world has ever known, notwithstanding the great religions that have helped us from time to time.

However, I am worried about the proposed application of democracy. Ofsted costs us £500 million per annum. There is a lay person on the Ofsted inspection team. What do they know of education? They might not know very much, but they bring another perspective, check on the school, decide whether it is doing good, bad or indifferent, and identify areas of weakness, which can get special attention. Then schools try to improve on that basis.

I will say no more about Ofsted. I think that it is a very unwieldy body and very often the calibre of the inspectors is not what I would want it to be. Having very close relatives in the teaching profession, I could give a few choice anecdotes about their views of Ofsted. Be that as it may, it is a major inspection force: a school-by-school, teacher-by-teacher observed in the classroom, inspection process, in order that we have a grip on how well our schools are performing.

League tables are very unfair; they simply reflect the number of passes in any subject for any number of children, but, again, they are a measurement. They can, to some extent crudely expressed, show that some pupils are doing very well in some schools and others doing not so well. Everyone knows the script. We have the added-value tables, which say that in areas of considerable deprivation, pupils have benefited massively from excellent teaching, dedicated staff and hard-working people who ensure that children make some improvement. Again, that is another test.

Today, we are bringing about guarantees. Each and every child will have a guarantee that its education will be properly cared for and looked at. Local authorities still send inspectors and advisers to help. It is an old-fashioned saying but it is true in this instance: “Weighing the pig does not make it any fatter.” How many ways and how many times are we going to weigh the pig? How are teachers beginning to feel about this? They are education professionals dedicating their lives and careers to the betterment of the children who form the next generation of bread winners.

I would think they are up to their back teeth with weighing the pig. How often do they get the chance to teach without having to think, “What will this do to the league tables? What will Ofsted say about this? Can I be innovative in something else?” As a Government, we are putting a huge burden on to a group of people who have served us magnificently for 150 years in state schools.

Of course, there have been failures. There are local education authorities that one would not pay in washers, they are so bad. That is also subject to democratic mandate. It has to be said that turnout is disappointing. Even when there is a very poor council, they still keep returning them—Tory and Labour. That is what they want to do and that is democracy. As Churchill said, “Democracy is probably the least worst form of government”. As a little aside, Lord Reith, who was the first director-general of the BBC and known for his autocratic style, when asked by John Freeman on the television about his preferred form of governance, I think replied, “Despotism, tempered by assassination.” We are trying to avoid such a radical approach to our schools. [Interruption.] I am not looking in any particular direction. We are trying to avoid that.

In my opinion, this is becoming very difficult. I do not know where this idea has sprung from. I am in favour of communities getting together to express the collective will on things large and small, but when we have a system of checks and balances provided by dedicated professionals caring for our young people, I wonder whether one more straw on this camel’s back might not be one too many.

I hope that the Minister can think again about this. I am a loyal Labour bloke, not one of these new Labour flibbertigibbets. Whatever he says I shall vote for. The truth is that this is deeply flawed. If it is not defeated and withdrawn today, there is a serious possibility of it being defeated on the Floor of the House.

Ann Cryer (Labour, Keighley)

I will not try to compete with my hon. Friend—nothing can match that.

As I have said before, my constituency is very diverse. I know that my constituents in Ilkley will send the local authority shed loads of opinions on any subject, particularly on their children’s education. In the case of senior school, their children mainly go to Ilkley grammar school, which is not a grammar school but a very good comprehensive. The parents who send their kids to that school are largely professional, and they will take a great deal of time about giving their opinions.

At the other end of the scale are two Keighley-centre wards in which 95 per cent. of the children attending most schools do not know a word of English. In some cases, they have not even heard a word of English before going to school, because their houses get satellite television from Pakistan. Their parents are just as concerned as the Ilkley parents that their children should do well. However, many will not have the facility to understand, write or read English, and I am not sure what to do about them. We can be as politically correct as we like by sending them letters from the local authority in Urdu, Bangla or Punjabi, but it will not help a great deal because, by and large, the parents who do not have English are also illiterate in their mother tongue. I can make no suggestion other than that the local authority sends people out to the school to hold discussions with those parents, but even that might not help.

I understand the thrust of the clause, but I am not sure how we get anywhere with parents of the type that I have described. We also have many white parents who are on hard drugs, and they will not take much interest, so we will not get any feedback from them. Nevertheless, the whole thrust of the measure is a good idea, and I will be voting for it.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I was absolutely delighted by my hon. Friend’s brilliant oratory—particularly her last sentence. To be serious, I thought that my hon. Friends the Members for Keighley and for Wolverhampton, North-East and the hon. Member for Yeovil made some interesting points. To start from first principles, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley summed up the thrust of the policy correctly. Some of the detail of it and the way in which it will work in practice will be refined as we go on.

Let me say to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that this is not about an individual school. He was good enough to say, if I remember his remarks correctly, that the parental satisfaction survey is about not one individual school, but the plurality of choice that is available to parents in an area. I understand the intention behind amendment 47, but he misunderstands the breadth of the survey and the reason behind it.

Similarly, through amendment 138, the hon. Member for Yeovil talks about a local authority carrying out a survey every four years rather than every calendar year. He will no doubt have read proposed new section 19J(8) of the Education Act 1996, which does, I think, exactly what he says. It states:

“The Secretary of State may, at the request of a local authority”—

I know that he will not like this because it is too centralising—

“exempt the authority, to an extent and during a period specified”.

The whole point of subsection (8) is to say that when a local authority has demonstrated that it has taken account of the views of parents, tried to ensure that the provision available to local parents is of the necessary standard, and done its best to respond to what people are saying to it, it is not appropriate to require it continually to have an annual survey. That was the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley.

Let us say that a response plan is drawn up by the local authority as a result of a parental satisfaction survey—the example that my right hon. Friend used was that the plan said that a school had to work more closely with children’s services. There would then be a number of issues. I think that she asked how one could expect that plan to make a huge impact in a year. The provision recognises that if a local authority has a plan in place and is clearly delivering on the points that parents have made to it, or it commands the satisfaction of parents, it would not be sensible to require an annual survey simply to satisfy a piece of legislation.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

If the Bill was currently law, how many of the 150 local authorities would the Minister expect to be exempt under subsection (8)?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I do not know the answer to that. Much of what is in clause 6 is a matter for guidance, which will be informed by the pilots, debates and discussions that take place. There is an opportunity in the Bill to achieve in part, if not in full, some of the desires of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that he expressed through his amendment, and to ensure that the survey is not something that takes place every single year, which would be unnecessary and inappropriate.

We have had an interesting debate, and since we will examine other aspects of the clause later, I will not stray too much for now. There is a decision to be made, however. We have a parental satisfaction survey, and the first thing to decide is whether that is a good idea—the clause clearly sets out that it is. If that is the case, what is the constituency of that survey? Of course, at the moment, it is based on the local authority area, as that was how the pilots worked.

I know that you will correct me if I stray too far and move out of order, Mr. Amess, but I am trying to inform the Committee of some of the thinking that has been taking place. If there is a big area such as West Sussex or, in my case, Nottinghamshire, how do we make sense of a parental satisfaction survey? Everyone in the area could vote, and the survey might say that there is complete satisfaction in the south and in the middle but not in the north. We were trying to say through the pilot that there must be a way, whether through wards or school catchment areas, of breaking the results down to make the survey sensible. Otherwise there would be a huge body of evidence that would seem to say that parents across the whole area were dissatisfied when that was not the case.

The second point, which is starting to be addressed, is how we determine what number of year 6 parents need to vote before there is a sensible estimate of—or barometer for—the parental view on secondary schools in an area. There are later groups of amendments about this, but in the context of this debate, I would suggest that it would need to be a high number to avoid campaigns by groups or individuals with a particular gripe, which would be unfair to the local authority. We are considering all those issues. However, the main point that I want to make is that the flexibility that the hon. Member for Yeovil wants with his amendment is allowed by proposed new section 19J(8). He would argue that that is centralisation and that, from his point of view, the measure is not particularly important, but I think that it is a very real power.

I want to address a point that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East and my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley. I say all the time that the teachers, head teachers, teaching assistants and other support staff in this country are a fantastic group of people who work extremely hard, often in difficult circumstances, to ensure that young people achieve the best that they can. Notwithstanding that, what mechanism do we put in place to ensure that the dissatisfaction that parents might feel about what is going on in their area can be expressed to try to change the secondary school provision in the area? That is what the clause is designed to provide for.

The hon. Member for Yeovil mentioned that the ballot box alone is not always the most effective way of delivering local democracy. This is about the social policy choices that we have to make. There sometimes a problem of parents feeling disfranchised, and how we address that is a real issue. Of course we need to do the things that my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said—engagement, face-to-face meetings and so on—but the question is whether that is enough. The clause says that we do not think that it is enough and that we need to find another way of dealing with the issue in a way that is proportionate and sensible, and that does not undermine the teaching profession in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East is concerned about, but gives parents a voice where they feel that they do not have one at present.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the role of the local authority in planning local education services is key, and that its ideas have to be put forward as a proposition so that parents may express their views? The proposition could be about the number of primaries, whether it shuts or opens schools or whether it introduces academies or specialist colleges, as well as one of the issues that parents get energised about most—the numbers at a particular school. Some provision could be reduced or some provision could be extended to meet the local demand for places. Is there not a problem with asking for a survey to be carried out before a proposition is put forward about the local authority’s thinking on how services should be planned? That is where we have got things the wrong way round.

Expectations are another issue—my hon. Friend looks quizzical. A weakness in the system has been local authorities planning local services—they have to be planned three to five years in advance in many circumstances—but not involving parents and others or allowing them to have a say on the authorities’ thinking about where the services are going and how they might look in the future. Some parents might come to have a very close and vested interest in what the outcome may be. I am wondering whether we have lost sight of that, and I would like to think that we could pull things back together in a more meaningful way.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I understand my right hon. Friend’s point now. She is absolutely right to say that this is about trying to ensure that people can influence the direction and provision of services on which they rely through the local authority.

Caroline Flint (Labour, Don Valley)

And plan for the future.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Absolutely. If, as many of us do, we think that there needs to be a mechanism over and above just an election every four years—some authorities use thirds—the challenge is to try to establish something that provides for that. That is what the parental satisfaction survey is about, but I absolutely agree that it must be conducted in a way that is sensible, that does not over-bureaucratise the system and that does what is says it on the box, which is to empower parents as they would wish to be empowered to help to plan the system for the future. If that can be done, it would be a reinvigoration of democracy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East was right to stress, in his own lyrical and expansive way, the importance of democracy. Democracy has many different forms and aspects. It is not just about voting. It is about engagement, involvement and people feeling that they can influence decisions. As I have said, I think that the thrust of the clause will achieve that.

In answer to the specific point made by the hon. Member for Yeovil, I hope that he will look at proposed new section 19J(8) and feel that it goes someway towards ensuring the flexibility in the system that he wanted to bring about through his amendments.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

When I was a councillor, my town clerk used to say, “Mr. Purchase, if you really must have these crazy left-wing policies, at least let me administer them effectively.” I thought that that was good advice and have tried to follow it throughout my political career. Four amendments have been tabled to the clause, and each one of them would give more discretion for local people, through their councils, to decide whether or not to proceed with a ballot. Why does not the Minister accept the amendments?

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Because we think that the flexibility in proposed new section 19J(8) will do much of what the amendments would bring about. In relation to the clause, as with other aspects of the Bill, we will of course continue to look at how we can improve what we are doing. However, I think that such flexibility is certainly brought about by that proposed new subsection. Given my comments, I hope that the hon. Member for Yeovil will withdraw the amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

We have had an interesting debate, as have Labour Back Benchers—one of them supported the clause as drafted. We heard a good contribution from the right hon. Member for Don Valley in which she raised serious questions about whether it is meaningful to consult the parents of pupils in year 6 and whether that is the right point at which to inform parents who have already made decisions.

We also heard a robust contribution from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East. None of us on this side of the Committee could understand earlier in the week why he had not served on a Bill Committee for 11 years, but we are now beginning to get an idea. We are also starting to fear that he is trying to work his way off such Committees for the future.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

I have spoken at great length with all my hon. Friends and I am delighted that they members of the Committee. I have said before that up to a point—hon. Members understand what I mean by that—a robust exchange of views, within both Committees and parties, is helpful for discussion and debate.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am delighted to hear that; I think that the Minister is indicating that an opportunity for a free vote is coming up.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

That was why I said “up to a point”.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Up to the point of Members voting against things that they do not like.

We have had an interesting debate, but I suppose I would have more sympathy for the Government’s offer of such an imperfect mechanism if there was currently no mechanism in place to hold schools to account. However, they are offering their mechanism when we already have a large amount of accountability, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East indicated. We have Ofsted and all sorts of school improvement agencies, and later in our proceedings we will debate the school report card. We have school improvement partners and the local authorities. We often consult the parents of pupils who are already at particular schools, and we of course have the choice mechanism so that if people in some areas do not like a school, they can go to another one, although that choice is not available in many areas. We therefore already have five different mechanisms for holding schools to account, so the issue is whether the provisions will add anything.

Ken Purchase (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

We are talking about practicalities and bureaucracy, but how would the hon. Gentleman organise such a ballot—should he ever be in a position to have to do so—when the pupils could come from perhaps six or seven boroughs, as would happen in my area with Walsall, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Birmingham and South Staffordshire? All the children could be sent to the same school, so who would do the organising and which local authority would be responsible?

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point that I did not touch on in my speech. I believe that the Government intend to consult only those who are within the local authority area. In other words, I believe that even if those children are crossing a border and accessing a school in the local authority area that is being looked at, their parents will not have a vote as part of this process—it will be only the parents within the local authority area. If I have got that wrong, I am sure the Minister will correct me, but I believe that those parents will not be consulted.

There are real issues surrounding whether we will be consulting people at the right time, whether we have to do so every year, why the response rates from the existing pilots are so low and why—the Minister did not respond to this point—even the Government’s cost-benefit analysis suggests that the measure is a waste of money. The Government have not made a very strong case for the provision, and the only real point that the Minister has made in response is that there is a get-out clause in proposed new subsection (8), which states

“The Secretary of State may, at the request of a local authority, exempt the authority”.

That is very different from our amendment 86, which would give the local authority the ability to decide whether to hold a survey. If we were confident that the Minister was suggesting that very few local authorities would have to do that and if there were some reassurance that the duty would be imposed only on failing local authorities, there might be some value in the measure, although I would still want to amend it significantly because most of it is wrong. However, I am not confident that the get-out that the Minister describes will be used very often—I think it will be the exception.

The Minister was not able to tell me how many local authorities out of the 150 would not be required to carry out the survey, if the measure was now in force. The proposal is a waste of money, and it is something we can ill afford at the current time. Labour Members have expressed their considerable concerns effectively. Governments do not always get things right; they sometimes need to listen, reflect and conclude that they have made a mistake. I hope this is one of the areas on which the Government decide they have made a mistake.

I cannot accept all the assurances that the Minister has given us so, at the appropriate time, I will press amendment 86 to a Division, as I consider that to be the substantive amendment. However, at this stage, I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 138.