Education Bill

Public Bill Committee, 29 March 2011.

Written evidence to be reported to the House

Clause 26

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

Good morning, Mr Walker and, through you, to the rest of the Committee. As we were finishing on Thursday evening, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), was telling us how, in contrast to me, he has received such good, personalised and relevant careers advice. Given that he is acknowledged throughout the House and elsewhere as having imagination, creativity and style—his words, not mine, although I am sure we would all agree—he rightly became a chartered accountant. However, despite his enormous creativity and imagination—and, given the suit that he has on today, his obvious style—he has failed to instil in me any degree of reassurance.

The Minister has a worrying belief that face-to-face advice might not be appropriate for all students, leading to the real possibility that young people’s needs might be neglected or dismissed to the point of impersonal and often irrelevant information being provided elsewhere. Despite the rhetoric from trusted professionals, the Minister failed to convince me that the Government are providing the logistical and practical support to allow careers professionals to do their jobs. The destination measure on schools is most welcome and I pay tribute to him for highlighting it; I was putting that in place as part of the information, advice and guidance strategy 18 months ago. Once it is operational, I hope it will be examined closely for risks of an elitist approach, which I fear is inherently built into the statutory framework proposed under the Bill. I shall return to such matters on Report, but at the moment, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 27

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to move amendment 123, in clause 27, page 27, line 11, at beginning insert ‘subject to subsection (10),’.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment 144, in clause 27, page 27, line 12, at end insert—

‘(1A) Within a period of three years beginning with the commencement of this section, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report about its impact on the quality of careers advice in schools.’.

Amendment 124, in clause 27, page 29, line 42, at end add—

‘(10) Before the Secretary of State exercises the power to commence this section under section 78 he must lay before Parliament a report which sets out agreed arrangements with representatives of school teachers, local authorities and employers on the delivery of careers guidance education.’.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

Clause 27 changes dramatically the landscape of careers guidance in schools in England. Under the previous clause when we were discussing amendments, I touched on what I thought was a leap in the dark and what a gamble the Minister is taking with his proposal for the careers service. It is not just me who fears that. The NASUWT stated:

“Schools will be required to secure independent careers guidance, but severing the link with the local authority and the removal of the requirement on schools to allow access to and facilities for education and support services, means that the nature of the ‘independent’ advice, and who provides it, will be at the discretion of the headteacher. Breadth, suitability or diversity of advice cannot be guaranteed, impacting adversely on social mobility and leading to inequality.”

The Institute of Career Guidance has similar concerns. It stated:

“We understand Government will still expect schools to provide careers education for their pupils, but we also know the pressure schools are under to target their resources on core curriculum subjects. We are concerned that without this requirement being retained, many schools will marginalise careers education, and this will be particularly detrimental for pupils with limited access to parental or peer networks and who may not be enabled to review their career options with a career guidance professional through their school.”

The Association of Colleges stated that

“we have concerns as to whether there will be sufficient independent careers advisers available. In addition, we would be interested to know how Government will monitor the effectiveness of the new duty.”

We echo those sentiments, and we ask the Minister to inform the Committee how the Government will address them. Will he set out how the success or failure of the new duty will be judged? How will Parliament be given the opportunity to hold the Secretary of State to account for his policies and how they are working in England?

On Thursday, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West intervened to ask the Minister how the new regime will be monitored and measured and, frankly, he failed adequately to answer her reasonable question. The group of amendments is designed to help him, and to ensure that the Bill locks in the Secretary of State to reviewing, evaluating and making available information to Parliament, so that Parliament can be satisfied that he is accountable for the quality of careers guidance and skills.

Taking into account those concerns and given the uncertainty surrounding the future of services such as Connexions, I seek the Minister’s assurance that the clause will not have a negative impact on the career choices of young people. What steps is he taking to ensure that the problems highlighted by the NASUWT, the Institute of Career Guidance and the Association of Colleges do not arise?

As was touched on during our deliberations on amendment 119 under clause 26, there are concerns about the Department for Education’s intimation that the requirement could be deemed to be satisfied by schools securing access for pupils to national telephone and online careers advice resources. Does the Minister agree that young people should be entitled to speak to a professional face to face to discuss such an important part of their education, training or development? There are concerns that, without the facility, social mobility will be impeded, access to careers services will be by postcode lottery and schools in more disadvantaged areas, with limited resources, will not be able to fund significant face-to-face services or to pass costs on to parents, as might be the case in more affluent areas. Emphasis on the importance of the term “independent” must not override the requirement for schools to secure acceptable professional quality standards.

For those reasons, I ask the Minister to give his assurance that, before the clause comes into force, he will consult stakeholders and compile and make available to the House a report addressing the concerns I have outlined. In particular, the report should address three key questions: first, will schools be required to seek services from service providers that are already registered with an accredited careers professional body; secondly, will the Government require that all providers of careers guidance services to schools must comply with Government-determined quality standards; and thirdly, will future service providers be subject to Ofsted inspection to ensure that schools comply with their obligations? The amendments are reasonable and I hope Minister will reassure us on how he will monitor, evaluate and review the proposals that the Bill will put in place.

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

I want only to add briefly to what my hon. Friend has said. The issue is enormously important, because young people do not have a good view of what opportunities there are for them. We know from recent work that children, particularly those from less well-off backgrounds, have limited experience of people working in a wide range of areas, so getting it right matters. It matters for not only those young people but for us as a society. We know that in a time of better economic circumstances we had skills shortages, and we know that those times are going to come again soon. If we do not get young people with the right skills into the right jobs and give them opportunities, not only they but our whole society will suffer, so I want to support what my hon. Friend said.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

If the change to careers advice provision in schools is effective and achieves the outcomes the Government want, it will be one of the most significant elements of the Bill. Important questions have been raised about ensuring quality and ensuring that the provision directed by heads within an institution is genuinely impartial and provided in the interests of the young person, and not through the prism of the institution’s interests, which all too often has been the case. The Browne review said:

“Research by the Sutton Trust has shown that half of young people consider the advice and guidance that they received before making these choices to be inadequate.”

Half currently think that it is inadequate, so the case for change regarding the need to improve careers advice has absolutely been made. What we always need to do in this place, of course, is to make sure that the provision put in place by the Government will actually improve matters. The report went on to say that careers professionals

“lack understanding of the range of options available to pupils”.

We must have assurances on quality and breadth, so I want to press the Minister to talk a little more on how he will ensure that quality. Will we consider the licensing of providers? As part of their training and ethos, will they have a real understanding of the breadth of opportunities open to people? The shadow Minister was right to mention Ofsted. May I press the Minister to write to the chief inspector and ask her to ensure that Ofsted takes a close interest in the quality of provision provided by schools? It can do so not only through its individual school inspections but through the surveys it carries out. If we get this right, it will be a tremendous feather in the Government’s cap, having improved a situation that is not right. If it goes wrong and after a great fanfare, it turns out that schools, in the name of impartiality, manage to suit their own interests rather more than their pupils’, and in a few years’ time young people are still saying that they do not think the quality is there, we will have failed. With those questions, I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Good morning, Mr Walker. It is good to be back scrutinising the Bill and returning to the issue of careers advice and guidance, which is so important if we are to enable people to achieve the best that they can. The Committee will be familiar with the survey that was carried out and published today, which reports that state school pupils are more than four times as likely to be given bad careers advice as private school students. Indeed, the survey has highlighted how the current system is failing children by giving them inadequate advice, which means that they cannot fulfil their ambitions. It found that 27% of former state sector pupils were given bad careers advice, against 6% who were educated privately.

I could go on but I suspect you would not permit me to do so, Mr Walker. However, I want to make the point that the case for change is fundamentally important. There absolutely is variability in the quality of the advice currently offered, and for two reasons. First, Connexions was simply asked to do too much. Expecting it to give advice on many different issues as well as on careers was asking an excessive amount, and the Committee has acknowledged that the current Connexions service is far from perfect. For the record, I do not say that it does not do good work; however, its current construction does not work best in respect of careers. Secondly, the current responsibilities of schools—again, we ask so much of our teachers—mean that in some places, best advice is not offered. If the research is to be believed, the problem tends to be exaggerated for state school pupils compared with privately educated pupils.

I articulated much last week which it is not necessary to amplify today, beyond saying that part of my aim is to ensure that careers advice is a driver of improved social mobility, so that we provide people who do not receive best advice from other sources, such as familial and social networks, with the kind of advice that allows them to turn their ambitions into fulfilled reality. I understand the concern across the Committee about the process through which that takes place. I do not think we differ on the aim; indeed, Opposition Members have acknowledged that Connexions needed to change. I have no doubt that it would have done so whoever had been in government; there was growing consensus on the need to move to a different kind of careers settlement.

Amendments 123, 124 and 144 are designed to establish exactly how we will test the new arrangements. That is a perfectly reasonable request to make of the system we are putting in place. We had a good discussion last week about the importance of careers and, as I said, I do not want to amplify it beyond what I have said so far. However, it is important to understand the detail of what we are trying to achieve.

With the responsibility that we are placing on schools to secure impartial, independent careers guidance, it is right that there should come a reasonable degree of freedom to choose how that is secured, because the circumstances of each school will be different and the circumstances of different cohorts of pupils are bound to be different. I do not want to prescribe exactly how that should be done on a school-by-school basis; it has been tried in the past without success.

I am sure that in fulfilling their professional duties, schools will consider how working with employers, local authorities—as mentioned in the detail of this discussion—and others could assist them. That is not new to schools; they already have much experience in forming such collaborative partnerships with other agencies to achieve stated objectives, covering a whole range of education and training provision.

I am keen to ensure that other organisations contribute to making the new arrangements effective. In Committee last week, I explained that I intend to call a summit of those with an interest in careers guidance, to ensure that each can have their say and play their part in the smooth transition from the existing arrangements to the new one. I do not pretend that the transition will not be a challenge—of course it will. Our fundamental shift in the provision of careers advice and guidance will be a significant challenge, for careers professionals and for schools. None the less, the challenge is worth taking on, given the imperfect arrangements that persist at the moment and our ambitions for advice and guidance to play their part in driving social justice.

To deal with the specific points made by the hon. Member for Hartlepool, that summit should be part of an ongoing conversation between Government and a full range of organisations interested in delivering the best possible careers guidance for young people. Indeed, yesterday, I was pleased to meet—perhaps in anticipation of our discussion today—the Careers Profession Task Force, which is chaired by the wonderful Dame Ruth Silver who has done so much good work in the area. That group of professionals, covering a wide range of interested parties from the sector and beyond, is committed to working closely with Government, not only to define professional standards, which will make the provision of careers advice meet the highest quality requirements, but to plan the transition process.

I would not go so far as to say that we are making a concession—that would be going too far; but we acknowledge the Committee’s and the hon. Gentleman’s absolutely proper concern. I shall be happy, therefore, to produce an action plan following the summits that we shall hold. That plan will contain staging posts that can be measured as we reach the destination of a fully fledged service next year. We said that our first step will be in place this autumn and that the service will be fully operational from next spring. Working with the taskforce that is built around the summits that we have already introduced, I am happy to cement that timetable with those staging posts and to work with the sector to deliver outcomes that will mark progress along that journey.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

The Minister has been conciliatory in his comments. I want to probe him on a point that was touched on during discussion of clause 26. What happens to the year group that is going through the careers process now? He said that the all-age careers service will be up and running fully by spring, but what about students who are thinking about career options at present? How will the Minister ensure that they do not fall through the cracks?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman will remember that last week I made other commitments. The first was to write to all local authorities, which I shall do this week, reminding them of their continuing statutory responsibilities concerning participation. I appreciate the points that were made when we last debated these matters; there is some variability in how local authorities are responding to that continuing statutory need.

Furthermore, I committed to communicate with schools about their statutory responsibilities. I understand that the hon. Gentleman may be fearful that there will be a hiatus, because the new duty will not take effect until after the beginning of the school year. We must make it clear to schools that they must prepare for the coming school year in anticipation of the statutory duty. It would be an irresponsible school that did not make provision for the beginning of the year in anticipation of what they intended to introduce once the new duty came into force. That the Bill’s provisions will not be in effect in August or September is simply a result of the legislative timetable, but they will be in place mid-way through the academic year. In the communication that I issue, I shall tell schools that they should anticipate those changes.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point, but we can deal with the problem. I acknowledge that doing so depends on the professionalism of heads, governors and teachers. However, I have a strong faith in those people—this theme has emerged throughout our consideration of the Bill; I have been a champion of educators for as long as I have been interested in education, which is since I was very small.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

Who will retain statutory responsibility for providing advice, guidance and support until the Bill is enacted? Does such responsibility remain with Connexions? Where does it sit?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That is a good question. Local authorities’ statutory responsibilities changed as a result of legislation introduced, as hon. Members will remember, by the previous Government. The arrangements for Connexions were altered; indeed, we were on the Bill Committee that dealt with that matter. An assumption that Connexions would change was already built into legislation. I shall come to how the matter concerns schools, but we need to make it absolutely clear to local authorities that they will retain that statutory duty. We cannot prescribe exactly how they effect that duty, but we can remind them that they have it. It has emerged over the past few weeks and months that different local authorities, having interpreted their duty, are putting different arrangements in place to meet it. I have highlighted Northampton, which seems to be an exemplar of good practice in that respect.

I know that it is not normally done in Committee, but it is absolutely right that Ministers should be responsive. I have discussed this point a little with the hon. Lady offline; there is a need to pick out examples of best practice and to find a mechanism. Moving to the destination can perhaps be done through the summit and the staging posts that I have described. There is a good argument for identifying examples of best practice and looking at how we can ensure that they are understood and that people learn from them. I will do that as a result of her overtures.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I am very interested in what the Minister is saying. Clause 30 repeals the duty of the governing body to co-operate with the local authority. How is the relationship that he has described between careers information, advice and guidance reconciled with other provisions in the Bill?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The answer is in my previous remarks. I would expect schools to work with all agencies where there are overlapping responsibilities. On the statutory duty the hon. Gentleman described, one cannot move from having a statutory duty to having nothing. Good schools have long experience of interfacing with different agencies on the provision of the right kind of services for their students. Of course we would expect good practice to involve that kind of collaborative work. I will not, however, set down in legislation exactly what form it should take and exactly how it would be effective. That would be outside the spirit that inspires this legislation, which is to give schools more freedom to make those decisions, on the ground, closest to the point where they have effect, and in the interests of the school’s students. We trust governors, head teachers and teachers to make those judgments. I accept, however, that there needs to be a clear set of parameters in which they make them, which is what the legislation tries to effect. I want to move on a little. We can perhaps explore that issue further through interventions from Opposition Members.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

On more than one occasion in this Committee, I have mentioned instances of schools barring further education colleges from coming in. Not only do the schools sometimes bar them from coming on to their premises for open evenings, but as soon as an FE college makes inquiries of a school, because a pupil is looking to join the college, the school deliberately tries to lead the young person back to their institution. It could be that schools do that because they believe it is better for the young person, but there are some serious conflicts of interest, so the Minister needs to do more than just tell us how much he trusts heads and governors. He needs to explain how this legislation will make schools that do not always put the interests of the pupil first do so in the future.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

My hon. Friend knows of my enthusiasm for further education colleges, born of my enthusiasm for vocational and practical learning. If he looks at the explanatory notes to the Bill, or the Bill itself, he will see that there is a requirement for schools to offer balanced advice on their duty to secure the independent guidance that we all seek. One of the problems with the current arrangements is that it has been suggested, and proven by a number of pieces of work and surveys, that the advice that many students currently receive is slanted towards an academic pathway. A survey famously produced by YouGov for Edge found that teachers knew less about apprenticeships than any other qualification apart from the Welsh baccalaureate. I have nothing against the Welsh baccalaureate—that needs to be a matter of record. It is surprising, however, that the paucity of knowledge on apprenticeships should have formed the basis of the advice that so many young people are given.

My argument in response to my hon. Friend’s point is twofold. First, the balance of advice is that there is a need for change so that all the options available to young people are made clear. That is most likely to come through the involvement of professional careers advisers who have a comprehensive understanding of all the options available to young people, in both progressive learning and careers. I want all young people to receive good quality advice. Secondly, in institutional terms, I would expect schools to have the kind of collaborative arrangements that I described earlier. I would be peculiar in securing impartial and independent advice if schools took an introspective view about that. The relationship between different providers of education within a locality is an important element in making clear to young people the different options ahead of them. A turf war between schools and colleges, such as my hon. Friend described, would clearly not be indicative of the best practice that I described in answer to the intervention from the hon. Member for Bolton West about how schools, local authorities and others can work together to secure the best outcome.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

Will the Minister address the point that I raised initially and was then developed much more eloquently by the Chair of the Select Committee, regarding the licensing of careers professionals and the inspection regime and Ofsted? How does he expect those to fit into his new vision of careers guidance?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

One of the things being developed by the careers task force that I mentioned is—I think it is fair to say this—the most coherent ever arrangements on professional standards. That will lead to a set of arrangements where there is greater clarity than there ever has been about the professional standards that apply to the careers profession and the nature of training and accreditation. What I look to in the all-age service is an arrangement where, in order to be part of that service, careers advisers need to meet those professional standards. I am quite unabashed in saying that. I am highly sympathetic to the principles of licence to practise, as is well known, and I would see the careers profession as a model for where we might develop that kind of good practice.

The work is already under way. The advice that I have received from Dame Ruth and her team is that much progress is being made. There is a great deal of enthusiasm in the profession about that, because it sees our public policy initiative as a catalyst within the industry for, as I have described it, an unprecedented degree of coherence on professional standards, training and accreditation. I am therefore confident that the profession is up for it, in the popular parlance.

The hon. Gentleman will know that we are trying to reduce the burden on Ofsted and make more straightforward what is inspected in schools. My hon. Friend the Schools Minister has articulated that case a number of times, both here and elsewhere, and I do not want to in any way inhibit that desire. Nevertheless, I would expect some consideration of these matters, because if the Ofsted inspector felt that there was a weakness in this area—perhaps something was highlighted to them by teachers, learners, parents or others—clearly, as this would be a statutory duty and meeting that duty would be part of what being a good school was about, I would expect Ofsted to take a look at it. If my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness is asking us to make that clear through communication with Ofsted—my hon. Friend the Minister and I meet Ofsted from time to time—I am sure we would have no difficulty in highlighting that point. However, I do not want to include that among the things that Ofsted must inspect in every school in every case, because that would be counter to the policy emphasis.

Yes, you are right—sorry, Mr Walker, you are of course always right, but the hon. Member for Hartlepool and the Chairman of the Select Committee are right as well—that, in looking at or judging a school, schools’ statutory responsibilities are meat and drink to what Ofsted do, in particular if there are reports that those responsibilities are not being met.

I must now make progress, if we are not to be here all day—

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We will be here all day anyway.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

For even longer then.

Amendment 144 requires the Secretary of State to report on the impact of our changes on the quality of careers advice in schools. I believe—in making his argument, he also acknowledged this—that the best indicator of good quality careers advice and guidance is outcomes, destinations. The test of the new arrangements will be whether they make a difference to where people subsequently go to learn and the kind of employment that they gain as a result of that progressive learning. Destinations are, in the end, by far the best way of judging the quality of the advice and guidance offered.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

The Minister has touched on a vital part of the Bill. With reference to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West last week, about monitoring and evaluating, what does success look like? How will the Minister know whether the provisions in the Bill have been a success? What will those outcomes and outputs look like?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The outcomes will be about whether we change some of the problems I have highlighted. We could have a long debate about this, Mr Walker, but you would not permit it. the problems I have highlighted are well made by Alan Milburn in his report on social mobility, as well as in a number of other studies commissioned by the previous Government and in some we have begun to look at as a new Government. It is about whether people get the right kind of guidance about progressive learning and jobs.

The survey that I mentioned, which is based on research reported in the evening papers last night and, I gather, some of the daily papers today, points to the fact that many people are not getting the right kind of advice and guidance, as measured by what they say about the advice they received, by where they subsequently head in respect of learning—my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness mentioned the relationship between schools and further education—by how many people from underrepresented groups in higher education get the opportunity to fulfil their potential and by the kind of jobs they end up doing. Those are all bits of destination evidence that would need to change if the new system were to be considered a success. That will happen over time, because we are talking not only about a short-term set of objectives, but about a medium and long-term set of effects. However, I am as determined as the hon. Gentleman to challenge some of that orthodoxy.

Let me put it plainly: too few people from working class families get the kind of chances that he, I and other Committee members had. Too few people get good advice on apprenticeships—we know that as well—and too few people are able to fulfil their potential. Part of that—not all of it—is about prior attainment and all kinds of other things, but part is about the advice and guidance they get. Those are the kind of destination measures, but to go further would take us down a path that is extremely long and fascinating and yet, under the strict terms that you would apply to our discussion, Mr Walker, possibly tangential to the debate on the amendments.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

At the risk of repeating myself, it would be helpful if Ministers cited the surveys to which they refer. I do not think he cited who did the survey or who published it.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The survey that I described was drawn to my attention yesterday by an adviser to the Leader of the Opposition. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not receive the same e-mail. In the Evening Standard last night, we were told about a poll conducted by Future First, which the hon. Gentleman will be familiar with. The survey was highlighted in the London papers last night, and has been picked up by the national papers today.

The real issue is that we do not need just a single survey; we know from any amount of research that there is a profound problem about people achieving their potential if they do not receive the right kind of advice and guidance, and if they do not achieve the right kind of results early on in their educational career. That is something that we are determined to address, because we know that it impacts on social mobility, and there is a fundamental relationship between social mobility and social justice.

I would go further and say that in a free society, with the consequent inequalities that are a necessary part of that freedom, it is ethically unacceptable not to have a degree of social mobility that means people can rise through that society on the basis of their talents and assiduity. For my money, if we reached that point, such rigidity would be not only unacceptable, but immoral. That is why I have been such an enthusiastic advocate of social justice during my political career.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool knows that, in our schools White Paper, we proposed a destinations measure for schools that will record the education and training that young people progress to after the age of 16. That is a real test of the effectiveness of schools in preparing young people to move on to positive destinations, and that is the most effective way of judging schools.

I have already mentioned Dame Ruth Silver and her work as chairman of the Careers Profession Task Force. That taskforce has recommended—this will be helpful to the hon. Gentleman—that a thematic review of careers should be carried out to identify excellent provision and to establish a baseline for future policy development. Ofsted published such a thematic review on information, advice and guidance in March 2010.

As a result of the remarks made by the Chair of the Select Committee and shadow Ministers, I will consider asking Ofsted to carry out a further thematic review on the basis of this morning’s discussion. That would allow us to make a direct comparison between the effect of the new arrangements and the problems that I have highlighted with the existing ones. It would also add to our knowledge of what schools are doing to secure careers guidance, provide examples of good practice from which other schools can learn and allow us further to improve as we progress with such a substantial public policy change.

I have said that I am prepared to consider such a thematic review by Ofsted, and that my hon. Friend the Minister and I will speak to Ofsted about such matters. I have agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness that there has to be collaboration between institutions, and that will be part of my communication with local authorities about schools. I have also agreed to identify examples of good practice and, using the summits that we have agreed, look at ways to export that practice across the system. There is little more that a listening, responsive and generous Minister could do to deal with those proper concerns.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

He could accept the amendments.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am tempted to quote Ruskin, who I was reading about last night. He said:

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort”.

Intelligent effort will mark what we do in respect of careers advice and guidance and, as a result, we will deliver better quality than we have ever seen before. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I thank the Minister for a lovely evening last night. He had dinner with several college principals and me in the Teesside area. We discussed a range of matters regarding apprenticeships. Given his duties as a Minister and his responsibilities in respect of the Bill, I am grateful to him for taking the time out of his day and spending a lot of time with college principals.

The clause is incredibly important. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley for supporting the amendments. Good careers advice can lift ambition and aspiration. Conversely, poor or inadequate careers advice can hinder someone’s progress. It is important as that. Advice is inherently linked with social mobility. Despite differences, there is still far too much correlation between disadvantaged students and the quality of advice that they receive, which in turn will have an impact on their ambition, education and career attainment.

I am not wholly convinced by the Minister’s argument. As I have said, the proposal is a leap in the dark. He has not worked out the plan of how he will produce such careers guidance. He has not been incredibly clear about what success will really look like, although some of what he said about the role of Ofsted and collaboration with schools, local authorities and the summit has gone some way towards dealing with our worries. We will need to return to the matter as the Bill progresses through the House and in the other place, but given his obvious commitment to the proposal, notwithstanding the lack of a plan and the fact that we are imminently facing the loss of many trusted careers professionals, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to move amendment 131, in clause 27, page 27, line 17, after ‘guidance’, insert

‘and good quality work experience’.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment 136, in clause 27, page 27, line 18, at end insert—

‘(1A) Notwithstanding subsection (1), the responsible authority for a school that provides secondary education must provide careers education, distinct from careers guidance, to all pupils.’.

Amendment 96, in clause 27, page 27, line 32, leave out paragraph (a).

Amendment 134, in clause 27, page 27, line 33, after ‘on’, insert ‘mainstream’.

Amendment 97, in clause 27, page 27, line 34, leave out ‘or’ and insert ‘and’.

Amendment 128, in clause 27, page 27, line 34, after ‘apprenticeships’, insert

‘and the likely post 18 pathways,’.

Amendment 135, in clause 27, page 27, line 34, after ‘apprenticeships’, insert

‘for all their pupils, including those who are disabled or have special educational needs.’.

Amendment 98, in clause 27, page 27, line 36, at end insert—

‘(d) includes information on both academic and vocational options.’.

Amendment 146, in clause 27, page 27, line 36, at end insert—

‘(d) is provided by persons appropriately qualified to provide comprehensive and impartial careers guidance.’.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

We are about to discuss a large number of significant amendments designed to enhance the quality of the careers guidance and work experience to which a young person will be exposed. Amendment 131 would expand the obligations placed on the responsible authority. It would require the responsible authority to secure not only independent careers guidance for pupils during the relevant phase of education but, importantly, good quality work experience during the same period.

The Minister will acknowledge that we are not starting completely from scratch. Work-related learning has been statutory for 14 to 16-year-olds since 2004. In 2009, 300,000 employers offered work experience placements to more than 500,000 young people, which is an astonishing number. Each student undertaking the new diploma must complete 10 days’ work experience to secure the qualification. However, it must be said that our IAG strategy in 2009 identified the fact that far too many young people were still not being provided with a sufficiently high quality, relevant and personalised insight into the workplace.

Members will have experiences from their constituencies of young people who, instead of looking round an engineering firm for potential work experience because that is the career pathway they want to pursue, have been given two weeks in the local school library. Such experience is not sufficient, relevant nor personalised. That is why, in our 2009 IAG strategy, we were putting in place further work to enhance and widen the offer of work experience to young people, making sure that there was more collaboration between schools and businesses. We strongly encourage the Government to do the same, which is why we have tabled amendment 131.

Work experience gives a young person something that cannot be taught in the classroom. It cannot be learned from a computer or a text book, and it cannot be discussed with a careers adviser, however well informed and experienced that professional might be. However, I have seen on my own patch that young people often come across hurdles when trying to gain work experience for themselves.

I know that the Minister has children, and it is the most natural thing in the world that he wants to see them get on in life. He might, therefore, use his contacts and networks to ensure appropriate, relevant and personalised work experience for his young sons. There is nothing corrupt or sinister about that; he would simply be having a word in someone’s ear to ensure that his children get the work experience that he wants them to have. Not all young people have such opportunities, especially those in disadvantaged areas. The measure is more likely to affect a school in a disadvantaged area that might not have the same contacts as a school in a more affluent one.

I should like to see work experience in a variety of formats, such as short work placements, work-based projects, work shadowing schemes or even vacation placements. I ask the Minister seriously to consider this important amendment, which would facilitate a more rounded and comprehensive level of careers guidance. Pupils would be provided with practical and invaluable experience, which, in the long term, would not only assist them in making informed career choices, but would add to their skills and experiences, making them much more work ready than they would otherwise be.

Amendment 136 would make it clear that schools should provide careers education rather than mere careers guidance. Those two phrases are often regarded as interchangeable, but that is incorrect. The word “guidance” reminds me of my earlier point—that wet Wednesday afternoon, somebody the pupil does not know and does not strike up a rapport with, and a wasted, inefficient and unsatisfactory experience for all concerned.

Does the Minister accept the principles of good quality, impartial careers education? Such education has six elements: helping young people to progress; empowering young people to plan and manage their own futures; responding to the needs of each learner; providing comprehensive information and advice; raising aspiration; and actively promoting equality of opportunity and challenging stereotypes. Will the Minister ensure that he promotes careers education rather than guidance? The amendment would help him to do so, and I hope, therefore, that he will accept it.

Amendments 134 and 135 would ensure that disabled pupils are advised about the same mainstream education and training options that are available to non-disabled pupils. The Alliance for Inclusive Education told us that many careers guidance advisers offer only segregated educational and training opportunities to disabled young people. That is not acceptable, especially since the Government and the Minister are committed to choice.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s “Staying On” report highlighted how careers advisers tailor their advice to what people with a particular impairment should do, rather than basing it on an individual’s aspirations. It concludes that,

“careers advice, the choice of subjects to study at school and for an apprenticeship, and work experience placements are all subject to stereotyping that tends to have an impact more significantly on distinct groups, including girls, the disabled, the working class and some ethnic minorities. The result is that young people’s options and aspirations are limited at an early age.”

The report also notes that disabled young people are not receiving information about opportunities in work-based learning and apprenticeships, and that the information they are given about further education options is often negative. What does the Minister intend to do to ensure that careers guidance offers all mainstream options to disabled children and people with special educational needs?

Finally, on amendment 128, clause 27(2) requires that the

“responsible authorities must secure that careers guidance provided under subsection (1)…is presented in an impartial manner…includes information on options available in respect of 16 to 18 education or training, including apprenticeships”.

The provision should go further to include guidance on likely post-18 pathways. It is difficult to see why such information should not be provided to young people who are trying to make important decisions at this stage of their educational journey, whether it is academic or vocational. I do not think it would add anything to the cost of the provision of the service. If anything, given the importance that Ministers rightly attach to destination data, it would be an efficient and effective tool to help minimise the risk of error. It surely follows that a young person should have a comprehensive understanding of what is involved in a career path before deciding whether to take that path. A full understanding of, for example, qualification requirements, cost, time scales and level of difficulty, perhaps including statistics on success rates in getting employment post-qualification, should be made available to young people to enable them to make an informed decision on career choice.

In The Times yesterday an article about universities and law courses advised young people not to study law at A-level, because it would be irrelevant to the law degree that they would take. If someone is interested in law, that sort of advice is vital. It also makes no sense to be obliged to advise someone about the requirements for securing a place on an AS or NVQ level course without considering their pathway post-completion of those courses.

As the Minister is aware, career decisions taken at 18 are becoming increasingly complex, due to increased competition for higher education places, difficulties in securing employment at 18, with a very difficult job market for young people at the moment, and a greater range of opportunities for apprenticeships and other choices. In addition, critical decisions are required about the cost and future returns of continuing education, which can mean high tuition fees.

Will the Minister consider this amendment, which would enable young people to have guaranteed access to a fully comprehensive advice and career guidance service? I think his point about the all-age career service will go some way to helping to achieve that, but I hope he will look favourably at the amendment to ensure that young people can proceed to further or higher education and then on to work after the age of 18 with a full understanding of what is involved in their chosen career path.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I shall focus most of my remarks on my amendments 96, 97 and 98. Amendment 96 highlights what I consider to be poor drafting. Clause 27(2) (4) states:

“The responsible authorities must secure that careers guidance provided under subsection (1)…is presented in an impartial manner”.

At first reading that sounds fine. Some parts of the Bill at first reading sound absurd; we need to stare at them and think about them a lot before they start to make sense, but this sort of thing is the precise opposite. The phrase used is “presented in an impartial manner”, not “is impartial”, as one would think it should be. That is peculiar drafting. It does not make sense, and the phrase should either be deleted or changed to “is impartial”. It is a small point, but as we are going clause by clause, line by line, we ought to try and get it right. I should be interested to hear either a florid defence of that particular wording or a dignified and carefully choreographed retreat from it.

My other amendments are probing and could in some ways be seen as superfluous because of the mention of various training pathways—specifically apprenticeships. The point of the amendments is to make sure that careers advice includes options in both academic and vocational routes and to say that explicitly in the Bill. We have talked about the need to ensure access to high quality careers advice, but we have walked around the issue, although the Minister referred earlier to a news item from yesterday, about the weakness of careers advice, particularly in state schools and in poor areas. The reality is that it is easier to provide careers guidance and advice to those following a predominantly academic route. I imagine that there is satisfaction in independent schools, where a vast majority of students go on to A-levels and university.

My 17-year old daughter is doing A-levels at the moment and I hope she will go to university. As a parent, it is extremely complex trying to work out which courses she might do and at which institutions she might do them. Thinking through the living arrangements, the quality of the individual courses and the brand of the university is quite complex for parents, but one can get through it. When we look at those who do not follow that route, things are infinitely more complicated.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I absolutely agree with the Chair of the Education Committee. Given the experience of his 17-year-old and his wish to see her go on to university, does he accept that one of the omissions in the Bill as it is currently drafted is that there does not seem to be any role for parents in securing good, impartial information, advice and guidance? Does he think there should be more in the Bill with regard to parents?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I confess that I have not given that a great deal of thought. Schools normally work closely with parents when it comes to such matters. That has been my experience; it may not always be the case. Perhaps it is something on which the hon. Gentleman should have tabled an amendment. It is certainly an important point.

We know that the role of parents is critical to our children’s future, and we are aware that those who are most vulnerable in our society, who are not following an academic route, have to navigate a much more complex ground. The qualifications they may need and their relevance are harder to determine. If someone is not sure where to go next, and if they do not have, as we have already discussed, family networks to advise them, or if there is not an expectation that the young person will be happy to follow a parental lead, the need for effective and high quality guidance is great, which is why the Minister is right to set out the direction of travel that he has. What we are trying to work out is whether we are going to head in that direction. Wishing for it and actually doing it are two separate things. The key point is that it is infinitely more complex. That needs to be said. We need greater support for those who are likely to be following non-academic routes.

Further education and skills-based learning provide a critical and important resource for young people. As I have touched on before, colleges who provide those must not be prevented from communicating careers advice directly to young people, as seems to be the case in some instances. Dr Alison Wolf’s review of vocational education makes it clear that courses of study must do more to ensure that there are successful pathways leading on to employment or higher education, rather than ending up in a cul-de-sac. Higher quality careers advice will be one element in ensuring that people go on appropriate courses that link on to progression in education or, indeed, employment.

One of the guiding principles of the Wolf report revolves around providing accurate information on the value of vocational opportunities. The review states:

“we should tell citizens the truth. That means providing people with accurate and useful information, so that they can make decisions accordingly. Good information becomes more critical the more important the decisions.”

We have just said that for people not following an academic route, every decision becomes critical.

“For young people, which vocational course, qualification or institution they choose really can be life-determining. 14-19 education is funded and provided for their sakes, not for the sake of the institutions who provide it. This may be a truism; but it is one which policy too often seems to ignore.”

I am probing the Minister to see what he can do to assure us that all young people will be given the kind of careers guidance that we all want to see. We want to ensure that it does actually happen and that vocational as well as academic routes are fully explained to young people.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

I, like the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, am going to concentrate mainly on the amendment in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow. I hope that I am pushing at an open door with amendment 146, because I have had previous conversations with the Minister, who has agreed that the people offering careers guidance in schools should be highly qualified professionals. Unfortunately, the Bill as it stands does not require people delivering careers guidance in schools to have any qualifications whatsoever.

Under the current system, we already have robust national quality standards—the matrix standards for information, advice and guidance on learning and work. How do we ensure that all the people who will deliver careers guidance in schools in the future will meet current standards? If nothing in the Bill says that people should be properly qualified to deliver advice and guidance, how can we ensure that the people delivering it will have the requisite skills, knowledge and information? I therefore hope that the Minister will accept the amendment; as I said, he has previously agreed that there needs to be well-qualified people in schools. Also, under the current system there are different routes to gain those qualifications in information, advice and guidance—the matrix standards. How will they be developed in the future? Will there still be the different part-time and full-time routes to do them? Who will deliver the education for careers advisers?

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

We have already heard in Committee that the provision of the service by schools may involve direction to a website and that the continuation of careers advice, which the Minister commented on, is currently recognised as not being good enough. I am therefore extremely sympathetic to the hon. Lady’s amendment, exactly as it is worded. If the Government do not immediately accept the phrase

“persons appropriately qualified to provide comprehensive and impartial careers guidance”,

they should think deeply about it and look to provide reassurance to us all.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which I am absolutely delighted to hear.

I move on to careers education, which is absolutely fundamental. The hon. Gentleman talked about people following academic routes in school, but I believe that the root of the problem lies much more in aspiration. I live for the day when young people living on my estate of Hag Fold will wake up and say, “I want to be a brain surgeon”, or even, “I want to be a teacher, a social worker or train driver.” One of the problems is that people are guided by those whom they know. Until I worked for a rail union, I never knew that there were so many well-paid jobs associated with the rail industry—that is one of the world’s hidden secrets. There are many hidden professions throughout society that, unless one has family or friends with such careers, one is unlikely to know about.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Last week, a director of a major train company commented that it was struggling to recruit maintenance technicians for its trains. We have so many people unemployed, yet that company is desperately trying to get people to work. Again, careers guidance has failed to point people in that direction.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. If we all recall our own careers advice and guidance, what did we get? Why did we end up in our current or previous profession? I attended school some considerable time before certain other Members in the room, and I did not have effective careers guidance. I was dependent on family and friends, and too often young people still are.

The other element is work experience. Connexions was able to fund young people so that they could experience different types of work, particularly those who were not achieving in school—the NEETs and those at risk of becoming NEET. Again, if we do not enable young people to go to different workplaces and see what is possible, we will trap them in the careers that their families and friends are involved in. Work experience is extremely important for all young people, but particularly for those who do not have a wider range of information available in their family.

Finally, I turn to disabled young people. Last week, I spoke about Thomas, who was supported by Connexions. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool that it is very important that disabled young people be given the same opportunities and information as non-disabled young people. It is not only about continuing with special education. Young people should be enabled to fulfil their potential, wherever it lies. If they need additional support to be in mainstream education, so be it. That additional support should be given; they should not be put on to a scrapheap.

I will finish with an e-mail that I received from a father in Bolton:

“I write to you to appeal for leniency in support of this valuable service”,

Connexions. He continues:

“please support no cuts or worse to this service, Phil who works there and Connexions have provided an invaluable service for my daughter Kelly who has severe learning difficulties over the years. I just cannot understand Mr Cameron and his government, I did think they wouldn’t dare cut and punish the most vulnerable in our society but nothing and nobody seems to be safe from his disgusting actions please help.”

That was from Adie Feber, a

“concerned parent of 5 adopted children, all with difficulties”.

It behoves us to look at how we can best support young people, whatever their ability; but in particular we must support young people with disabilities to ensure they can lead the most fulfilling life possible.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

As always, Mr Walker, it is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship. I rise to support amendment 146, partly because of my own experience of careers guidance. It was given by teachers and other people who were not qualified—and thus I was encouraged to be a dentist or an engineer. I am sure that the Committee feels that this is a loss to the medical and engineering professions in many different ways.

The amendment should be unnecessary, given the alternative. That raises the question as to why we tabled it. If careers advice is not to be given by people who are “appropriately qualified”, who will give it? That is a clear concern of us all. What will happen to the current careers service—to the professionals who provide a much better service than any of us were entitled to in years gone by?

The amendment would send a clear message to schools about the service we want and the kind of people we want to provide it, and the quality of the advice we want to be given. It would send a message in this time of flux about the importance of our careers service and of protecting those professional people. I fear that, if we lose them, many more people will be told that they should be dentists or engineers when that is not the appropriate course for them, or for the future of our medical and engineering services, and we will all be worse off for it. Those young people will not get the support they need to aspire to the careers they want. I hope the Minister will appreciate that this amendment arises from the concern that the Bill may open a loophole for schools to provide poor quality advice. We would all be worried by that.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The nine amendments in this group cover a wide range of matters, and I will try to address them all without speaking endlessly. I have more notes than a Phil Spector record. I hope that there will be piercing clarity from the wall of sound that emanates from me from this moment on.

The first point raised by the hon. Member for Hartlepool concerned work experience. Work experience is an important part of what is needed to prepare any young person for their working life. According to the 2010 CBI education and skills survey, 64% of employers have links with secondary schools. Despite the fact that work experience is not statutory, we estimate that some 95% of key stage 4 pupils participate in it. I do not know about other members of the Committee, but I have had numerous young people on work experience since becoming a Member of Parliament. Exposing young people to some of the excitement of the life of a democratic representative is a very important part of what we can do as Members of this House. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that work experience can be an important form of engagement that leads people to frame their own views about what they might do. Indeed, any work experience with a Member of Parliament is likely to convince them that this job is arduous, and that other options exist for them.

On that basis, I want to emphasise to the hon. Member for Hartlepool that we will continue to highlight the importance of work experience. It is for schools to make critical judgments about how they engage with employers, nevertheless I appreciate that employers make highly valuable contributions to schools and students, and we must continue to encourage that.

The Education and Employers Taskforce is developing a number of projects to ensure that every school and college has an effective partnership with employers, providing young people with the inspiration, motivation, knowledge, skills and opportunities they need to help them to achieve their potential and to fit them for the world of work. As a result of the proposed amendment on the matter, I will emphasise to the task force how important Ministers feel that work experience is and I will reflect the comments in Committee.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

May we use my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow as an example? I am anxious to avoid a tick-box mentality whereby everyone in a particular school has access to a week or two of work experience, regardless of the relevance to the person’s ambition. How would the Minister address my hon. Friend perhaps wanting two weeks shadowing her local Member of Parliament but, because of contacts or whatever, being sent to a dental surgery instead? How do we ensure that that does not happen and that work experience is quite personalised in terms of the needs, wishes and aspirations of the young person?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That responsibility has to lie with the school and its relationship with the employer. Good schools already place a significant emphasis on the tastes and aptitudes of the students engaged in work experience and on them choosing where they go on their work experience. In the end, the responsibility has to lie with the schools.

Having said that, I would not go so far as to say that any work experience is better than none, but I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Walthamstow would not want to leave the Committee with the impression that she had gained nothing from her experience in the dentist’s surgery. Perhaps her fear of dentists was lessened, for one thing—or heightened.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I just wish to clarify: I ended up doing work experience with children in a primary school, which has given me intimate experience in dealing with parliamentary procedures and the behaviour of a range of people. However, the teachers at our school had a quota for the number of women that they wanted to get into underrepresented careers, which is why dentistry and engineering were recommended to someone who was not doing a particularly heavy amount of science courses. That is why good work experience and well qualified people are so important—that is the point we are making.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Yes, I have often thought that the greatest wisdom comes from the mouths of babes. Later, we all become so fuelled with doubt and guilt that we qualify some of the purity of the insights coming from very young children—I certainly find that with my own children.

Moving rapidly on to amendment 136, I understand the concerns behind it. I am mindful that the careers profession has invested a lot of time and energy into achieving statutory recognition for careers education. I want to emphasise, deservedly, something I mentioned earlier: the Careers Professional Alliance, which represents six professional associations, has made good progress in bringing this diverse sector together, which is significant if we want a highly professional, high-quality sector addressing the needs of young people and adults.

The careers profession is committed to creating one professional body which will set standards, maintain a professional register leading to a licence to practice, and provide a range of professional services. That will give the careers profession one umbrella body which is independent and self-supporting. That has come about as a direct result of the Government’s policy on developing an all-age service. I am delighted with the progress and I congratulate all those involved in bringing it about. We have yet to reach the destination, but we are making significant steps along the road.

To pick up on the passing remark made by the hon. Member for Hartlepool regarding the previous amendment, the plan that we will put in place as a result of our discussions will not only build on that work, but set staging posts towards the destination that we want to reach by next year. I will also ask the Careers Profession Alliance to set key milestones on behalf of the profession regarding professional standards with officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education.

I will reassure the hon. Gentleman also by saying that as the Bill makes its way through Parliament, we expect to set out in clearer terms the evidence that we have gathered on the statutory recognition, in order to ensure that students can take full advantage of the careers guidance that schools are able to access. The broad range of activities encompassed within the terms of careers education are important in contextualising the careers guidance on offer to pupils and support the development of decision making and careers management skills. That point has been made to me by the profession, academics and others, and I understand it. What schools do in those terms matters just as much as what independent careers advisers offer, and to see careers advice in isolation from the supporting education provided by teachers would be a mistake. We will make it clear as we set up the new service that schools have a continuing responsibility to ensure that the context is provided, in the way that I have described, for the advice that young people are given.

Interestingly, the lack of clarity about the difference between advice and guidance is to some degree a feature of the current arrangements. The distinction between careers advice and careers education has become blurred, and the Bill will helpfully make the distinction crystal clear. What matters is that young people get the support they need to make informed decisions about their future, that we empower teachers to do what they think is right and that we free them from unnecessary bureaucracy and, in this case, prescription. We will continue along the road of raising the standard of careers advice, considering the context of what happens in schools.

That leads me to amendment 146, which attempts to introduce a further element of prescription by requiring all independent careers guidance to be delivered by qualified careers advisers. Let me be clear about that, because I have already committed myself to the principle of a licence to practice in respect of the all-age service. While we are not being prescriptive, I would of course expect that the advice secured as part of the statutory duty under the Bill to be of appropriate quality. Neither the hon. Member for Bolton West nor the hon. Member for Hartlepool said this, but a school that felt that it could do that in a way that was regarded by learners, parents or others as being wholly inadequate would be harshly judged. It would ill befit a school that wanted to deliver the best for its pupils to try to secure inappropriate, inadequate or unprofessional careers advice and guidance, particularly when advice would be available from careers professionals with the renewed professional standards that I have described.

While we are not being prescriptive about the matter, there will be a strong emphasis on schools getting the right kind of advice from the right kind of people and provided in the right kind of way. I say to the Committee and the hon. Member for Bolton West that our belief in not only the good will, but the professional judgment of head teachers, governors and teachers is such that we do not share her view that they are likely to try to do such things on the quiet, on the sly or on the cheap.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

That is not good enough. How will schools be judged under those circumstances?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Judged by learners, by parents, by the governors, the wider community—how schools are always judged. The hon. Gentleman must bear in mind that we will have destination data and an all-age service will be in place. We will have new emphasis on careers advice under the Bill. Does he really believe that schools will have a hiding place if they fail to carry out what is expected of them or, indeed, that they will try to concoct a cheapskate way of doing this? I do not see that. I do not believe that of schools, and I certainly do not believe it of heads and teachers. The Committee knows that I have an elevated view of educators and it will take a lot to shake me from that view, given that it is framed and informed by the inspirational experience of seeing the transformation they make to young lives.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I struggle to see how ensuring that people who provide such a service within schools are appropriately qualified is some terribly over-prescriptive evil, particularly as we know that on a sustained basis young people have not been receiving the quality advice that they should. We are not changing heads. We are discussing a Bill. For those involved in Bills, it might seem that it will change the world, but for those outside, unless some special duty or bite is put on them, it will not change much at all. My hon. Friend agrees with licensing for those in the all-age careers service, so surely some pressure to ensure that those providing the service within schools have some form of appropriate qualification or capability is not unreasonable.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Under current arrangements, Connexions advisers are expected to have achieved certain registered standards, but those who provide careers advice and guidance in schools beyond their core teaching qualifications do not have to have additional qualifications to those issued by the Institute of Career Guidance or elsewhere. The existing arrangements do not insist on additional professional training or accreditation. Indeed, in the previous Government’s view that was good enough. I do not believe that it is good enough, which is why I am putting in place the all-age careers service, which will place strong emphasis on professional standards that are being developed, as I have described. While we are not being prescriptive, we are putting strong emphasis on the all-age service’s high standards and the need for schools to secure high quality, independent professional careers advice and to show how they have done so. That goes a considerable way down the road described. It goes much further than the status quo, and it will deliver precisely what hon. Members want to be achieved.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

The Minister seemed to confuse the two different roles: that of careers teachers and the careers education in schools and that of the careers guidance person who, according to the Bill, will not be employed by the school and will be external. The hon. Gentleman’s response related to the teacher not the external person, and our worry is about the qualification of the person coming into the school.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Let me just be absolutely clear. At present, when giving careers advice and guidance, teachers do not have to have additional careers qualifications above and beyond their core teaching qualifications. I am arguing that, in the new all-age service, professional standards will form part of that service, standards that have been developed by the sector at the moment. However, I will go further—we will certainly encourage schools to use qualified advisers. I strongly endorse the view that a school that wants to have the best possible outcomes for its pupils would look first to the all-age service or other qualified advisers.

It would be a very odd school that acquired a service to meet the statutory duty from someone with no history, qualifications or accreditations in careers advice and guidance. How would that school be judged? Would its governors allow that to happen and would its head teacher want it? Would its parents stomach it and its learners agree to it? Of course, they would not. What sort of world are we imagining? That is a flight of fancy, rather than a serious criticism of the proposals.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

The Minister should get into schools and see what happens now, which is that the careers role is given to a teacher because they have some spare time in the curriculum, and not necessarily because they have any experience. If we want something that is better in the future, we have to change how we do things, because otherwise we will have exactly the same results.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That is precisely what I am saying. The current arrangements—I do not want to be unnecessarily partisan, but they were presided over by the previous regime for donkey’s years—have led to circumstances in which many young people did not receive the right kind of advice and guidance. That is precisely why we are changing the statutory arrangements in the Bill, so ensuring that schools secure impartial, independent careers advice.

The advice provided by an external adviser—it will supplement the work done by teachers; I take the hon. Lady’s point that it needs to be contextualised around the rest of the work done by the school in supporting the ambitions of its students—will transform the landscape she described into one with a coherent set of professional standards and an all-age service supported by the Government to provide the high-quality advice that she seeks.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

At the risk of being partisan I should point out that we are holding the Minister to account for the Bill that his Government are proposing now. He has used the term “ensuring” a qualified service, and yet he seems to be refusing to accept an amendment that would do exactly what he says that he wants. I cannot understand why he wishes to have a loophole to allow schools not to use qualified individuals. Why does he not feel the need to ensure that he gets on the ground exactly what he says in Committee that he wants, and which we would all support?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Because the whole point of the Bill is to change the balance of responsibility from the centre to schools. It recognises the immense human capital that exists in our schools, and which was underutilised by the micro-managed, target-driven and bureaucratic regime that preceded ours. That is not to say that that regime was not without many virtues; clearly, it had many virtues. However, on trusting schools to do what they think is right for their students, it was inadequate. That is why the Bill makes the assumption—the right assumption—that we should place faith in schools and change the balance of responsibility.

In trusting schools to make those professional judgments about how they best address their statutory duty based on the needs of their pupils, we will draw to their attention best practice, as I described earlier; we will use the advice available to us through the careers sector to deliver the best professional standards; and we will market the new service effectively. We already have a well received web-based product, because many young people do not look first to a face-to-face contact with an adviser, but to online or telephone sources of advice.

It is worth mentioning that existing online products are very well received by young people. Some 90% of users of the current internet-based service were pleased with the service they received. Telephone users were even more satisfied—99% said that the service was providing them with good advice and guidance—so we are building on a model that has strengths. The previous Government created the Next Step adult careers service—at least, they laid the foundations. I suppose we created it, because we rolled it out last summer, but the Next Step service will also provide a useful foundation for what we plan to do next, so there is existing good practice on which we are building. I do not think that we need to be more prescriptive than that.

I understand the concerns behind amendments 97 and 98, which seek to ensure information on academic and vocational options. I have already made it clear that that is very close to my heart. It is vitally important that young people have a thorough appreciation of all the academic and vocational options that are available to them and understand the various merits of each route.

This country has been guilty in the past of a lamentable failure to provide young people with a proper technical and practical education of a kind that other nations can boast. For too long, we have lived with the myth that the only form of prowess that counted came through academic accomplishment. It is not a view that I share. It is not a myth that I am prepared to perpetuate. Through the acquisition of practical competencies, people can gain not only a sense of worth and purpose, but also a good chance of progressing in further learning and gaining and keeping a job.

As Alison Wolf identified in her recent report for the Government, we need to create a vocational pathway as rigorous, robust, accessible, progressive and seductive as the academic pathway that many of us chose to take. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness is right to say that the kind of advice and guidance that people get is critically important. It is why we emphasise in the Bill that that advice should be independent and balanced in putting vocational as well as academic options to young people.

Proposed new section 42A(4) requires careers guidance for every young person to include information on all post-16 options. It also addresses the point about further education colleges and schools and the relationship between the two. It states “including apprenticeships”. This is sufficient to ensure that pupils receive information about all academic and vocational options and are made aware of the fullest possible range of routes open to them. In respect of amendment 97, I can reassure members of the Committee that the definition of “16-18 education or training” options in subsection (4)(b) has been used in previous careers legislation and is accepted to include all academic and vocational routes. My hon. Friend knows that I am as passionate as he is about ensuring that people get balanced information.

To restrict the careers guidance requirement to mainstream options, as suggested by amendment 134, would introduce an element of discretion for schools in deciding which options their pupils should be informed about. I can only see this leading to a patchwork of options being made available to young people, as schools would interpret the meaning of “mainstream” options quite differently. The difficulty with using “mainstream” in that more permissive way is that it would perhaps lead to more inconsistency rather than more clarity and consistency.

At the heart of this new duty also lies a recognition that teachers are not always best placed to offer careers advice, particularly on vocational options of which they have no prior experience. With all that is expected of schools, it would be too much to ask them to keep up to date with the latest information.

Amendment 96 would remove the requirement for independent careers guidance to be presented in an impartial manner. Information, advice and guidance should offer an insight into the benefits of different learning options, but also tackle openly the differences between them. Throughout this process, care must be taken to keep the best interests of the young person in mind at all times and not undermine a route that may be appropriate for them.

We know that the impartiality of careers guidance has been called into question. Hon. Members will know that the Ofsted report, “Moving through the system—information, advice and guidance”, which was published last year, noted:

“The information, advice and guidance given were not always sufficiently impartial about the options available to young people at the age of 16, for example where secondary schools had their own sixth forms.”

That is why we want to emphasise in the Bill the impartiality of advice that is given about the available options. I understand that hon. Members may feel that the word “impartial” is unnecessary if careers guidance is already described elsewhere as independent. However, impartiality counts as well as independence, and they are different things.

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

As I understood it, the point made by the Chair of the Select Committee was that the concern is the wording rather than the impartiality. An impartial manner might not necessarily imply impartiality. Is the Minister confident that the rest of Bill requires impartiality and not simply an impartial manner?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Yes, certainly that will be emphasised in our communications with schools. The provision is sufficient as worded, but I will go further and emphasise impartiality in the terms mentioned by the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness. The Government are determined to ensure that the advice is both impartial and independent.

I assure hon. Members that in respect of amendment 135, the requirement to provide information on all post-16 options to pupils extends to those with special educational needs. I understand the point that the hon. Member for Hartlepool has made. It is critical that we place appropriate emphasis on the needs of people with particular and sometimes challenging needs. I met people from Skill, which, as the hon. Gentleman will know from his ministerial experience, is an organisation that represents the interests of the people that he has described. I am determined that in our words, and in the guidance that we give, we emphasise the importance of ensuring that those with SEN and other disabilities, needs and challenges are taken into full account in advice about learning and career options. Too often, learning options and employment opportunities for people with special needs of one kind or another are stereotyped. We must challenge such stereotypes in precisely the way that the hon. Gentleman has identified.

The Government attach great importance to the measure. As I have said, local authorities will retain their duty to provide targeted support to young people and young adults with learning difficulties up to the age of 25. Such support will include a responsibility for carrying out learning difficulty assessments and should, of course, include a degree of careers guidance.

On amendment 128, in choosing post-16 options, young people must have an understanding of where such options might lead at 18. Last week I mentioned Lord Browne’s report on higher education, in which he said that many prospective students do not receive adequate advice or information to help them choose the right course of study. That is a concern to the Government and that is why schools working in partnership with expert, independent careers advisers will be at the heart of the new arrangements. The CPA is establishing common professional standards, and I firmly believe that professionally trained careers advisers are the best placed people to provide detailed guidance on the learning routes that are available to young people.

Proposed new section 42A(4)(b) is clear about information on all post-16 options. Those sources of information will contain different levels of advice on the post-18 pathways, so careers advisers should have the discretion to supplement that basic information with more in-depth guidance in discussion with the young person concerned. The clause does not limit careers guidance to post-16 education and training. Proposed new section 42A (7) defines career as

“any training, education, employment or occupation”,

so we would expect young people to receive guidance on post-18 pathways. Indeed, many elements of the advice that young people are given when they make earlier decisions will have a direct impact on their progress post-18, so there is a necessary synergy between the advice that is given about different options before and after the age of 16.

In conclusion, we need to be clear that guidance is independent and impartial. We also need to be clear about the standards we will put into place to ensure that it is of the right quality. All that will be an immense advance on where we have been and where we are. On that basis, I urge the hon. Member for Hartlepool to withdraw his amendment and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness not to press his amendments to a vote.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

The Minister’s body language indicates that he knows that he has lost the debate on this. My hon. Friends and the Chair of the Education Committee had him on the ropes, certainly with regards to amendment 146. I pay tribute to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West has done on that.

I will start by trying to be positive. The words that the Minister said on amendment 131 and work experience were positive. The rhetoric and warm words that he used in respect of amendment 135 were also positive and a welcome step. On amendment 136, it was useful and helpful to hear him say that evidence will be used as a means of shaping policy. Given the example of the Department for Education since May—on the education maintenance allowance, Building Schools for the Future and school sports partnerships—there has been a lack of evidence-based policy. It is nice that there has been a departure from that approach here.

It remains the case that there is a worrying trend from the Treasury suggesting that, because young people use social networks, face-to-face provision is not necessary and that online provision is sufficient. Online provision is important and no one is disputing that, but some of the phrases that the Minister used were worrying.

On amendment 128, I understand the Minister’s point that the clause is not age restrictive as it stands. I think the amendment goes with the grain of Government policy. The Minister for Universities and Science is trying to ensure—and I understand where he is coming from, although that is not a phrase I usually use—that students and potential undergraduates are consumers. If they are spending in the region of £27,000 on tuition fees, they want to ensure that they get value for money, a first class education and that the pathways after the degree will lead them to a fulfilling and, hopefully, economically rewarding career. If he accepted amendment 128, the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning would be working with the grain of the Minister for Universities and Science. It may be that at the age of 14, an individual may want to do a particular course and want to go down that route. It should be pointed out to that individual at that time that employment rates for that course are, for example, 10%. The adviser could say, “Unemployment is high, is it worth thinking about another choice?” The amendment puts it more explicitly than the Minister has suggested so far.

I will not press a number of my amendments, although I give notice to the Minister that I want to test the opinion of the Committee on amendment 128. I urge my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow and for Bolton West to ensure that amendment 146 is pressed to a vote.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Following the Minister’s remarks, I am happy not to press my amendments. The debate on amendment 146 has given the Government an opportunity to think some more on this. As we have laid out, this external advice has to be impartial. The wording of new section 42A(4) to the Education Act 1997 could be changed again so it just says that the guidance must be impartial, that there must be information on options and that the guidance must be in the best interest of the pupils, specifying in addition that it must be provided by someone who has the appropriate qualifications. That would finish that section and bring it to completeness. I hope that the Government think more on that. I am sure they will, given the Minister’s openness. I am happy not to press my amendments, and I will vote against the others.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

Much as I believe that the Minister is passionate about and genuine in his desire to improve careers education and guidance for young people, I do not share his confidence that that guidance will be provided to the standard that we all believe it should be unless we ensure that it is provided by professionals. As the Chair of the Education Committee also believes that it should be provided by a careers professional, I hope that he will join us when I ask the Committee to divide on the amendment.

Perhaps we ought to have introduced a qualification for careers teachers. The Minister seemed to say that we needed such people to be properly qualified and trained. Unfortunately, we did not introduce such a qualification, but we did expect the external person coming in to give careers guidance to be properly qualified. The Bill provides that such a person cannot be employed by the school, but it is far more important that the person has the requisite skills, knowledge, experience and qualifications to deliver the guidance those young people so need.

To hope that schools will automatically look at the all-age service is too great a risk, in particular at times of financial austerity, when schools are already having to pay for things now that they never used to have to pay for, and which were provided previously by local authorities or other agencies for free. I will, therefore, be pressing the relevant amendment to a Division.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to move amendment 75, in clause 27, page 27, line 24, at end insert—

‘(d) an Academy.’.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 127, in clause 27, page 27, line 29, at end insert—

‘(c) in the case of an Academy, the proprietor.’.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I will be brief on the amendments, which insert additional proposed new paragraphs into clause 27, ensuring that the duty of responsible authorities of a school in England to provide careers guidance also applies to academies and the proprietors of academies.

The Minister probably accepts that good-quality careers support and guidance is essential to all young people. Such advice provides the information and support needed for them to fulfil their potential, to achieve their ambition and to facilitate social mobility. For such a service to be available to all young people is essential, whether they attend a community, foundation voluntary or foundation special school, or a pupil referral unit. Given the Government’s intention to establish further academies, the duty must be placed on academies, to ensure that all young people have the same access to careers advice and guidance.

The Opposition’s concern is that, without the imposition of the obligation on institutions with academy status, they might not provide the service to the young people registered. Regardless of the level and quality of information provided at the academy, young people might fail to reach their potential due to a lack of accurate, comprehensive and impartial careers guidance. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will consider the amendments, with a view to ensuring that we have a level and consistent playing field in educational institutions.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I understand the concerns behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, which relate to the application of the duty to secure independent careers guidance to academies. I assure the Committee that all new academies, through their funding agreements, will be subject to a requirement to secure access to independent careers guidance for their pupils.

We have always been clear that, while maintained schools are governed by legislation, one of the defining features of academies is that they are regulated contractually. A broad regulatory framework allows academies to be flexible and innovative in their approach to raising standards. Where maintained schools have important requirements, which we want to replicate for academies, such as the duty to secure independent careers advice, we will include that in future academy funding agreements. We believe in the importance of choice and diversity in schools, and in using funding agreements to ensure that academies meet important requirements, which is a well established mechanism, also used by the Government supported by the hon. Member for Hartlepool.

We will encourage existing academies to move to a new model funding agreement containing that requirement. More important than such a requirement, however, is practice on the ground. We have taken steps to strengthen the evidence base to show the benefits of good careers guidance and to improve the quality and status of the careers profession, both of which should help to deliver better careers guidance for pupils in all schools. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman and that he will withdraw his amendment.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

It is a pleasure to speak on this group of amendments; I notice that my amendment is the lead amendment. Amendment 75 seeks simply to add academies to list of schools. Thanks to the ordering that you chose to follow, Mr Walker, the Minister has already had the opportunity to explain that he is looking to include them in the funding agreement rather than in the Bill.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I wonder what the hon. Gentleman feels about existing academies. This is a residual problem that occurs throughout the Bill: the Government introduce measures that they think are important for all schools to follow, but because they will do that only through the funding mechanism for new academies, they are unable to do anything about existing academies.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

There are opportunities to talk to those schools, and I imagine that funding agreements may be amended, perhaps with mutual agreement. It is hard to believe that existing academies are so dead set against the provision of decent careers advice that they will resist such negotiations. The inheritance creates some anomalies, but part of the whole idea of academies as set up by the hon. Gentleman’s Administration was to give them greater independence so that we are less tempted to prescribe every last thing that they should do.

My feeling was as a point of principle. Where we have an issue that lies outside the basic provision of education within a school and where the institutional interest of a school is set against the individual interest of a pupil, we may choose to legislate and lay down in the law the requirements on academies, and that would not necessarily be in breach of the general view that we should tell it what we want from it but not necessarily how to do it. The Minister has made it clear in this strangely ordered debate that he will rely on funding mechanisms, and I would hope and expect, in answering the shadow Minister’s point, that within a short time, all schools, including existing academies, will have the responsibility accepted in their funding agreements.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

In respect of existing academies, there may be a risk that the proprietor and the head teacher will think that it imposes unnecessary bureaucracy and a burden on his or her work load to arrange and negotiate a new funding agreement, which may include, among other things, revised guidance and criteria on careers advice. What nudge factors will the Minister deploy to ensure that it is in the interest of the proprietor and the head teacher of an academy to go for a revised funding agreement, given the work, negotiation and time that that would take?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I shall respond first to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness; as someone once said, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Both he and the hon. Member for Hartlepool make an important point about open academies. We will communicate to them the changes that will be made by the Bill and reiterate the importance of policies such as the need to have independent careers advice and guidance. Of course, academies will be subject to the destinations measure that was referred to by my hon. Friend the Minister, which will provide information to parents on the effectiveness of academies in preparing their students to move on to positive destinations. We will encourage academies to move to the new model funding agreement, which will bring with it a number of advantages. Existing academies may find them advantageous, and if they move on to a new funding agreement, they will have the provisions. I think that answers the questions of both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Hartlepool about how we expect the duty to be applied to existing academies.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to move amendment 125, in clause 27, page 27, line 36, at end insert—

‘(4A) The responsible authorities must ensure that all providers of independent careers guidance have access on request to information on the educational progress of pupils in order to assist them in the guidance they provide.’.

I shall be brief. This amendment seeks to ensure that independent providers of careers guidance must have access to information held by schools on the educational progress of pupils to assist them in providing guidance to that student. Under clause 27 as it currently stands, there may be an issue for schools as to how much information may be shared with independent service providers who provide careers advice to young people. To provide an effective and comprehensive level of support and guidance to a young person in terms of their future prospects, realistic capabilities and options, it seems common sense that service providers are given some level of academic information. This would include information such as projected results for that young person, attendance records, punctuality and perhaps even details on extracurricular activity, in certain circumstances. All this would assist in offering more accurate and detailed advice to a young person.

We accept that there should be limitations on information sharing. Information held by schools on matters such as personal or health issues should not be provided. If the young person chooses to volunteer this information, that would be a matter for that individual and perhaps his or her parents. Clear guidance would need to be set out before implementation to ensure that only relevant information would be made available.

The amendment specifies that the information be made available to a service provider on request and therefore would not simply give that service provider infinite unrequested data. The service provider would need to make a request to the school concerned; as a result of that request a decision would be made about whether the information would be released. I hope the Minister will accept the amendment, which is probing in its nature. It also addresses an important point about providing requisite data in order to provide comprehensive and personalised advice for young people.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I share the hon. Gentleman’s view that careers advisers require access to data about young people, including information on their educational progress and, indeed, as the hon. Gentleman said, extra-curricular activities and interests, in order to provide effective guidance that is in the best interests of the individual pupil. However, primary legislation should be restricted to those areas where it is absolutely necessary, and if a school chooses to form a partnership with a specialist careers guidance provider, then we should trust them to make sure that that partnership delivers the maximum possible benefit to pupils. There is no reason that schools would not want to co-operate with careers advisers in this way. They already work with a number of agencies in other areas, including health and social care, for the good of the children at the school.

We believe that a school is best placed to know the needs of their pupils. Because this duty is on the school and it is the school that has the information, there is no need therefore in primary legislation to require any form of data sharing in order to fulfil this duty. On that basis, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

Is the Minister able to anticipate a scenario, which was touched on earlier in Committee, where there might be a question mark over the independence of careers advice? The Chair of the Education Committee has well highlighted that further education providers do not have access to schools. In circumstances of impartial, independent advice being provided via the conduit of independent service providers, will it be possible for the head teacher to restrict access to data, because he or she might think that pupils were going to an alternative FE college as opposed to a school sixth-form college. How will the Minister stop the risk of that occurring?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The head teacher is obliged to maintain the confidentiality of those data within the school, except where explicit provisions in statute require the sharing of data—for example, data held at local authority level—that might help the Department provide destinations measures. There is a case for data-sharing in those circumstances. Ultimately, the school record and the details of the progress of a pupil at a school are confidential to that school.

The clause has a requirement that the school provides impartial advice. The examples that have been given relate to existing statutory provisions, in which there is no similar requirement about providing impartial advice. We will require schools to provide access to independent advice in the interests of the child. If the school needs to provide those data to do that, the school will of course do so. The scenario painted by the hon. Gentleman is one that the clause is designed to address. It is best addressed by the clause, rather than by having external advisers who are somehow able, by statute, to obtain the school records of any pupil whom they would like to take part in a course at their institution.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

It is a probing amendment. The Minister has not fully reassured me, but I do not wish to press it to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I beg to move amendment 129, in clause 27, page 27, line 44, leave out ‘14’ and insert ‘12’.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 130, in clause 27, page 28, line 2, leave out ‘16’ and insert ‘18’.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

The amendments—in a crowded field—are very interesting. They are intended to probe the Government’s thinking on the age, and particularly the age range, at which careers advice is provided.

I will deal relatively quickly with amendment 130, which seeks to extend the age at which a young person can seek careers advice to 18. That would be consistent with the raising of the participation age to 18 by 2015, and would provide a young person with appropriate careers advice up to and including 18. I welcome submission E 86 on the matter from the Department for Education, which the Committee received last week at 4.34 pm. It confirmed that the Department intends to consult on the issue and, subject to the outcome of that consultation, lay regulations to ensure that all young people will have access to careers guidance up to the age of 18. That is something I wanted, and which I announced in the publication of the information, advice and guidance strategy “Quality, Choice and Aspiration” 18 months ago.

It is disappointing that little progress has been made since that announcement, but I welcome what was provided by the Department last week. Will the Minister set out a definitive time scale on the consultation and explain when he expects to lay regulations? Can he also say in what circumstances an extension to 18 would not be a good and positive step? It would be useful to know such details.

I come now to amendment 129. As drafted, the clause requires that the careers service should be provided when a pupil reaches the age of 14. There is a strong argument that that age is too high and, to engage young people effectively, suitable, appropriate and personalised careers advice information is needed much earlier. That could be at secondary school, but there is equally a relevant case for appropriate suitable careers advice at primary school—something that I pushed for under the IAG strategy in 2009.

Such a service would provide young people with context and a degree of experience that would inform their subject choices and options at the age of 14 onwards rather than a big bang approach, in which options come simultaneously with careers advice and they do not have sufficient time to reflect on what is appropriate for them. We have chosen the age of 12. It could be earlier than that, but I should like to know the Minister’s thinking about an appropriate age for young people to receive careers advice, perhaps in primary school, but certainly below the age of 14.

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

I want to use the amendment to probe the Minister’s thinking on how the service in schools will fit with the all-age careers service. That is important, given the issues of age that we are debating. My hon. Friends have already expressed worry about what is happening to careers guidance. Can the Minister give us more information about the commissioning of the all-age careers service? Furthermore, given the announcement yesterday about the new bursary scheme for 16 to 18-year-olds, can he give us more details about it? Some news agencies were speculating that money was being taken out of the all-age careers service funding to bolster the replacement to EMAs.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Like other members of the Committee, I should be interested to hear the Minister’s thinking on such matters. Alison Wolf said explicitly in her report that it was appropriate for young people aged 14 to be going into FE colleges. Tens of thousands of young people are already doing so. Only a small number are full time, so the age of 14 sounds a little late if people will be making decisions that could have such an impact later in their lives.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

I draw the Committee’s attention to evidence sent to us by Paul Jackson, the chief executive of EngineeringUK. That piece of evidence, along with several other copies of evidence, encouraged the Committee to consider reducing the age below that of 14 years. On the subject of careers advice, he said:

“At the moment there is a huge deficit in this area. Engineering is such a massive discipline involving careers that span nanotechnology on one side to big infrastructure build on the other. All too often career choices are made too late in the day at school to enable many school age children to enter the profession. Also, particularly with girls, we find that they can be really excited by engineering as a subject in their early school years, but are often put off by the image of the profession when they come to make crucial subject choices.

Careers advice could and should play a very significant part in changing the mindset of school age children about how to select their GCSE topics. There is no doubt that independent careers advice at 14-16 is often too late in terms of our discipline, and we would urge the government to free up the pipeline of entrants into the industry by committing to earlier careers advice.”

The Committee should pay attention to that. We know that the future of our country and prosperity is linked to how we grow manufacturing and build on our engineering skills, particularly high-tech engineering. If professionals say that it is too late to give people careers advice at age 14, and that we will miss out on a raft of young people who would be excellent engineers and help the country’s prosperity to grow, we should listen to those professionals.

Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat, Wells)

I have spoken to the Minister at some length about this matter, but I wanted yet again to point out some of the peculiarities of the middle school system as it relates to the clause. I disagree with putting the age of advice at 12, and I am in favour of raising it to 13. At 13, young people in Somerset are in year 8, which is the last year of a four-year period at middle school. By then they are well known by teachers and head teachers, and it seems extremely appropriate for young people to be given good, independent advice by someone who has known them for a long time. The difficulty with making that decision a year later is that sometimes a pupil has moved into senior school, and that is the time when they are least known.

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

Is it not the case that if someone’s birthday is in August, as mine is, they will only be 12 at the end of year 8?

Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat, Wells)

I do not believe that is the case. There are different systems in different places. In Leicestershire, middle schools cover a different period that goes from age 10 to 14. In Somerset they go from age nine to 13. I would change amendment 130 to read “19” in some cases, rather than “18”.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Rather than ages, perhaps the hon. Lady could explain her point in relation to academic year groups. Is she saying that year 8 is the appropriate year, which is when middle school ends in her area?

Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat, Wells)

That is correct. Middle schools in Somerset take children from year 5 to year 8.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley was making is that if someone was born in August and was in year 8, they would still be 12 at the end of the academic year in July.

Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat, Wells)

The majority of those children are 13. The period in question comes at the end of four years of being known by a particular school. One of the advantages of doing such things in the middle school system is that those students and their teachers and head teachers have no interest in using the financial incentive that comes at a later stage, when the money follows the student and provides an incentive for the head teacher to keep that young person as a result of making subject choices that may affect their future career, or may stop them going on to college. As far as I am concerned, all subject choices are career choices. Such choices should be made at 13, and that should continue on to 19.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I will speak to amendments 129 and 130, which concern the age range of young people who should receive access to independent careers guidance. I agree with the hon. Member for Hartlepool that careers guidance should not simply cease once a young person reaches the age of 16, and neither should access to guidance cease at the age of 18. As we have discussed, we are establishing arrangements for the provision of careers guidance to ensure that young people and adults have access to expert impartial guidance throughout their lives. Most young people are already choosing positive options post-16, and we have record levels of post-16 participation. However, we still face high drop-out rates—the UK is ranked 28th out of 30 OECD countries on participation at 17. I agree with members of the Committee that the decisions that young people make during the 16 to 18 phase of education are just as critical to their realising their potential as the decisions that they make pre-16.

The previous Administration, in the information, advice and guidance strategy that they published in 2009, set out their intention to consult on extending the careers education duty to cover young people up to the age of 18 attending schools and institutions in the further education sector. We are amending existing delegated powers to allow us to take a similar course of action in respect of this new duty. We intend to consult on the issue and, subject to the outcome of that consultation, introduce regulations to ensure that all young people attending schools and further education institutions have access to high-quality careers guidance up to the age of 18 in future. In answer to the specific question of when, the consultation process will begin in the summer.

On the question of the earliest age at which pupils should be subject to independent careers guidance, I accept that a cogent argument can be made in support of commencing the duty at the beginning of the secondary phase of education. I will come to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells about middle schools in a moment. After all, careers guidance should not be a one-off stand-alone experience for a young person. It is an ongoing process by which young people are supported to make the decisions that are right for them and are helped to gain the skills to make effective decisions.

I firmly believe that the provision of personalised guidance to individuals is unlikely to be of huge benefit before the age of 13, because the first major decision point relates to post-16 options. Independent, impartial guidance in the year leading up to those decisions is far more likely to have a positive impact on a young person. A 2010 Department for Education study demonstrated that the effect of careers guidance on young people’s attitudes to schools and intentions to remain in education is strongest at that age group.

The focus in the early years of secondary education is rightly on making a successful transition from primary school and gaining a good grounding in the national curriculum subjects, all of which will help a young person to get more out of their careers guidance at 13. That does not mean that pupils will not benefit from some careers guidance before the age of 14, or even 13. In providing schools with greater freedoms and flexibilities, we trust professionals to make decisions about how best to use their resources to meet the needs of their pupils. Schools must have the freedom to decide how they want to introduce their pupils to the world of work as part of their time at school.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

For the children most likely to be disaffected and most likely to end up in youth unemployment, the signs of disaffection are likely to have emerged by the age of 12 and 13. Although we may look across the whole school cohort and see that, on average, intervention has the biggest impact later, for some children and those who are being failed by the system now, there is a strong case for providing advice at 14, or at least showing what options the FE and university technical colleges have to offer. Age 14 may be in the mix at the moment, but, as originally conceived, the starting point was 14.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend, but I disagree with the wording of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Hartlepool. I sympathise with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells about middle schools. I have taken on board her points about the importance of young people receiving appropriate guidance before they make choices about their options, which may in some circumstances happen earlier than year 9. She has made a forceful argument, both here and outside the Committee, although I would like to know how widespread an issue it really is. The hon. Member for Hartlepool rightly pointed out that we have made a commitment to consult on extending the age range for the duty to 18, which was in the note about exercising the regulatory powers under the clause. I am happy for the consultation to go one stage further than I have set out in the note.

Dan Rogerson (Liberal Democrat, North Cornwall)

Having examined the clause again, I am interested in something that may habitually be interpreted in a certain way. Looking at schools with mixed age groups, which I know is far less likely in secondary than in primary in rural schools, is there an issue with older pupils who are mixed in with younger ones, who will therefore not get that education until later on?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

My hon. Friend makes an important point about very small schools with mixed ages. The clause states:

“For the purposes of this section the relevant phase of a pupil’s education is the period…beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 14”.

I do not think that that will be interpreted as strictly as it may be in my hon. Friend’s example.

I want to address the question of whether the age of 14, as specified in the clause, should be reduced to 12. I think that that would be extreme, because that would mean that pupils will start at the age of 11. Far better, and more interesting, is the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Wells, which applies when the majority of pupils in the class attain the age of 13. That means that there will be pupils who are 12 starting that academic year, but they will reach 13 during the year, which is in year 8. I am happy to say to my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall that we will extend the consultation to look at extending it not just beyond 16, but down to year 8. However, I want to see how wide a demand there is for such an extension to the legislation, which we will do through secondary legislation.

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

I am sorry to press the Minister at this point in the sitting, but I do not think that he responded to the question about the funding for the all-age careers service.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

We will make an announcement on that in due course. I hope that I have satisfied all members of the Committee, and that the hon. Member for Hartlepool will withdraw his amendment.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

With respect to amendment 130, as I said in my opening remarks, I welcome what the Minister has provided on E 86. He mentioned that the consultation will take place in the summer. May I ask, a little facetiously, but not too much, which year’s summer will it be, and when does summer end? Will it be in October? May I probe him a little more on what he means by summer?

The Minister did not take amendment 129 in the spirit in which it was intended. As I said, it was a means to probe Government thinking on a wider debate about whether adequate, relevant and suitable careers advice could be provided for younger people, perhaps in primary schools. As I said, at the age of eight, I wanted to be an astronaut, and I was not suggesting that I sit down with a careers adviser. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] There is still time. I wrote to “Jim’ll Fix It” about this and did not get a reply, and the wounds have not healed. The idea that I should sit down with a careers adviser to complete my application to NASA is somewhat over the top. I would make a wider point about having a personalised basis. If someone were interested in being an astronaut, advisers could take into account concerns about science, chemistry and physics and tailor an experience that would be relevant to them. I think that that would be an appropriate way. The amendments were of a probing nature, and I do not want to press them to a Division, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 28

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I welcome you to the Chair this afternoon, Mr Williams.

It is a real shame to repeal the diploma entitlement for 16 to 18-year-olds. Diplomas will wither on the vine. I oppose the repeal and do not think the clause should stand part of the Bill. Let me set out the concerns that various bodies have expressed. The NASUWT has said that the clause

“narrows the curriculum and undermines parity of esteem between academic and vocational courses. It is a retrograde step that will disenfranchise thousands of learners”.

The ASCL has said:

“This must not send the wrong message about the future of vocational education. We strongly believe that high quality vocational education must be a key aspect of the education system and, as the government is (rightly) going ahead with the raised participation age, the demand for it is likely to increase. The government must commit to providing quality options for all young people.”

Unison has said:

“The repeal of the diploma entitlement is another step towards scrapping diplomas and the vocational education opportunities that came with them.”

What is the Minister’s view on the quality and value of diplomas? What support will his Department give to ensure that they can prosper and thrive? What assessment has he made of the impact on young people of narrowing the curriculum, both through this clause and through his proposals on the English bac?

I have referred to the raising of the participation age, and it is right that the Government continue with that, but the Minister himself has admitted that the demand for vocational education, and specifically diplomas, is likely to increase as a result of it. Can he assure us that he will provide quality options for all young people, regardless of their interests, rather than a narrow focus on a specific academic route, as is suggested with the English bac? What plans does he have to ensure that diploma supply will match popular demand? On the back of the Wolf report, can he reassure us that, in the absence of diploma entitlement, access to high-quality vocational education in schools will continue?

One of the key things to allow diplomas to thrive is collaboration and partnership with schools and with local authorities. If a young person is in a rural area, and their educational institution does not provide a particular diploma line that he or she wants to pursue, what redress is there to ensure that provision is made? Given the repeal in the clause, how will that young person be able to do the course of his or her choice?

What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the repeal on levels of NEETs? We discussed this in Committee last week. It is important to ensure that we have positive, enthusiastic engagement from young people in the education and training system. By repealing this valuable qualification, we are losing something in that regard. I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts about the future of diplomas with regard to those concerns.

Graham Stuart (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

I will be brief, as I am sure the Minister will cover all the ground that I would want to be covered.

We all want to see better vocational, practical education offerings for young people, and we recognise that our historical efforts in that regard have been poor. We should also note, though, that the diploma was appallingly ill thought through. It was introduced by a Secretary of State who simply would not listen. I remember representatives of the awarding bodies appearing before the Select Committee, where one of them described it as the most complicated qualification that he had ever seen. As originally laid out, the entitlement was technically undeliverable, not least in rural areas, and it was phenomenally expensive for a remarkably small number of people successfully qualifying for it. It was an expensive promise made by the previous Government that could not be delivered and unfortunately failed to do what it set out to do. As for the respective positions of the Front Benches, surely Labour Members should show greater humility in respect of the diploma because it is not an unalloyed triumph of the previous Administration. On the contrary, it was expensive and ill thought out.

However, the shadow Minister referred to making sure that we have suitable offering and a clear picture of where we are going in the aftermath of the original vision of diplomas and entitlement across the 13 flavours, excluding or including the academic. None the less, we need from the Minister a clear idea of where we are, and I am sure that he will remind us of a few more details about the catastrophic failure of the diploma as introduced by the former Secretary of State.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Not for the first or last time the Chairman of the Select Committee is right. The diploma is difficult because of some of the reasons that he outlined. None the less, when it was introduced it was absolutely right that we gave it a fair wind, and I was the shadow Minister responsible for that. We debated the matter at some length when we were in Opposition, and my hon. Friend the Minister and I took the view that the diploma represented an opportunity to provide the quality vocational offer that the hon. Member for Hartlepool describes as being essential to motivate those whose tastes and talents take them down the practical path.

Some of the diplomas on offer are very strong in that respect. The engineering diploma is highly regarded, partly because it was heavily influenced by the engineering industry at the time of its inception. The same can be true for the IT diploma. Several major IT companies played a key role in helping to shape that qualification. Nevertheless, surely it is not the role of the Government to force local authorities, and through them, schools and colleges, to offer the whole line of diplomas. It would be immensely difficult to offer all 14 diploma subjects in many different circumstances, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness said.

Those doubts were made clear at the outset. Indeed, we were uncertain whether there would be sufficient resource capacity to deliver all 14 diplomas. It is for schools and colleges to decide which diplomas are appropriate for their cohort, which they have the capacity to deliver effectively and which will deliver the best outcomes for their students. I want that to be at the heart of what we now do and the amendments that we are making to the existing provision through the removal of the entitlements does just that. It places responsibility back into the hands of the professionals to make those judgments.

Such a change has been welcome. The Association of Colleges has always been uncertain about diploma entitlement, and states that

“we have always wanted greater freedom for colleges to offer courses and qualifications which meet the needs of young people.”

The Association of School and College Leaders states that

“removing the Diploma entitlement is welcome as it was not practical to offer all lines to all students”.

Edge has said,

“It was always going to be difficult to deliver the entitlement, especially in rural areas”.

At an early opportunity, the hon. Member for Hartlepool will want to welcome the thoughtful and sensitive statement on the replacement of the EMA made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which deals particularly with transport issues that are essential if we are to allow provision in rural areas to match the best. It is important that, when people want to take advantage of options that are not in their immediate locality and outside the travel area designated by the local authority, they can do so by being supported by travel. My right hon. Friend made it clear that that was part of the package that he was bringing forward.

I want to make it clear that the clause does not remove diplomas or prevent providers of 16 to 18 education from offering diplomas if they wish. Indeed, the Association of Colleges has also told us that repealing the diploma entitlement will make little difference to many colleges’ continuing commitment to the qualification. I do not think that they will wither on the vine, as the hon. Gentleman said, and I do not want them to do so where they deliver a quality product in line with pupil and student expectations and where they can be tested against proper measurements of outcome, especially destination measures. Those measures are a much better way of our judging whether the system is having the effect that it should. That is particularly true of vocational qualifications, where further learning and employment are a key measure of whether those practical qualifications have conferred competencies that have economic value.

The clause will not remove any diplomas or other vocational options for young people. We believe in high-quality vocational education, as reinforced by Alison Wolf’s report. I saw her yesterday evening before I had an enjoyable dinner with the hon. Member for Hartlepool. By the way, I put on the record my thanks for his generosity in inviting me and subsequently thanking me for the good meal and the even better discussion yesterday evening. In that spirit, I hope that he will agree to allow the clause to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 29

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

I do not want to repeat many of the points that I made about clause 28, but I will anyway. I want to ask the Minister about three or four of those key points. How does he intend to ensure that there is a sufficient supply of diplomas at the fourth key stage to meet the number and variety of subjects for which there will be demand? There is a genuine concern about the Secretary of State’s proposals for the curriculum. Does the Minister believe that there will be a narrowing of the curriculum available to young people? Is he concerned that, notwithstanding broader social and economic considerations, the effect will be to drive up NEET levels? There is little point in getting students to do that if they are starting to become disengaged from the more academic, classroom-based approach to learning, but are still ambitious to do things and consider the diplomas to be more interesting and relevant to them and their career. There is no point in pushing square pegs into round holes. Is he concerned that there will be a higher level of disengagement as a result of the provision?

Does he believe there will still be a role for the local authority to work with schools to plan diplomas for the fourth key stage? As it currently stands, the clause seems to remove the basis of the local authority role in developing a wider 14 to 19 strategy. The key point of having the local authority as a strategic body that held the ring to help local education providers was a positive step made as part of our 14 to 19 strategy. Finally, what about the disadvantage and disparity between urban or metropolitan areas and rural areas? Will the Minister’s plans not disadvantage students from rural areas who might want to consider doing diplomas? My concerns are very close to those that I raised on clause 28, but I would be grateful if the Minister gave us an outline of his thinking.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Welcome back to the chair this afternoon, Mr Williams.

Clause 28 will remove the diploma entitlement for 16 to 18-year-olds, whereas, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool remarked, clause 29 will remove the entitlement for all key stage 4 pupils to all of the diplomas. As with clause 28, the provisions being amended are not yet in force, but were they to be implemented as originally planned they would give an entitlement to pupils of that age to study any of the diplomas and would have placed a corresponding duty on not only local authorities, but governing bodies and head teachers of all maintained secondary schools in England to secure an entitlement for pupils aged 14 to 16 to all 14 sub-diploma subject lines at every level.

That would have placed a huge burden on schools. It would have resulted in all kinds of strange changes to timetables which would have been instituted not for pedagogical reasons but purely for logistical ones, to enable students to travel from one institution to another, so they could partake of those qualifications. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, that would be particularly hard in rural areas, which answers the point made by the hon. Member for Hartlepool. It was never realistic in rural areas.

We want to have increasing freedom and autonomy for schools, and we want to relieve them of unnecessary duties and burdens, because that is one of the cornerstones of our schools’ quality. Throughout the world, the case for the benefits of school autonomy is now well established. The highest performing countries in PISA—Finland and South Korea—are characterised by individual school autonomy, which is why the clause gives schools greater freedom to choose for themselves which qualifications they want to teach.

As with clause 28, nothing in clause 29 prevents schools or any other provider from offering diplomas if they wish to. Nor does removing the diploma entitlement signal a lack of interest by the Government in vocational education, as my hon. Friend so ably demonstrated. High-quality vocational education is crucial to our country’s economic future. While it is vital that 14 to 16-year-olds receive a core academic education, Professor Alison Wolf’s report clearly sets out the value of high-quality vocational education alongside that core to help prepare young people for further study and the labour market.

Forcing particular options on schools is not the answer. The importance of the clause is the freedom it gives to schools, which should be able to decide for themselves which courses—academic and vocational—to provide to their students.

Clause 30

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move amendment 137, in clause 30, page 31, line 27, at beginning insert ‘Subject to subsection (5),’.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment 138, in clause 30, page 31, line 34, at end insert—

‘(5) The Secretary of State must not commence this section until Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills has reported to the Secretary of State on the operation of section 10 of the Children Act 2004, and the Secretary of State has laid the report before Parliament.’.

Amendment 139, in clause 78, page 57, line 31, leave out paragraph (c) and insert—‘(c) section 31.’.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Prynhawn da, Mr Williams, croeso ’nôl—good afternoon and welcome back.

We now move to part 5 of the Bill, in which the Government seek to remove a whole series of duties from educational establishments. Clause 30 will remove from the list of relevant partners in section 10 of the Children Act 2004 the governing bodies of maintained schools, the proprietors of non-maintained special schools, city technology colleges, city colleges for the technology of arts or academies situated in the authority’s area, and the governing bodies of further education institutions.

You will recall, Mr Williams—although you were not present, I am sure you read the evidence—that the National Children’s Bureau told us that the rationale for extending the duty to co-operate to the educational establishments listed was to ensure that all relevant bodies were consulted during the development of the joint local plan. By removing the duty, schools, academies, FE colleges and other educational establishments lose the right to be consulted in the development of local strategic planning for children and young people. That is a matter of concern to the National Children’s Bureau.

The Secretary of State does not seem to value partnership and co-operation in his general approach. In addition, Unison told us:

“The removal of schools and colleges from the list of relevant partners in children and young people’s well-being drives a wedge between them and other local services and negates the purpose of Every Child Matters”.

As we go through this Bill, one begins to wonder whether the phrase “Every Child Matters” has been banned in the Department for Education, given that we never hear it pass the lips of any Minister. Perhaps we can do a word search of all our proceedings to see whether it has been uttered, I may be mistaken. I see that Ministers are just checking between themselves whether it has been banned and struck from the lexicon of coalition speak. It is surprising, because, as I recall, the Liberal Democrats were extremely keen on Every Child Matters, and when we were in government they often pushed us to go further on that agenda, but now they are busily taking out of legislation lots of the things that they pushed us to include. When we do our audit of all the things that they have voted for in the Bill, it will be interesting to consider what they previously urged, in some cases begged, the previous Government to include in legislation. We were, as every Government are, reluctant to impose too many duties on education authorities, but, unfortunately, with the Lib Dems hectoring us to include more, we occasionally had to give way.

Dan Rogerson (Liberal Democrat, North Cornwall)

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have a coalition Government and that our party, and indeed our coalition partners, have never pretended that we agree on every single thing. That is why we have a coalition agreement and an agreed programme. Of course, when the hon. Gentleman was in government, his party, as a united vehicle, could have pushed through a lot of the things that they are now seeking to include in the Bill. I will be interested to see whether his work on cross-referencing the work of the last Parliament and this one will consider some of the issues that his party resisted to which it is now suddenly converted.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I think the Schools Minister confirmed earlier from a sedentary position that both parties have sold out, and perhaps he is right.

Our principles are not for sale, but when we were in government we were a listening Government, so we did occasionally accept a proposal or two from the Lib Dems, when they were sensible and progressive. Now, they are busily removing duties from the legislation that they had previously asked us to introduce.

As a result of the clause, there may be too little contact between local authorities and schools. In effect, despite the Government’s protestations about being in favour of localism, it could mean cutting elected local councils out of the schools and education landscape. Can the Minister tell me whether the phrase “Every Child Matters” is banned, and clarify how the Government intend to maintain a joined-up policy at the local level, given the implications of the clause?

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

I want to remind the Committee of where the duty came from. It has its roots in the horrific murder of Victoria Climbié in 2001. Lord Laming’s subsequent report highlighted the lack of priority given to safeguarding by the agencies involved in the case, which made it difficult for professionals to work together effectively.

As the Committee will be aware, in previous sittings I have raised the issue of the importance of keeping children’s safeguarding as a priority. The reality always is that the number of staff involved in that work, compared with the numbers involved in educating children, is tiny. It is only when horrific cases occur that the spotlight is suddenly pointed at all the organisations involved, and everyone then says, “What’s happened here? Why did the agencies not work effectively together?” After a period of reflection, the world continues, and Governments, whether new or not, put other measures in place. For example, the last Government brought children’s services together, and we discovered that, unfortunately, a lot of children’s services departments did not have strong leadership in terms of safeguarding, because not unexpectedly, the majority of the leaders of such services had backgrounds in education. It is for that reason that we considered inserting the clause in the 2004 Act.

I have some recollection of the 2004 Act, but as I have said previously to the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford—I was in his position when that legislation was debated in the House—I was unable to speak and we do not always remember matters as well as when we take an active part in the Committee. But I recall very well the circumstances that led to this. I also recall, from my experience working in children’s social services up to 2000, the frustration at times of dealing with others parts of the local authority or schools and getting them to co-operate on very important issues around safeguarding. Of course, that is not the top priority in schools. Education is the reason children go to school and that is what we expect. But unless we recognise that we cannot deliver safeguarding effectively without the involvement of all agencies, children will slip through the net. I therefore ask Government Members to take those concerns seriously, because another child will slip through the net and we will all start to look at the systems and whether there is systemic failure. Please look now and consider how to ensure that we do not lose the real benefits gained over the past decade in children’s organisations working more effectively together.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

I am incredibly concerned about this. The explanatory notes state that relevant partners—school being one of them—

“will be able to decide for themselves how to engage in arrangements”

for children’s well-being. Basically, that leaves it up to individual schools to decide for themselves how they engage with local authorities, health services, the police, probation services and others that they need and rely on to support the well-being of children in their schools.

As we all know, well-being is a huge issue for schools. Children spend up to six hours a day in school. That is 38 weeks out of every 52, and 190 days out of 365. It is a relatively short period of time, and we recognise that the impact that the school can have will be seriously negated if the child’s home, family and community is not right. Many of the barriers to learning faced by children and schools exist outside the school gates, and good schools recognise that.

My son sat in this Committee last week. He is a head teacher and I am incredibly proud of him. He was the youngest head teacher in the country for about 30 seconds. He told me that in his school he takes the matter of the child’s education and all the other things that go along with that incredibly seriously. Every child in his school has access to food at the beginning of the day. They also have a nutritious meal in the middle of the day, because he recognises that that has an impact on a child’s learning and behaviour. He makes sure that every child who wants to has something to eat before they leave school, because he also recognises that many of his children will not eat again until they come back to school the following day.

The police are welcome in his school, as are social workers, parents, school nurses and the whole range of people who contribute to a child’s well-being. He is not alone. Most head teachers recognise and respond to the problems in inner-city schools, in schools working in challenging circumstances and in schools where children traditionally had less opportunity to reach their potential. Head teachers deal with the kind of children that the Government are telling us daily in this Committee and in the House that they want to support. But I remind the Committee that it is very often the most successful schools and local authorities that have the biggest gaps in learning and achievement for their poorest children, so it is not only in inner-city schools and in schools where the majority of pupils are on free school meals that we need to be mindful of well-being.

Allowing schools to decide for themselves how they engage in safeguarding with others within the local authority, health services, the police and social services will result, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out, in some schools having major engagement. Most schools will find a way of engaging, but some schools will have virtually no engagement at all. Ultimately, that will result in the fragmentation of services. As a result, young people, their families and communities will be very badly served.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I start by reminding the Committee that the duty we are repealing in clause 30 is the duty on schools and colleges to be part of children’s trust arrangements. The arrangements themselves and the duties on other members will remain, notwithstanding the clause. There are no plans to repeal the general duty to co-operate, which forms the basis of the children’s trust arrangements. We fully endorse the need for effective partnership working to secure better local services for children, young people and families. It is the unnecessary prescription that we are seeking to tackle. While I am on the subject of partnerships, my comments about coalition are that we all have to compromise in a coalition. That is the essence of coalition politics. The Conservative party has compromised on a range of issues and so have the Liberal Democrats. That is what co-operation and working together is all about. I would have thought that Opposition Members understood that.

The amendments would delay removing the duty on schools and FE colleges to co-operate with the local authority through children’s trust arrangements until the chief inspector of Ofsted has reported on the operation of the duty under section 10 and that report is laid before Parliament. It is not appropriate to delay removing that burden from schools. First, the duty to co-operate was only placed on schools and colleges on 12 January 2010. Just nine months later, we announced on 31 October 2010 that it was to be repealed. Given that schools and colleges knew that we intended to remove the duty as soon as possible, it would be strange to decide to inspect them on how well they are complying with it in the meantime.

Secondly, and most importantly, we already know that partnership working is effective without a statutory duty. The Audit Commission produced a report in 2008 that showed that, without a statutory duty, schools and colleges were already actively engaged in effective partnership. As the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) said on Second Reading, Ofsted has in fact already produced an evaluation report, in November last year, on the impact of children’s trusts in six local authorities. It found that partnership working was already well established within local authorities before schools and colleges were required to co-operate. Much of the field work for that report was conducted before the duty was commenced, and the identified success was through voluntary co-operation. Many of the children’s trust board members whom Ofsted interviewed for that report were not in favour of extending the duty more widely, and emphasised the importance of

“winning hearts and minds, of creating a climate and ethos that promoted working together, of building strong relationships, and of working to common ends.”

They did not believe that a mandatory approach could help.

Let me turn to some of the comments made by hon. Members. On the comment made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West about Every Child Matters, the duty on schools to promote pupil well-being will remain. Of course every child matters, and because we know that, that phrase will not be banned from the Department. Some phrases will be banned from the Department.

Iain Wright (Labour, Hartlepool)

Such as?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

When the hon. Gentleman looks at my letters, he will see that certain words do not appear. He will have to try to work out what those words are. I do not like jargon. I am trying to remove jargon from correspondence.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We have an ongoing mission against jargon.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

We could join together in a formal partnership to do that [ Interruption. ] Yes, or a coalition.

The duty on schools to promote well-being remains. That encompasses the five outcomes incorporated in the Every Child Matters agenda. On the comment of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley, local safeguarding and children’s boards will remain and will also do so for schools. Governing bodies of schools must have arrangements in place as part of their obligations under section 175 of the Education Act 2002 to ensure that their functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. On the comments of the hon. Member for North West Durham about her son, I am sure that he was going way beyond these duties, but they would require him to do some of the things that he is doing in his school.

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

Is the Minister therefore expecting Ofsted to inspect that part of the duties, as well? That is not what its consultation proposes.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

No, we are confining what Ofsted will be judging a school on to those four areas: teaching, leadership, attainment, but also behaviour and safety. Within that last category, a school that was blasé about safety and safeguarding children would of course perform badly under leadership and management, too. If everything it was doing about safeguarding contravened its duties under the 2002 Act—or, indeed, contravened what was expected of a school in the 21st century—it would be difficult for it to demonstrate that it had effective leadership and management. Much of that will be found in Ofsted’s current consultation.

On the comments of the hon. Member for North West Durham about schools being able to decide for themselves about well-being and working with partners, we fully support effective partnership working. We do not, however, want it to be a top-down and prescriptive approach, which in the case of schools and colleges too often turns into a box-ticking exercise. They go through the motions of ensuring compliance with a particular duty, but the reality underneath is not of the quality that we want. Many of the past barriers to partnership working have been caused by heavy-handed, top-down performance management systems. We want to encourage flexible and responsible partnership working that reflects local circumstances and has genuine buy-in from all the agencies and partners involved.

That is our approach, and on that basis I urge the hon. Member for Cardiff West to withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We are very concerned, as Opposition Members have said. Notwithstanding the Minister’s point about there remaining a duty on schools to co-operate with relevant partners locally in relation to the five outcomes in Every Child Matters—I think he used that phrase, but he will correct me if I am wrong—he is simply saying that they do not have to go along to the children’s trust any more, because he does not like them and wants to get rid of them. That is my plain-language interpretation. I am trying to avoid jargon and to give him an opportunity to intervene.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Which explains why he was grinding to a halt—I am joking.

What I said about the five outcomes was that there is a duty on schools, as he knows, to promote well-being, which came out of the White Paper, and that duty remains. It is that duty that encompasses the fives outcomes, which is why he has raised this issue. How schools implement and fulfil that important duty is up to them, and we do not want to tell them how to do that.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Far from grinding to a halt, I was simply slowing down to give the Minister an opportunity to find the right piece of paper. He says that a duty to promote well-being remains in place, but there is no longer a duty to co-operate via a children’s trust as a result of clause 30.

Amendment 137 is obviously a probing amendment, because it asks for a delay while a report is undertaken on the issue, so I will not press it to a vote. I give notice to the Minister, however, that we are extremely concerned about the potential for this clause to undermine a lot of the work that was undertaken post-Climbié to put in place stronger protection for the safeguarding of children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out. We may return to this subject later. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move amendment 140, in clause 30, page 31, line 34, at end add—

‘(5) Notwithstanding subsection (2), the governing bodies and proprietors of schools and FE institutions must cooperate when asked by a local authority in furtherance of the local authority’s duty under section 436A (Duty to make arrangements to identify children not receiving education) of the EA 1996.’.

The well-thought-out position that was reached by April 2010 was that schools should not only have to promote the well-being of pupils on their school rolls, but co-operate to promote the well-being of children across the area in which a school is situated as well. As I have just hinted, we do not believe that the Government have given compelling reasons why that position should be abandoned. There may be dangers in abandoning it going forward. The Minister should exercise care in this area.

Amendment 140 seeks to probe one practical implication of the Government’s approach. Local authorities are charged by section 436A of the Education Act 1996—titled “Duty to make arrangements to identify children not receiving education”—to find out how many children in their area are missing education. A narrow interpretation of that provision is that it refers to children who are not on the school roll. The Department for Education does not systematically collect information from local authorities, although The Times Educational Supplement used the Freedom of Information Act to find out that, on 11 February 2011, 12,000 such children were known to local authorities. That was an increase from a Government estimate in 2006 of 10,000. The reliability of those figures is questionable. Some 30% of those children missing from education came from one authority. There may be reasons for that. In this case, it was Leicester. That is the background to the reasons for tabling the amendment.

A wider interpretation of the duty that I mentioned is that local authorities should work with schools to identify children who may be at risk of falling out of school attendance. That can be a real problem, as I know from my time as a Minister, as well as a teacher. Local authorities need schools to co-operate if that is to be done. They need to know when a child stops attending school. Staff, particularly in primary schools, because they are so embedded in the community, are likely to hear about children not receiving education in the manner that local authorities want. It is only section 10 of the Children Act 2004 that places a duty on schools to co-operate with the local authority and help it fulfil that duty.

Last summer, Ofsted’s report “Children missing from education”, published 17 August 2010, stated the following:

“Even when the local authorities had clear policies and processes”—

for identifying children missing from education—

“with a strong emphasis on safeguarding, if schools disregarded them, this could quickly result in children and young people becoming lost to the system. Officers in all the authorities surveyed gave examples of schools which had not followed the agreed procedures for exclusions. The vulnerability of such pupils was significantly increased because they were out of school unofficially and preventative agencies were not aware of their potentially increased exposure to drugs, alcohol misuse, crime, pregnancy or mental health problems. The nine local authorities in which there were academies were struggling to establish consistent communication about children who were vulnerable to becoming missing, despite good cooperation from some of the academies.”

Admittedly section 10 of the 2004 Act does not contain any penalties for schools that do not wish to co-operate, but at least it sends an important signal. The problem with the Government’s approach is not that it enables schools to decide how they wish to co-operate, but that it gives a green light for some schools to decide that they do not have to co-operate.

The only course open for a local authority to deal with an unco-operative maintained school is a complaint to the Secretary of State—is that correct? That is how I understand section 496—“Power to prevent unreasonable exercise of functions”—of the Education Act 1996. If so, what standard of proof would be required? What are the arrangements for academies?

This area might not seem central to the Bill, but it has the potential to come back to bite Ministers quite hard if things go wrong. So I ask the Minister for his explanation of what the Bill means for children who are missing or in danger of missing their education.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about children missing from education, and I fully endorse the need to find better ways to deal with the problems he has highlighted, but the amendment is not the best way to do it.

Children missing education are at greatly increased risk of not attaining the skills and qualifications that they need to succeed in life. They may also be at risk of neglect or abuse. Often they come from disadvantaged families, experiencing multiple risks such as poverty, substance abuse, mental ill health and poor housing. They might be from travelling communities or immigrant families, or they might be unaccompanied asylum-seeking or trafficked children. Nobody should underestimate—the hon. Gentleman does not—the importance of the issue, but it is difficult to see how amendment 140 would help.

We have legislative provisions in place. Local authorities and maintained schools, further education colleges and sixth-form colleges have safeguarding duties under section 175 of the 2002 Act. Academies are also required to make provision for safeguarding under the independent schools standards and their funding agreement with the Secretary of State. The Children Act 1989 and the Education and Inspections Act 2006 both place additional duties on local authorities requiring them to establish, as far as possible, the identity of those children of compulsory school age who are missing education and empowering them to apply for an education supervision order.

Crucially, under the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, all schools are required to inform the local authority: when a pupil fails to attend school regularly; when a pupil has been absent from school continuously for at least 10 days without permission; or when a pupil has been removed from the school roll in specific circumstances. Failure to comply with those provisions is an offence under section 434(6) of the 1996 Act, and if found guilty the proprietor of a school may be fined.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

Does the Minister accept that this is not only about schools notifying local authorities if a child is missing from education for more than 10 days? In many schools, if a child does not turn up at 9 o’clock in the morning, somebody at the school contacts the police, social services and the local authority because there is a known risk to that child, either from being involved in crime or where there are real concerns about the situation in which the child lives. Current legislation does not cover that. It is about co-operation between the school and a range of agencies because of the situations in which children live.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Yes, but requiring schools to participate in children’s trusts is not the answer to that problem, as the hon. Lady’s own son demonstrated. The Government believe in trusting professionals to contact the relevant agencies when they fear for a child’s safety. That is what schools do and will continue to do, and all schools that are not doing that should do it. That is absolutely clear. However, the duty to co-operate with other bodies and the way in which section 10 of the 2004 Act is drafted in respect of schools is not the most successful way of achieving that. We are trying to relieve schools of the increasing number of statutory duties that have become a box-ticking exercise. We are trying to get away from that approach and to allow schools genuinely to tackle some of those very difficult problems.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

Will the Minister update us on his conversations about social care with his colleagues in the Department of Health? Often, the issues we are talking about do not originate within a school. Information about what might be happening in a child’s background does not originate in the school, but has implications there. Taking away the relationships that mean that sharing takes place has implications for health and social care as well. Will the Minister update us on the conversations he has had about unhooking those joined-up relationships locally and the national consequences?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Those relationships should and do occur, and they will continue to occur. Our argument is that we do not need bureaucratic duties, such as section 10 as it applies to schools and colleges, to achieve that. This is about humans dealing with one another in a professional way. There is a range of legislative duties on schools already, which I have highlighted—section 175 of the 2002 Act among them—that require schools to take the kind of action that the hon. Lady is talking about without requiring them to attend meetings of children’s trusts. Of course, the health service is still under a duty to co-operate with children’s trusts.

We are reviewing the regulations to tighten up and extend the circumstances in which schools must inform the local authority when a child is missing school or removed from the register. We will also revise the statutory guidance to clarify how local authorities can best carry out their duties to identify children missing education. Any problems experienced in monitoring and supporting outcomes for those children is therefore a result of implementation, not of a lack of legislation. A recent Ofsted report, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, made a number of recommendations that the Government are considering seriously, but it did not recommend further legislation to compel schools to co-operate. Children missing education highlights important challenges, and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise the matter, but I do not believe that amendment 140 is part of the solution to the problem.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Will the Minister clarify what the Government intend for local children’s trusts? He says the duty remains for the NHS to participate in the trusts, so am I wrong to think that the Government intend to get rid of them?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

No, it is not the intention to get rid of them. We are removing the duties—I made that point at the beginning of my response to the amendment. The purpose of clause 30 is to remove section 10(10) of the 2004 Act, covering schools and FE colleges, not to remove children’s trusts or the co-operation between agencies, including the health service, that happens now. Having clarified that, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

A logician would surmise that teachers and head teachers are to be trusted—in the Minister’s words—to do their duty without a statutory duty to co-operate with children’s trusts, but doctors and others are not to be trusted, because the duty has to remain upon them to collaborate in children’s trusts. I see no logic in the Government’s position. So much for joined-up government.

Children missing from education is an important matter. The Minister says that he takes it seriously and I believe him. He knows the complexities of the problem and that it is one of those areas where events can sometimes put Ministers in a very difficult position. I simply advise him to ensure that he has his arguments lined up straight and his facts and statistics ready. He may not have to deal with it—perhaps it will be one of one of his colleagues—but when children missing from education raises its head, and there is no longer a duty to collaborate with children’s trusts on that, it might cause a crisis for the Government. Perhaps I am wrong, but we will see. As it was probing, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I beg to move amendment 142, in clause 30, page 31, line 34, at end add—

‘(5) The repeal of the requirement on governing bodies and proprietors of schools to co-operate with the local authority by this section is without prejudice to the Secretary of State’s duty in section [Duty to support statutory youth provision] to require by regulations maintained schools and academies to co-operate with their local authority in the provision of youth services.’.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 10—D uty to support statutory youth provision—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must make regulations with the purpose of ensuring that all maintained schools and academies are required to support local authorities where practicable in discharging their statutory duties under section 507B of the Education Act 1996 (duty of local authority to secure access to educational and recreational leisure-time activities).

(2) Regulations under subsection (1) must include, but are not limited to—

(a) the provision of school-based positive activities as defined in section 507B of the Education Act 1996,

(b) the provision of support for extended schools services as set out in the Education Act 2002,

(c) discharging the duties of local authorities with regard to information, advice and assistance for carers under section 12 of the Childcare Act 2006,

(d) the provision of information regarding the positive activities available within a locality,

(e) the requirement to consult with parents and carers when providing services as set out in Section 28(4) of the Education Act 2002, and

(f) the provision of youth services by both the statutory and voluntary sector.’.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

Welcome to this afternoon’s debate, Mr Williams.

The amendment reflects what I think will be a theme this afternoon—a growing concern among Labour Members that the problems the Bill will inadvertently create in matters that we care deeply about are legion, and our rising fear that those difficulties have not been thought through. I see the amendment and our debate on it as an opportunity to test the consequences for a key service for many of our young people—youth services and their provision locally, as well as the relationships between schools and youth services.

My specific fear is that the Government are selective in their concern about unnecessary prescription and what that might mean for services on the ground. We have just debated safeguarding, and I urge the Minister, if he has not done so, to read the report of the Laming inquiry and to think again about some of the issues we have discussed. In youth provision, relationships between schools and a range of organisations bring benefits for both sides, and that is especially true of youth services.

I see schools as a key part of the jigsaw of providing youth services for young people in any local community, and I know from the countless e-mails that I have received over the past couple of days that many people in the sector share that view. Labour Members therefore feel that it is inconsistent to exclude schools from some relationships while health care services, youth workers or mental health care services remain parts of such relationships. With the amendment, my aim is to explore how we might be able to protect and extend the good work that many schools are doing in partnership with local authorities in the face of the changes that the Government seem intent on making.

The amendment closely reflects section 507B of the Education Act 1996, which is at the heart of this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West will talk about that, too. Section 507B ensured that, for the first time, a single body held lead responsibility for securing young people’s access to what are called “positive activities.” There is a relationship with schools and to the Bill because of the duties the Bill imposes to secure, as far as practically possible, services that promote the well-being of young people through the provision of educational and leisure-time activities. Youth services have a role in supporting those aims, and I want to discuss the two sides of that coin.

First, it benefits local authorities to have an active relationship with youth services in trying to deliver services for young people and to meet those aims. I am sure that everyone in the House sees that as a positive, constructive contribution to our local communities. Secondly, there are also benefits to schools in terms of the learning environment that is created through working with those partners. My concern is that if we start to unhook schools from relationships with local authorities in the guise of removing unnecessary prescription, the public benefits that we get from such relationships may inadvertently be lost. The Bill needs to protect both sides of that coin, which is what the amendment seeks to do.

In how schools are supported, the amendment refers specifically to extended schools. That relationship is comparatively new, but I am sure that many of us have seen the benefits of the extended schools programme beginning to take place in our local areas. In Walthamstow last summer, a number of fantastic youth activities involving schools were provided, which made a real difference to many young people. Pupils or people who knew a school were able to use its facilities for activities that were provided by a range of voluntary and statutory sector organisations.

Such work requires a lot of co-ordination. I am concerned that as we start to unhook schools from local authorities, the relationships that enable such co-ordination, support for youth workers and youth provision in the broader sense deteriorates. To be frank, my local authority found the work frustrating to begin with, because some schools were more keen than others to take part—there was a difference in schools’ appreciation of the value of working with the local authority.

The amendment also highlights the importance of supporting consultation between young people and parents in deciding what sort of youth provision a local authority will offer. I am concerned that much of the Bill seems inadvertently to remove the voice of parents and young people in determining their services. The belief that professionals will always work with young people in a uniform manner may be mistaken—we cannot be sure of that. One aim of the amendment is to ensure that where local authorities are working actively with young people in determining youth services, they can draw on the support and encouragement of schools in doing so.

The other side of that is how youth provision helps schools. It particularly helps to create the type of environment that the Ministers want in schools, in which young people are supported to achieve. A later amendment, which also reflects my concerns about the implications of the Bill for special educational needs, mirrors a similar concern. When we take away local relationships that help schools to develop a learning environment in which children can thrive, we make it harder for all sides—we make it harder for the young people and for the teachers.

In the past couple of days, I have been deluged with examples from across the country of youth services that are helping schools to achieve good outcomes. In Durham, youth workers are helping to provide sexual health services, which helps young people in their personal health and social education. In Wales, youth workers in the Oasis project are working closely to support schools in dealing with behaviour and attainment challenges. In Devon, youth workers are joining mental health workers within schools to support young people in adolescence who have developed mental health concerns. In Surrey and Halton, youth workers, in partnership with schools, are helping to build the confidence of the young people. Such confidence is critical to their educational attainment in school, but it also helps them to grow.

All of us remember that adolescence is a difficult period of time in the best of cases, so helping young people whose confidence is lacking is important to developing their confidence and the soft skills that will help them to achieve in the classroom. The amendment tries to take the best elements of schools working with local authorities through partnerships, youth services, or mental health services and protect those relationships. Schools could, therefore, draw on the good work that has taken place so far, and build on it in future.

I hope that the Minister will accept that one of our concerns about selective application of the principle of unnecessary prescription is that it can be turned round as unnecessary public benefit. We have seen the relationships that have been developed in partnerships and through forms of co-operation. In other legislation, the Minister and other Departments talk about the importance of co-operation and how it is at risk.

We have talked a lot about the changes that happen after two partners become married in a coalition. The Liberal Democrats have always been strong on the importance of youth services. They have tabled several amendments, as recently as March last year, stressing the importance of protecting partnerships and working at local level, so I hope that they will be receptive to what I and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West are trying to do through our amendment. Our aim is to get clarity from the Ministers about how we might protect youth services in this changing relationship.

I hope that Ministers will respond positively and contemplatively to the idea that partnerships at a local level can be good and can offer public benefits. It is right to build in co-operation, which should be built not on individuals, but on institutions. Such co-operation is commonplace in the way people work. Just as we need to do build such relationships around safeguarding, so we need to build them around youth provision. That is the purpose of the amendment, and I look forward to a positive response from the Minister for a change.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

Following on from what my hon. Friend said, I shall talk a bit more about the statutory duty on local authorities to provide positive activities for young people, which by guidance was defined as youth work. Youth workers have a distinct approach to education and many schools have accepted that they make a valuable contribution to the educational support of young people. Many schools have seen the benefit of working in partnership to support young people, not only those who are underachieving and those who have additional social problems, but young people who do not have particular problems apart from those of growing up. The schools also see it as part of their contribution to the integrated targeted youth support service. As a result of the drastic cuts that are being made to youth services, however, they will not be readily available to schools. New clause 10 is about schools having a responsibility to contribute to and

“to support local authorities where practicable in discharging their statutory duties under section 507B of the Education Act 1996”

including the duty of local authorities to consult young people on the shape of the services that should be offered to them, and the duty of schools to address not only the qualifications of students but their mental, physical and emotional health.

A school is not, and should not be, an island. It is part of its community. Often it has the best buildings that the community has to offer. The amendment is not only about allowing the community and young people to use the buildings—although that makes a valuable contribution, particularly to groups such as scouts and guides—but about the fact that shoving more schooling at children does not work for an awful lot of them.

I used to manage a project for young people in public care, and a tension always existed about how we should raise achievement with young people, particularly those in care. The educationalists were pushing for young people to have more lessons and more input in the various subjects, to encourage them to achieve and get better qualifications. From the other side, however, we would say that they actually needed support to sort their heads out. If someone’s head is a mush, it does not matter how much a teacher tries to put information into it; that information will not stay. The issue is about addressing the social and emotional needs of young people to enable them to learn and to thrive.

I asked the field to give some examples of some of the partnership work that it is doing in schools. A common strand ran through it. Some of it was about services to all young people, such as Duke of Edinburgh award schemes and sexual health programmes, but there was also the targeted support and services for those who were experiencing personal, social or educational difficulties. I want to talk about a few of those examples.

Bodyzone runs at Wheatley Park school and is advertised as a teacher-free zone, where young people can come in total confidence to talk about their issues. The programme involves true partnership work between a sexual health nurse, school nurse and youth worker, who all deal with their particular field of expertise. The youth worker deals particularly with peer pressure, family problems, bullying and relationships.

In Kent, there is a community room scheme that offers sexual health sessions and a self-esteem programme. Making a difference—I like MAD—is a room where vulnerable young people can come at lunch breaks to address their issues and make new friends. Youth workers are involved in PSHE lessons, looking at things such as sociology and life skills, youth crime and drugs.

Student voice allows young people to have an input through their school councils into what their schools should be like and to address issues that are important to them. In Milton Keynes, Oasis works with the Milton Keynes academy and various other schools to provide after-school and holiday activities. It works in and out of school hours with young people who are experiencing difficulties.

Tibshelf school identified that young people who were questioning their sexual identity needed additional support, and we know that young lesbians and gay young men suffer a great deal of bullying in schools. The school formed an LGBT network, which was supported by the youth service, to support young people who were experiencing such difficulties. Young people at that school who are not engaged in school are undertaking a 10-week programme with the youth services’ outdoor education programme. The upshot of all these programmes is that young people are engaging better in the schools when they go back.

There has been a lot of evidence from youth workers in Surrey, who talked about peer education and about a year 7 girls’ drop-in, to enable girls to look at healthy eating, team building and body image, and to do craft work, helping girls to come together who were not settling easily into secondary school. Warlingham school has done an anti-bullying DVD. Runnymede promotes educational engagements. It talked about one young girl with learning difficulties who had been excluded from school. She attended the PEER group and is now going to achieve OCN qualifications. She would have left school with no qualifications, had it not been for the alternative provision working closely with schools.

Lakers talked about first aid qualifications, ASDAN and OCN life skills. It talked about one young man who would not interact with pupils or staff at the school. He always hid his face and looked down. Now he is engaged in the programme. He actually initiates conversations, and holds his head up high when he walks around the school.

Redbridge enacted “Question Time” debates, seeking to engage young people in the political process. There are many other examples of different projects. I am thinking particularly of one in Oxfordshire, where a youth worker talked about job awareness courses and drug intervention work with young people, and said that many schools were calling on youth workers to work in partnership with them, but that that work would have to stop, because all the youth workers in Oxfordshire were being made redundant.

Overall, young people involved in these programmes either re-engage in school or achieve their qualifications and accreditation in other ways. The Minister talked about the need to trust schools, but I am getting as frustrated with “trusting schools” as I am with some of the other slogans that he used in the Chamber.

However, not all schools are good schools. The best schools engage in the community and with youth services and other agencies—whether social services or whatever else. The best schools see themselves as the centre of their communities. They see that they have a responsibility—not just for academic achievement, but for helping young people to achieve their full potential in life and for improving their communities.

The amendments are saying, “Yes, we want to support the best schools, but we want all schools to recognise that they have a responsibility.” It is not enough to shove learning into children’s heads and expect them to assimilate it and to achieve. The amendments are saying that different young people have different needs. They do not come to school without bringing all the problems that they may be experiencing at home—whether those are with parents who are drug users, parents who they have to care for because of disability or other issues, or issues that they may have with their own mental health or with their own activities. How do we ensure that those young people fulfil their potential and become rounded human beings without, for example, unwanted pregnancies, or dropping out of school altogether?

Partnership approaches work—bringing in people with different educational skills to take different approaches, particularly towards young people who are not achieving, who cannot accept the normal way of sitting in class and assimilating information. Those young people need additional support. I hope that the Minister will look positively on the amendment and see how we can continue to provide those additional services to young people.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Benjamin Disraeli said that opinions alter but characters can only develop. The hon. Lady is right that as characters develop through youth they are influenced by many things, not just by what happens to them at school or even at home. It is absolutely the case that the opportunities we can provide for people to interact both with their peers and with others, adults in particular, have an immense effect on the development of character. That is why the Government fully appreciate the spirit that lies behind the amendment and the context in which it has been set by the hon. Members for Walthamstow and for Bolton West, who speak eloquently with both experience and heart on these matters.

My sons are, respectively, Beavers and Cubs. The youth movements—Scouts and Guides, Brownies and Cubs, Beavers and Rainbows and many others, such as the Boys’ Brigade, that we could go on to list ad nauseam—do immense good in building lives and shaping communities. I am not sure whether any of that would be greatly affected by the amendment.

The hon. Lady described a myriad of virtuous activities and reminded the Committee that these things happened without the duty, which is a very recent addition to the panoply of Government initiatives and directives. Oscar Wilde said—I paraphrase—that when Governments start to take themselves seriously and get involved in things, that is when they really start to cause problems.

The previous Government certainly demonstrated that fault. We now hear from the hon. Member for Cardiff West that it was all the fault of the Liberal Democrats. The previous Government were reluctant to introduce regulation but were prompted to do so, he told us earlier, by the overtures of the Liberal Democrats. I find that hard to believe and untypically ungenerous of the hon. Gentleman. I know that he wants to take his fair share of the blame for the excessive regulation that emanated from that Government, particularly in their dying days.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

Does the Minister accept that it will be far more difficult for the best schools that have worked in partnership and had youth workers when youth services disappear throughout the country?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I would not want to give licence to that calumny. The hon. Lady knows that this summer the Government are piloting the national citizens service for around 11,000 16-year-olds, offering the opportunity for personal challenge, community service and social mixing. We will evaluate that carefully. I agree with her that its impact needs to be evaluated, but she also knows that we are investing £134 million in capital funding over the next two years to enable to construction of up to 57 new myplace centres, first-class hubs for local services for young people.

The hon. Lady is right—let us find common ground—that the interface between schools and other services and the interaction between all of those who have an interest in and a concern for young people’s development are important. But we should not present a parody of what has happened thus far and what might happen from now on.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

Does the Minister really believe that three weeks of summer outward bound activities, and perhaps a little bit of a follow-up if we are lucky and the voluntary organisation is able to manage that, is comparable to the day-in, day-out work done by many youth services and youth providers, both voluntary and statutory, in our local communities? That work is now at risk and is going in many areas as a result of the cuts.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I think that character-changing development can turn on a day, on an hour, on a week, on a holiday and on one single relationship. But of course, the hon. Lady is also right that the continuing work of some of the youth organisations that I have already highlighted is of immense value. I pay tribute to those organisations and all those who make their work possible are also immensely important.

I share the concern that children and young people in a local area should have suitable access to positive activities and youth services outside school, but that does not require a specific duty on schools. Out-of-school activities can be immensely beneficial to young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness is not in his place, but I should say that I welcome the decision of the Select Committee, of which he is Chair, to launch a new inquiry into the provision of services for young people— primarily those aged between 13 and 25—beyond the school or college day.

The results of that work will help inform how the Government move forward, but as I have said, in the pursuit of what I think is a shared objective—to provide as rich an experience for young people as possible—much of this work was already taking place voluntarily before the duty to co-operate came into force in January 2010.

The issue of providing youth services highlights some important challenges and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walthamstow for raising the matter. However, we do not believe that it is necessary or right to place additional duties on schools or academies to co-operate with local authorities or others in respect of the provision of positive activities for young people. I think that schools, rather than being encouraged, might be held back by over-prescription.

Let me see whether I can clarify the position for the hon. Lady. We should look at best practice and at ways of advertising and exporting that best practice. We should remove the barriers that might inhibit the kind of collaboration that we have all celebrated today. However, I do not think that the continuation of that duty would play any significant role in achieving our shared purpose. On that basis and in that spirit, I invite her to withdraw the amendment.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

Words fail me. Frankly, the Government have a blasé attitude to youth services and to what will happen to the opportunities for young people. I hope that the Minister will look in particular at the scouts and the guides, who are suffering because local authorities are putting up their rates, so scouts and guides will not be able even to hire the huts to take part in activities that might fill the gap before the Bill damages those relationships at local level. The aim of the amendment is simply to protect those relationships, not extend or alter them. I am saddened that the Minister does not seem to be concerned about the future of those relationships. I recognise that there are challenges about how that might be implemented.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I do not want to be unkind to the hon. Lady, who is new to the House. I am immensely generous and never patronising, but it is not that I do not care about those relationships. The amendment is specifically about that duty, which came into force only recently. She will be familiar with the Ofsted report that looked at the best practice that I described. It was published after that duty came into force, but dealt with matters that prevailed before it. It identified that much of that good work is happening, so we just do not think that that duty is salient in achieving the outcomes that she wishes to achieve.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I, too, would never wish to be patronising to the Minister but I wish that he had actually read the amendment, which is about understanding what implications the repeal of the duty may have. It is not necessarily about the duty itself. If he reads it carefully, it is about protecting the regulations that already exist.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That is semantic.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

The Minister suggests that that is semantic but it goes to the heart of the matter. Our concern is that the Government have not thought through the implications and the unintended, I am sure, consequences of the Bill for the provision of services at local level. I do not doubt that he is sincere in his desire to see youth services thrive at local level. Those of us who have actually worked in the sector and seen the implications of those powers and regulations—not just the consequences of the duty to co-operate but how the powers fit together at local level—are deeply concerned. The amendment was tabled to raise that point.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

The Minister referred to the Select Committee on Education, which will carry out an investigation on these matters. As a member of that Committee, my motivation is to get this matter on the agenda because I am concerned that by the time that report is published, there will not be a youth service to look at.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

My hon. Friend speaks with a wealth of experience and has actually worked with these organisations at local level. I look forward to hearing from other members of the Committee about their experiences of the sector and the challenges about which we are all concerned. The amendment was tabled to reflect concern about the consequences of the duty to co-operate being repealed, rather than the duty to co-operate being repealed in itself. I appreciate that we have had that debate already. I will withdraw the amendment because it was a probing amendment, but I put the Minister on notice that those of us who represent and have worked—

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I do not want there to be even the slightest trace of bad blood between the hon. Lady and me. I hear what she says about the Select Committee inquiry. Of course—I put this on record—we will take careful note of the outcome of that inquiry and its recommendations, which will help to shape what we do as we move forward.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I appreciate the Minister’s recognising that perhaps he misread the amendment in the first place. As I said, the amendment was tabled to probe the Minister about the Government’s thinking on the future of youth services and to see whether they really understand the relationships at a local level between schools, youth services and the health care service.

The Opposition are satisfied of the importance of the Select Committee inquiry and the need to press the Government further about how youth services are provided. I put the Minister on notice that no doubt many people across the youth sector will be writing to him shortly to help improve his understanding of those relationships at a local level. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I beg to move amendment 143, in clause 30, page 31, line 34, at end add—

‘(5) The repeal of the requirement on governing bodies and proprietors of schools to co-operate with the local authority by this section is without prejudice to the Secretary of State’s duty in section [Achievement for All Partnerships] to establish Achievement for All Partnerships.’.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 8—Achievement for All Partnerships—

‘(1) The Secretary of State shall bring in regulations to establish Achievement for All Partnerships, which shall have responsibility for designing and directing a whole-family approach to the assessment of the needs of and delivery of services to children with special educational needs and additional learning needs.

(2) Regulations under subsection (1) shall require relevant persons to participate in Achievement for All Partnerships.

(3) “Relevant persons” for the purposes of this section include, but shall not be limited to—

(a) maintained schools;

(b) academies;

(c) the relevant local authority;

(d) relevant health services;

(e) relevant learning and skills improvement services;

(f) the relevant police force; and

(g) relevant voluntary organisations.’.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

Me again. The amendment follows the pattern of the previous one in trying to understand the connection between what the Bill will do to the provision of local services, the Green Paper on special educational needs and the consequences of the unhooking of relationships at a local level for children with special educational needs. It seeks to build on the evidence that we have about what works at a local level in the provision of services to children with special educational needs. I know that the Minister will respond, although I am not sure which one; I certainly hope it is the one who is actually listening.

Before we look at the consequences of the Bill, and the achievement for all partnerships, it is useful to reflect on what we are talking about. The Committee has talked a lot about special educational needs and the importance of early intervention, a concern that we all share. One of my concerns is how we deal with special educational needs—I am addressing the whole Committee; I am sure that everyone is as deeply concerned about the matter as we are. My concerns are about the onset of special educational needs later on in a child’s development, particularly through mental health issues in early adolescence, what services there are to support those people, and dealing with young people for whom special educational and additional learning needs will be a fact of life for a number of years.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Lady is making an extremely important point, too infrequently made when we debate special educational needs. Many such needs, as she rightly says, are dynamic because they are acquired or change their nature over time. Has she considered the code of practice that accompanies legislation on special educational needs, which is critical to determine both the quantification of need and the specification of provision to meet that need? In that spirit, she might invite my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton to have a look at that too.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

The wonders of a Tuesday afternoon with Ministers rapidly recognising that there is merit in scrutiny and ideas! I take on board the Minister’s point, and I am sure that his colleague will wish to commit on it further.

My concern is about implementation at a local level and the complex and sometimes messy partnerships that need to be put together to support young people with special educational needs—partnerships in both the classroom and the broader community. As a starting point, I would like to put on record the numbers of some of the young people whom we are talking about. The latest data, from 2004, showed that one in 10 children and young people aged five to 16 had a clinically diagnosed mental disorder; 4% had an emotional disorder; 6% had a conduct disorder; 2% had hyper-kinetic disorder, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, from which one could say that some Government Members may be suffering at this point; and 1% had a less common disorder, such as autism. In our previous discussions about special educational needs we looked primarily at children with autism, and I encourage the Committee to recognise that there is a broader range of issues and concerns that we might be looking at when delivering for special educational needs. The data also show that the gap between those identified at key stage 4 as having a special educational need and their peers is widening, and the gap in educational attainment is growing as well. People have also been concerned about other issues. For example, eight out of 10 children with a special educational need have been bullied and six out of 10 have been physically hurt.

Of course, schools are a critical place for providing the education support that young people need to achieve, but often people also need support outside the classroom. The relationships that now enable schools to develop that support are not necessarily those that begin in the classroom; they are those that begin with relationships built by professionals working with parents to support a child, with the child often having the opportunity to contribute too. That is why the educational Green Paper offers some interesting ideas for many of the Opposition, and I welcome some of those ideas about how those relationships might be joined up. That is why the amendment that I have proposed refers specifically to the ideas and relationships set out in the Green Paper. I hope that Ministers, and those concerned about special educational needs, find much in it to admire, and recognise the need to take on board how that whole-family approach might be developed.

I am concerned about the slight contradiction between the mantra of “trust professionals” and “let’s not burden local authorities or schools with those relationships,” and the desire set out in the Green Paper for relationships built at a local level to deliver services. There is a need for greater collaboration to join up services, in particular the joint commissioning and managing of services, or the combination of services within a single local authority management structure—for example, through sensory support or educational psychology services. My concern is that very often the services that schools might want to draw on to provide a child with special educational needs services will not be those held within schools. Accessing them will require schools to have a relationship with the local authority so that they can identify where to find those services.

I am minded by the Special Education Consortium’s contribution to the Bill. They say that they have yet to hear how the Government envisage the new structures in health, social services and schools will work together, and that they want the Government to set out more clearly how that will happen. I think that all of us who are worried about the provision of special educational needs are concerned that the Green Paper was published in the middle of the Education Bill process—perhaps not at exactly 5.37 in the afternoon, but certainly interacting with the process. It is very difficult to see how these systems will work together, not least because there seems to be a juxtaposition between the common assessment frameworks currently used, the Green Paper’s proposals—particularly the new powers around an educational health and support plan—and the disconnection between local authorities and schools.

Common assessment frameworks are a key part of delivering services, and as we heard when discussing the previous amendment many youth workers are involved in the provision of common assessment frameworks, alongside health care workers, schools and indeed the voluntary sector. We know that that multi-agency working approach is effective, but I fear that the Bill will hinder the development of that relationship and the noble ambitions in the Green Paper. I am anxious that the Government set out how they think these things will fit together. We see that in the achievement for all partnerships, which I note have been highlighted in the Green Paper as an example of the kind of relationship the Government want to see taken forward. That sets out a very clear relationship for such partnerships—for well-being partnerships to be put together; for panels to work together; for improving the achievement and progress of children with special educational needs; for the involvement of educational psychologists, a service that we know is at risk because of cuts; for the direct involvement of young people in determining the educational environment they wish to learn in; and for the involvement of health care services, particularly with children and adolescent mental health services.

I also want to draw the Committee’s attention to my concerns over how other changes that are occurring, particularly in the Localism Bill, might affect the Government’s ability to deliver on their ambitions for special educational needs. There is therefore a need to establish a partnership and way of working that protects special educational needs provision. In particular, I have been written to by a number of residents—as I am sure Members on all sides have—about the Localism Bill and the review of statutory duties placed on local government. I think this comes from the proposal that there is unnecessary prescription, which the Opposition see as the public benefit of co-operation.

A mother in Walthamstow wrote to me:

“I have a son of nine months old who has Down’s Syndrome and I am profoundly worried about how proposed changes might impact on his future. I believe that local authority duties that cover the provision of services and support for disabled children and children with special educational needs are vital and should be kept. Rights for disabled children and those with special educational needs are not a ‘barrier’ to the delivery of services—they are vital tools that help families and local areas to make decisions about what support they can provide for families. Local authorities provide services based on their statutory duties. These duties set out what they are legally obliged to provide, and give families and professionals a framework to help decide the services that disabled children will receive. Many disabled children and their families have to fight to get the services they need to lead ordinary lives. Now that overall funding for local services has been reduced, and local authorities are looking for ways to cut costs, there is an even greater pressure on families trying to get support.”

I believe that the same criticism could be made about removing those duties on schools to work with local authorities, and that is why I tabled an amendment to try to take account of what is in the Green Paper and of the good practice that the Government seem to want to expand on. I want to hear more clearly from Ministers about that joined-up thinking. There is the partisan concern that we have about the disconnection between different Departments and different reforms, and there is the human, compassionate concern that we all have that says, woe betide all those who, in 18 months’ or two years’ time, will be filling our surgeries, fighting to get the services that they need for their young people. We may see terrible safeguarding issues emerging, and the Government must acknowledge that sometimes co-operation is not Stalinist but is about public benefit and securing a better outcome for every child, because indeed every child does matter.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

I support the amendment and want to point out its merits to the Minister. I was involved in setting up the achievement for all projects. There were 15 of them across the country, and I was partly involved in setting up the one in Oldham and, to a lesser extent, in monitoring the outcomes of the one in Sheffield. The Government acknowledge in the Green Paper that it has been a highly successful programme, which should be rolled out across the country. It did exactly what the Green Paper proposes. It reduced the labelling of children with SEN; it clearly identified the difference between children with SEN and those who are under-achieving—there is a huge difference, and many of those children have gone through the SEN sausage machine in the past—and it sought to help both those groups, and was highly successful in doing so. It appears to fit in incredibly well with the objectives in the Green Paper, which I would argue are slightly long on issues and short on solutions—but that is a different issue for a different day.

We had a helpful and positive discussion here last week about the disappearance before our eyes of careers services. I want to make some special pleading for SEN specialist support services, which again are disappearing before our eyes. There are so many highly specialised people taking early retirement and voluntary redundancy on 31 March, and there will be massive pressure on educational psychology, on low-incidence SEN services, and on services for children who are visually impaired or blind, as well as the higher-incidence services such as those for autism and behaviour.

There is much merit in the new clause, which fits in very well with the objectives in the Green Paper. If the Minister intervenes now, it may prevent a disaster in those low-incidence SEN services, which are disappearing before our eyes. From 1 April, many will not be able to be supported.

Mark Durkan (Social Democratic and Labour Party, Foyle)

The point that I wish to make on the amendment and the new clause could have been made in relation to some previous amendments. It certainly applies to the clause as a whole and to some of the following clauses in this part of the Bill. It relates to questions on which I seek assurance from the Minister. I wish to ensure that the effect of the clauses and of any rejection by the Government of the amendment and the new clause would not be to do injury to the intention of Parliament when it passed the Autism Act 2009 in the previous Parliament. Unfortunately, my point would be slightly too long to make as an intervention, so I am raising the matter now in lieu of an intervention on the Minister. Under the Danny Blanchflower rule, when he was manager of Northern Ireland, we had to equalise before the other team scored. I am getting the long intervention in now.

In the previous Parliament, the Autism Bill was reported on a cross-party basis. Of course, it was sponsored by someone who was then an Opposition Front-Bencher and who is now in Cabinet as the Secretary of State for Wales. Some of the arguments made during the early stages of consideration of the Autism Bill were effectively that sufficient powers and duties already existed, including some of the existing powers and duties that we are discussing in relation to the clause. The case was made persuasively to Parliament that those various pre-existing powers and the duties on local authorities and on others to co-operate with local authorities could be assisted if there was further legislation to provide, in my phrase, bespoke autism Acts. They could be used to complement and give more articulate effect to some of those duties on local authorities, on education authorities and on a range of service providers.

The argument was made that those promoting the Bill—they belonged to all parties—were not trying in any way to minimise the significance of the existing provisions and services; they were trying to complement and reinforce them. It concerns me that the Government may be inadvertently removing some of the provisions on which the assumptions that people had when they voted for the Autism Bill rested. I want assurances from the Government that through the Bill and the attitude they will take in relation to the amendments, such as that tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, they are not taking air out of the tyres of the Autism Act, they are not removing some of the presumptions on which it rested and they therefore will not injure the promise that Parliament thought it was making when it approved that legislation.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

It has been a good, well-informed debate about an important issue, but it has ranged slightly wider than the amendment—although I would not dream of saying so. I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Walthamstow for the Green Paper and I welcome her comments about the breadth of the term “special educational needs”, because it covers a huge range of challenges, problems and conditions.

The hon. Member for North West Durham raised the issue of low-incidence special needs. Before coming on to talk about the amendment and without steering too wide of it, I want to discuss briefly the Green Paper and the relationship with the common assessment framework, to which the hon. Lady referred. I shall also mention the multi-agency approach that is outlined in the SEN Green Paper. All those who come into contact with families have a part to play in identifying those children whose needs are not being adequately met by the system so far. Some of those needs can be helped by early intervention and some may need referral to more specialist services, including local authority social care.

Many local areas and services see the benefits where, with the family’s consent, an assessment is made using a format that is common to all local agencies and that can be shared, as appropriate, with other professionals. Local arrangements of that kind are appropriate for children who do not require statutory assessments for special educational needs or social care, but who may, for a variety of reasons, need support from other agencies. That might be the sort of assessment that schools would choose to conduct to examine any underlying causal factors—we discussed that under the behavioural clauses earlier in Committee—such as mental health, family problems or where a pupil displays poor behaviour that does not improve despite the effective policies of the school.

Before I come to the amendment, I want to refer to the comments of the hon. Member for North West Durham about support services. We recognise the important role that local authorities play in meeting children’s special educational needs and through the provision of SEN support services. In the schools White Paper, we announced that we will be reviewing school funding, and, in the SEN Green Paper, we ask a question about funding SEN support staff, to inform that school funding review. There is no change to the responsibility of local authorities for SEN services, but we are aware of the changes that will happen as a consequence of wider education policies, and we are consulting on that.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

The direction of travel and what the Minister has said about the White Paper and schools funding are welcome, but the crisis is now. Huge numbers of local authority staff are going, because of Government cuts, and SEN specialist services are part of those cuts. In local authorities that I know well, I am seeing huge numbers of highly specialised and incredibly skilled members of staff, working in low-incidence SEN services, who are going on 31 March or who will be subject to compulsory redundancy shortly afterwards. That crisis is happening now. If we wait until the review of school funding, those people will have gone. I must say that I have not seen things as bad as this since 1997.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I do not want to take the debate into a discussion about the state of the public finances, but we have had to take some difficult decisions. Local authorities must make the right decisions, however, because their statutory duties remain in place. The decisions that we had to make in the emergency Budget and in the spending review in order to prevent the country going into financial meltdown take us back to the public spending levels of 2007. It should be possible, with careful husbandry of resources, to manage things, so that the most vulnerable people in our society do not suffer the brunt of the savings that must be made right across the state sector. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State have made it clear that they do not expect the most vulnerable to bear the brunt. The spending review has been designed deliberately to prevent that sector of society from suffering. I would be disappointed if there are local authorities that are taking the approach that the hon. Lady has mentioned.

Pat Glass rose—

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

Order. I hope that the intervention addresses the amendment and the new clause, rather than the Government’s spending priorities.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

I will try to restrict my remarks to the amendment. I just want to say that that does not matter to the parent of a child with SEN. The people who are disappearing now matter to them.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Yes, those decisions can only be taken by local authorities at the local level. As I said, the spending review has been configured in such a way that such decisions should not be necessary. Local authorities must be careful in how they deliver the necessary savings, and we expect them to find those savings in other areas.

I want to speak to amendment 143 and new clause 8 on the issue of special educational needs. On the new clause, the hon. Member for Walthamstow has served the Committee well by raising her issues. We had a short and good-humoured debate on a highly sensitive and important matter, which enabled us to discuss the work that schools have undertaken through Achievement for All. New clause 8 would require schools and other bodies, including health agencies and police forces, to participate in Achievement for All partnerships. The partnerships would be responsible for using a whole-family approach to assess the needs of and to deliver services to children with special educational needs and additional learning needs.

Achievement for All, which was introduced under the previous Administration, is a school-based programme that aims to improve both the attainment and progress of pupils who have special educational needs or who are disabled, and their wider outcomes. It has already shown early successes, as we have acknowledged in our Green Paper on special educational needs and disability, “Support and aspiration”. However, Achievement for All has succeeded without the need for regulations or a requirement that certain local services such as the police shall participate.

Unlike the proposals in the new clause, the programme is not prescriptive about how a child’s needs are assessed. Achievement for All has relied on schools’ professionalism to assess their pupils’ needs and to make appropriate provisions for them. We agree with that approach. I do not want to make this into a piece of jargon, but we trust schools’ professional judgement; school leaders and head teachers know what works for their pupils and parents and we trust them to exercise that judgment.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I hope that the Minister will accept that one reason for tabling new clause 8 and the previous new clause was that the environment will change as a direct result of the Bill. Many of the relationships that were put in place through the duties that are being repealed in the Bill will no longer exist. That will make it much harder for the professionals in whom he has so much trust to do the work that these partnerships seek to set out.

Reading the Green Paper, one of my concerns is that the processes in relation to partnership are the very processes that the Bill will unpin. In 18 months’ or two years’ time a new Bill could be brought before the House to do exactly what the new clause sets out to do and to build those partnerships again so that parents do not have a limited number of options for their children. Will he confirm that there is some thinking going on about how one might deliver the kind of relationships that currently take place within the framework that the Bill is unpinning and that help to make Achievement for All possible?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I will come to that point in one moment. Let me continue my argument. We know that the approaches used in Achievement for All can have a very positive impact on pupil outcomes. That is why, alongside the Green Paper, we have launched a tender for bids from external organisations to spread the practices that those involved with Achievement for All have developed. We will ask the successful bidder to work with the voluntary and community sector to develop a quality mark for those schools that are developing excellent and innovative SEN support.

Amendment 143 would require maintained schools and academies to co-operate with the local authority and the partners set out in new clause 8, through the Achievement for All partnerships. Those partners are broadly the same as the current Children’s Trust relevant partners. It is a further attempt to place a statutory requirement where none is needed. That is not the best way to deal with the important and sensitive issue of children with special educational needs. We all agree that the early identification of any barriers to learning, including special educational needs, and the resulting provision of appropriate support are vital in ensuring that every young person is able to reach their potential.

In the Green Paper, we set out proposals to ensure that teachers have training to enable them to identify, confidently and accurately, where pupils have special educational needs and to provide appropriate support. We are consulting on proposals under which local authorities and other local services will communicate the range of support available for families with children who are disabled or who have special educational needs. However, there are some children and young people with the most complex needs who will require support across a number of agencies. We also propose, therefore, to trial a new approach to statutory assessment, which in time could replace the current process for providing a statement of SEN.

The new, single assessment process and education health and care plan will bring together the services on which the child and family rely, and set out clearly who will be responsible for which service. The assessment and plan for children and young people with the most complex needs will involve a commitment from all parties across education, health and social care to provide their services.

There is some excellent practice in schools and, as I have just set out, we want that practice to spread. We do not think, however, that the right way to do that is through prescriptive regulations or statutory requirements. I hope that the hon. Member for Walthamstow is reassured by the range of measures that we are proposing to improve the identification, provision and support for children with special educational needs.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

The Minister talks about proposals for the new early-years education, health and care plans that are being trialled. I would also like the Minister to comment on additional learning needs. There is a lot of talk about special educational needs, but the new clause also mentions additional learning needs and how they will be met without those kinds of partnerships.

On the proposed new plans, if a child has one of those plans and there are statutory obligations within them to schools, health care services and voluntary organisations, will the Minister set out more clearly how they will be enforced without an organisation to pull all that together? What proposal does he have for the delivery of those services without those relationships already being in place?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

We will learn, from the assessment and planned pathfinders, whether and how those approaches might work best. If the pathfinder suggests that it is necessary, we will introduce all the measures required to bring about cross-sector working by a multi-agency planning process by 2014, for both special educational needs and additional learning needs.

I hope that, without allowing the debate to become a major debate on the contents of the SEN Green Paper, the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

The Minister said it all when he mentioned that the Government will have to learn. They may well end up having to introduce new powers to do exactly what the amendment aims to do—reconstitute those relationships. At that point, I am sure that that will no longer be unnecessary prescription, but a recognised public benefit to get organisations to work together to deliver services for young people, not just in the early years when they have special educational needs, but throughout their educational lifecycle.

This probing amendment is an attempt to understand how the Government’s thinking on the Education Bill and the Green Paper will fit together. It has been shown very clearly that they do not yet fit together. I will withdraw the amendment, but I put on the record my deep concern for the future of special educational needs as a result of the proposals. I hope and pray that the Minister will rapidly do some homework to figure out how they will fit together, because there are many young people, not just in my constituency but across the country, whose educational, social and personal outcomes will be damaged. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

Earlier, the Minister anticipated what I am going to say next. We have had a full debate on clause 30 already and I am minded not to have a stand part debate.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move amendment 145, in clause 30, page 31, line 34, at end add—

‘(5) The repeal of the requirement on governing bodies, proprietors of schools and FE institutions to co-operate with the local authority by this section is without prejudice to the Secretary of State’s duty in section [Duty to Participate in Health and Wellbeing Boards] to require by order maintained schools and academies to co-operate in the work of their local authority’s Health and Wellbeing Board.’.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 141, in clause 31, page 32, line 22, at end add—

‘(5) Notwithstanding subsection (2), the governing bodies and proprietors of schools and FE institutions must cooperate with any relevant provision of the local Health and Wellbeing Stategy published under section 116A (Health and social care: joint health and wellbeing strategies) of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007.’.

New clause 11—Duty to Participate in Health and Wellbeing Boards

‘The Secretary of State shall require by order maintained schools, Academies and FE institutions to—

(a) be represented on Health and Wellbeing Boards established under section 178 (Establishment of Health and Wellbeing Boards), of the Health and Social Care Act 2011; and

(b) participate in integrated working in the provision on health and social care services under section 179 (Duty to encourage integrated working) of the Health and Social Care Act 2011.’.’.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

These are probing amendments to find out the Government’s thinking. The Health and Social Care Bill introduces new local bodies, health and well-being boards, that have to produce a health and well-being strategy—a new planning requirement. The valuable role that schools can play in promoting child health, and future adult health, can sometimes be easily forgotten. I have seen some very good work on that and I am sure that the Minister has, too.

I accept that the Minister may not have the answers, but it would be useful to know the Department’s view on those boards and on school participation. Is there an expectation that schools will co-operate with the new boards? Does the Department for Education expect schools to be represented on the boards? How will the boards fit in with local safeguarding boards for children? Do the Government have a view on what is left of children’s trusts becoming accountable to health and well-being boards?

Given that there is no clause stand part debate, I shall make a general point about duties. It really took from the Children Act 2004, with no duties on schools, until the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 for it to become clear that gentle persuasion was not sufficient. That is why duties were put in place and we certainly believe that the removal of those duties sends a powerful signal that the Government do not think that even gentle persuasion is required. The amendments are probing and I ask the Minister to answer those questions.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I will try to do what the hon. Gentleman asks. The health and well-being boards were discussed next door on 10 March during Committee discussions of the Health and Social Care Bill. I do not want to stray inadvertently into the territory of another Public Bill Committee, but perhaps I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the needs of children, young people and their families are at the heart of the NHS reforms.

The core purpose of the new health and well-being boards is to encourage joint commissioning across the NHS, social care, public health and other services, such as education, that are related to health. The Government have consulted widely on the membership arrangements of the board and there is broad support for the proposals, which will include directors of children’s services as well as GP consortia, the director of adult social services, the director of public health, at least one elected member and local healthwatch as statutory members. Beyond that core, boards will have the flexibility to invite other members, including schools and FE colleges, as they think appropriate. But the determining principle should be whatever makes sense locally. We will leave it to the local authority and health and well-being board to decide who to invite.

We have already debated our removal of the requirement on schools and colleges to co-operate through children’s trust arrangements. It would be a mistake to require all schools and colleges to be represented on health and well-being boards and to compel them to co-operate with those boards. It is neither practical nor necessary.

Schools and colleges vary enormously in circumstances, size and capacity, and they all act in the best interests of their pupils and students and have long recognised the need to tackle issues that get in the way of young people’s education. They work with partner organisations to do that. But we need to recognise that the small rural primary school, the schools delivering specialist education for young people with communications needs, the inner-city academy, the sixth form and the FE college are all very different from one another, so it is not possible or sensible to try to prescribe a one-size-fits-all rule on how they should engage with local partnership arrangements—and, indeed, with the boards.

The boards will, of course, have an interest in encouraging the involvement of schools and colleges. The board may in particular encourage people who arrange for the provision of any health or social care services and health-related services to work closely together, and this means that where it makes sense locally for schools and colleges to be represented on local health and well-being boards, they will have a voice in encouraging close working arrangements for the provision of those services for children and young people. Quite rightly, arrangements for such representation should be determined locally in a way that is proportionate and appropriate.

I would like to add that, in the reformed system, the joint strategic needs assessment will take on much greater importance, providing commissioners access to expertise so that deep and productive partnerships, including with schools and colleges, can develop new commissioning solutions for the vulnerable people we are discussing today.

Amendment 141 would require schools and FE colleges to co-operate with any relevant provision of the new health and well-being strategies that are currently being legislated for during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill and which will be published by the local health and well-being board. I understand the intention behind the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Cardiff West, which is to ensure that schools and colleges are involved in local strategic planning. That is a principle that all members of the Committee agree with. Schools and colleges should always be considered by those in a planning or strategic role, but I do not believe that the amendment, which would legislate to force schools and colleges to co-operate with the strategies and indirectly give health and well-being boards the power to direct what schools and colleges should prioritise, is the right approach.

The new joint health and well-being strategy will be a concise summary of how organisations will address the health and social care needs of a community, including children’s health, and will help to reduce health inequalities. I hope that I have persuaded the hon. Gentleman that his amendments are not necessary.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

It is curious that the Government should on the one hand be setting up new duties to participate in health and well-being boards and on the other be removing duties to participate in similar institutions for schools and education. However, this was a probing amendment, as I indicated at the outset. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 31

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We touched on planning in the debate on amendment 141. Government requirements on local authorities to produce plans, which affect schools, about how they intend to provide education and children’s services are not new. The word “plan” appears 40 times in the Education Act 1944. That Act principally required local government to produce two plans to be approved by the Education Minister; one was a successful use of central planning and the other was, perhaps, not so successful.

The 1944 Act required every child to be provided with a secondary education. Local government had to follow a plan approved by the Minister, and by the early 1950s, that provision had been achieved through central planning. However, it took another 10 years for the last all-age elementary schools to be converted. The other requirement was to plan for county colleges—the forerunners of what we would know as further education colleges. That is sometimes thought to have not been as successful, because it did not provide a proper legal basis for the development of further education in the following 40 years.

The Minister may correct me if I am wrong, but the effective removal of the children and young people’s plan through clause 31 will remove the last Government requirement for a local authority children’s service to have a plan that is specifically required by legislation. The Department of Health, as we have heard, will require local authorities to help with health and well-being strategies, with which certain bodies must comply. For clarity, will the Minister state whether his Department requires other plans from local authorities? Does he feel that there are any risks of removing the plan to local authorities and schools? Why does health need plans, but not education?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Clause 31 will remove the redundant requirement on governing bodies of maintained schools and local school forums to have regard to the local children and young people’s plan prepared by the children’s trust board. The simple reason why is that local areas are no longer required to prepare a statutory children and young people’s plan.

That does not mean that those bodies should stop planning, but that central Government will not tell them how to do it or who should have regard to such a plan. We revoked the highly prescriptive Children’s Trust Board (Children and Young People’s Plan) (England) Regulations 2010 in October last year to free local partners from the burden of having to produce and publish a local strategy by 1 April, a strategy that would have owed more to central diktat than to local priorities.

The regulations set out in considerable detail not only what the content of the plan should be, but how and where it should be published, the 16 different categories of partners, boards, forums and groups to consult, and even when to review and how to revise the plan. Needless to say, compliance with the regulations added considerably to the bureaucratic burden on local authorities and their partners, including schools and colleges. It resulted in many local areas having an impossibly large number of top priorities—in other words, no priorities. It restricted the freedom of local partners to work together in innovative ways, and it discouraged local creativity and solutions to meet the challenging circumstances that we all faced.

I want to make it clear that the removal of the clause does not mean that we are opposed to planning. On the contrary, we want to support effective planning that genuinely reflects local priorities and the worries of local people. Under the clause, we intend to free local partners and partnerships from the micro-managements of central Government and let them produce genuinely local plans.

Clause 32

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We do not dispute the need to do something about the duty on school governing bodies to publish a school profile. A significant proportion of schools do not publish a profile and parents are denied detailed comparative online information about schools. When we were in Government, we were about to repeal the school profile provision, but that proposal was removed at the behest of the then Opposition in the wash-up last year. The difference between us is that we wanted to replace the school profile with a nationally provided school record card. Alternatively, the Government’s proposal will deny parents useful information, a point to which I shall return in a moment.

In case members of the Committee have forgotten, the school report card would have mainly contained information already held nationally, including school performance data matched with information about the characteristics of pupils, with a small amount of additional information produced by schools on the perceptions of pupils and parents. A two-year pilot of the report card started in September 2009 and to quote the then Minister for Schools, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker),

“it will be a fundamental and radical reform that will answer the demand of schools up and down the country, which is, ‘Do not let our school be judged on just the raw attainment scores’”.––[Official Report, Children, School and Families Public Bill Committee, 4 February 2010; c. 464.]

The view of the present Minister for Schools at that time, which is the view of the Government now, is that all the data currently held in schools should be published, whether it is the proportion gaining five or more GCSEs, the proportion gaining eight or more GCSEs at grades A to C or the proportion gaining an A or B in physics GCSE. He said then:

“Different parents have different priorities about what they want from a school for their children, and we do not believe that it is possible to provide an overall score, which will inevitably involve a very subjective judgement.”––[Official Report, Children, Schools and Families Public Bill Committee, 4 February 2010; c. 463.]

Will the Minister explain what the Government intend to do if and when they publish proposals, rather than bringing changes through the back door as they did with the ex-post publishing of information in accordance with the strictures of the invented English baccalaureate?

One thing that the Government have found in office is that they can—this is true—publish school-level information in any way they like. I do not recall any formal proposal to show the proportion gaining an A or B in physics GCSE, but, as I have just mentioned, we now have information on each secondary school published in accordance with the Secretary of State’s rather antique view of what secondary education is about—the so-called English baccalaureate.

In the space of a few weeks, the Government have done more to interfere with the key stage 4 curriculum than any number of initiatives. The Minister knows that, for better or worse, people tend to value what is measured—in this case what the Government are measuring—rather than the things that ought to be valued.

Secondary schools, as ever, need to demonstrate their position in the league table of what the Government decide is worth measuring—the officially approved table, we might say—and are changing their curriculum to meet that publication requirement, whether or not it is right for their individual pupils. We are not talking about the

“soft bigotry of low expectations”.

The Secretary of State borrowed that quote from George W. Bush, although I doubt that George W. Bush thought of it himself—I may be being unfair to him, but I doubt it. It is about having a broad and relevant curriculum with real choice for students that is fit for the 21st century.

Could the Minister tell the Committee a bit more about the information the Government intend to publish? In what form will it be published, and how will it fit in with the Minister’s previous utterances?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Clause 32 removes the duty for every maintained school in England to prepare and publish a school profile.

At the moment, schools are required to produce a profile by completing an online template that allows for the provision of quantitative and qualitative information about the school. The aim of the profile was to allow parents to compare the information on different schools in a consistent way. Since its introduction, however, only 30% of schools have completed a school profile; 70% of schools have failed to publish a profile, preferring instead to use other means, such as their own websites and newsletters, to communicate information to parents.

In a public consultation carried out by the previous Administration alongside their 2008 White Paper, 84% of respondents agreed that the requirement to complete a school profile should be ended. Respondents, who included head teachers, teachers, governors and other stakeholders, commented that parents rarely used the school profile, which was evidenced by the lack of hits on the site.

One person, for example, said:

“Please get rid of the School Profile. It is difficult to complete, parents don’t look at it and it is a real burden to head teachers and governing bodies”.

Another commenter said:

“Parents don’t value it; most heads do not bother to complete it.”

In a nice comment, someone else said:

“Nice idea but a waste of time. Parents don’t look at it.”

It is estimated that it takes schools a minimum of half a day, and a maximum of two days, to complete and upload a profile.

We believe that parents, governors and the public should have access to information about their children’s school and schools in the local area. Currently, parents are able to access information about a school’s performance in a variety of places. That includes the school and college performance tables, school and local authority websites, as well as the online school profile. We will make available much more information and data about schools in local areas and bring together in one place data about school performance, finance and work force, and school and pupil characteristics. That will make it easy for parents and others to access and compare school performance in local areas and so use that information to hold schools to account and make better informed choices.

Already this year, and for the first time, parents have been able to use the Department’s website to create their own performance tables to rank schools and compare them with others. We will continue our policy to release in reusable form as much as possible of the statistical information the Department holds. We want to free schools from unnecessary bureaucracy and legislative burdens. Replicating information that is widely available elsewhere is a waste of school resource time. Schools should be free to focus on their core business of teaching children.

To respond to the comments of the hon. Member for Cardiff West about what we want to publish, we said in the White Paper that we want to require schools to publish comprehensive information online. That should include, for example, admission information and oversubscription criteria, the school’s curriculum, the school’s phonics and reading schemes, arrangements for setting pupils, the behaviour policy and home school agreements, the special needs policy, information about how the school uses the pupil premium and clear signposting for parents who would like more detailed information. We also expect key performance tables to focus on a range of measures, including the English baccalaureate, the percentage of A to C in English and maths and so on, along the lines that the hon. Gentleman discussed when he quoted a comment from me in a previous Bill Committee.

I hope that with that full response to the hon. Gentleman’s comments, we can press on and agree that clause 32 should stand part of the Bill.

Clause 33

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Clause 33 deals with the duty to appoint school improvement partners. They grew out of work that the previous Government started in 2003 on the new relationship with schools, and in a short period have become a part of the schools landscape that is valued by schools and local authorities. This Government have decided to kill them off, and have done so by withdrawing funding from local government, which is why the duty finishes on Royal Assent, according to clause 78.

It is worth noting some functions of school improvement partners. They provide support to school governors in the performance management of the head teacher, which is an extremely important task if we are to be able to help head teachers to grow and develop in the demanding role that they play in school leadership. We know that that is required of a highly successful head teacher for a highly successful school. Perhaps the Minister could say what support he envisages will be available to school governors in that task.

I thought it might be useful to quote from a letter that I received earlier this month from Councillor Nickie Aiken, the cabinet member for children and young people on Westminster City council, about school improvement partners. She states:

“I also have specific concerns about school improvement and how slipping standards can be identified quickly and effectively. The provision of a School Improvement Partner will soon become discretionary; most local authorities will no longer continue to provide this service. It must be noted that without a formal school improvement partner the capacity for a local authority to ensure the quality of education in its borough is limited so problems will only be able to be dealt with once schools are already underperforming.”

For fullness, I should tell the Committee that Councillor Nickie Aiken has added, in her own writing at the bottom of the letter:

“Not that I’d want to teach my former teacher to suck eggs!”

I know Councillor Aiken from a previous life—I used to teach her in Cardiff many years ago. It is right that I should declare that, but I do not think that it undermines her point. She makes a good point. There is a real concern that

“problems will only be able to be dealt with once schools are already underperforming.”

She goes on to talk about a need for clarification of

“a clear mechanism for referral for a school which has slipping standards or is beginning to fail”.

We will look at some of those issues in our discussion of later clauses and Ofsted’s role. She also said:

“It would be useful to understand how any slips in standards at an ‘exempt’ school”—

that is a school that will no longer have to be inspected—

“might be spotted if the School Improvement Partner no longer has any contact and Ofsted inspections are halted.”

There are some real issues being raised, and not in a party political sense. The issue of school improvement partners has been raised by a local government cabinet member in the Minister’s party. In replying to this clause stand part debate, I would be grateful if the Minister would make it clear how he will overcome that problem.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

I just want to add my concerns on the removal of school improvement partners. One of the mantras that we are taking away from this Committee is the concept of trusting professionals. Many professionals are fantastic at their jobs and we heard from some of them in the evidence sessions. We are trying to square that with the concern about school standards and the ability of schools to rise to the challenge that the Government want to put to them.

School improvement partners—I declare an interest as the daughter of someone who has been a school improvement partner—have been described as the “eyes and ears” of the local authority within a school, and they are the people who could spot early on if problems were developing. For example, if a head teacher was unable to implement policies or to deal effectively with issues of behaviour or attainment, or if there were new challenges arising within a school, that SIP can provide support and assistance in developing proposals to deal with the issues, before they came to the attention of Ofsted and a more formalised intervention became necessary. From a value-for-money perspective alone, those eyes and ears are worth their weight in gold in being able to address problems early on.

The other thing that I learned today is that people are concerned about early intervention. Sometimes early intervention is a principle that we should apply to how we work with schools, as well as how we work with young people with challenging behaviour. The shadow Minister is right to ask what alternative mechanism local authorities and parents will have, so that they have the confidence that they do not have to be there 100% of the time watching what is going on in schools like eagles. With SIPs, they have the confidence that there are people with experience, understanding and solutions—that is the critical point. They have ideas on how to address some of those problems and are part of the school’s fabric, and they do not only come in to inspect, but to challenge and support. That is what school improvement partners have done, where they have been effective.

I would hope that the Minister will reflect on the clause, and perhaps think about how a different regime of school improvement partnerships could be brought in to support achievement within schools and bring them to the standards that he wants them to reach, where professionals do not meet his high expectations. I am sure that the Minister will accept that there may be that rare occasion when that needs addressing.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

I remember many years ago visiting a school that almost never got in touch with the local authority, had high standards and the head teacher got on with things. We saw each other rarely. I was visiting the school on a specific issue on a Friday afternoon. It was going to take little time. We went through the business, and as I got up to leave, the head said, “Sit down, because I need to talk to you.” He explained to me that, in his position, he had no one to talk to. He found it really useful to have someone who listened to him, whom he could trust and who was of a professional standing, so he could share some of the concerns within his school. That was 20 years before SIPs came along.

It was the kind of role that head teachers were looking for. It was someone to look at the issues within a school, to challenge and to monitor their self-evaluation form—I know that the SEF is not required any more, but many head teachers I know find them useful and are going to continue with them—and to look at the school priorities and listen to their issues and their problems. Many times over the years I have had phone calls from head teachers saying, “I have got this issue.” I would say, “I will come out and see you”, but on the drive there I would think, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t have an answer to this insurmountable problem.” However, when I would get there, the head would talk through the issues. In fact, they would not be looking to me for a solution, but for someone whom they could professionally trust, who would listen to them, and whom they could talk to, and they would find their own solutions. That was largely the role that SIPs subsequently played.

I accept that where SIPs are good, their worth to schools is high. Equally, where SIPs are not so good or less than good, their worth is less positive. I also accept that SIPs have been much more successful in primary than in secondary. A lot of that was because it was much harder to get head teachers to come out of their successful schools and work as SIPs in other schools, which it was much easier to do in primary. The feedback that I get from head teachers is that overall SIPs have been a positive influence in schools and are seen as worth while. What consultation has the Minister held with head teachers on that, and if he has done so, can we see it? Certainly, the feedback I get is that despite the variability, SIPs generally have been seen as worth while in schools.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I do not want to teach the shadow Minister to suck eggs, but he will have read, as shadow Ministers do when they serve in Public Bill Committees, the briefings that are sent to us by various interested parties. One of them was sent by Westminster city council, as it happens.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I have read it.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The hon. Gentleman says that he has read it, but he did not quote it. By his wide smile I think he knows that he ought to have quoted it. It said:

“The removal of the need for all schools to appoint a school improvement partner for all schools they maintain is broadly welcomed by Westminster City Council as it allows highly-performing schools to be independent and focus on the quality of teaching they are providing our children and young people”.

I could quote a number of head teachers. Patricia Sowter, a primary school head, said:

“I felt that it was a complete waste of my time to be sitting down with a local authority adviser or SIP five times a year to tick their boxes.”––[Official Report, Education Public Bill Committee, 1 March 2011; c. 4, Q1.]

The National Union of Teachers said:

“The repeal of the requirement on local authorities to appoint school improvement partners…for every school is welcome”.

The National Association of Head Teachers said:

“The School Improvement Partner initiative has met with mixed reviews, with some schools finding the SIP an invaluable aid to improvement in the way that they support and challenge the school appropriately. Others found the degree of challenge inappropriate and unhelpful, with very little…support”.

The SIP initiative does not carry with it widespread support among head teachers.

The hon. Member for North West Durham commented on the loneliness of, not the long-distance runner, but a head teacher. Nothing will stop a head teacher from appointing an improvement partner, and they did not need legislation to force them to do so. Our direction is towards encouraging more mentoring and peer-to-peer and school-to-school support, so that it becomes a default approach for delivering school improvement, which I think partially answers the comments made by the hon. Member for Walthamstow. That is why we are building capacity in the system for a growing network of teaching schools. We want to double the number of national leaders and local leaders of education, and we are identifying the best subject and specialist leaders working in schools to designate them a specialist view of education. That is the direction—more co-operation between experts and people who have a proven track record. None of that will be delivered by a whole range of new statutory duties being imposed on schools.

Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)

Has the Minister done any work on when head teachers might appoint a SIP or someone to support them? What evidence does he have that people who want to challenge the way in which schools are run—they need support or need to acknowledge that they are perhaps falling down in areas—will do so? One benefit of the school improvement partnership system is that it picks up things that people may not have identified themselves. He is asking an awful lot of a head teacher to admit that they have failings. I appreciate that he has been listening to head teachers who do not believe that they do anything wrong. However, occasionally they slip up, although they might not realise it—I can say that as the daughter of a head teacher who is watching now, so I know that I shall be in trouble when I leave. What mechanism does the Minister expect will take account of where head teachers might not recognise the value of mentoring or of critical friends in helping them to improve the provision of services?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Well, we want to foster that culture of co-operation, although it is not the case that we need to, because it is live and flourishing out there among schools. Schools co-operate with one another, and we want to help that along by creating more national leaders of education and local leaders of education. Schools will continue to have a relationship with the local authority—the phrase “an island unto themselves” has been used, but our school system is not made up of that. We want autonomy, but not isolated autonomy. The schools are not all seeking to be islands unto themselves without any co-operation. Opposition Members are painting a picture of schools today that does not reflect the reality or the quantum of co-operation that takes place between schools and professionals.

Turning to the clause, it removes the duty on local authorities to appoint a school improvement partner to each of their maintained schools. For too long, schools have been the focus of highly centralised, top-down approaches, leading to the stifling of creativity and innovation. Some of the world’s best education systems operate an autonomous school system and, if we are to achieve world-class status and compete with the best, our approach to school improvement needs to change.

We are committed to creating a self-improving school system that empowers schools to become fully responsible for their own improvement. Alongside that, we will make much more information about schools available in standardised formats, to allow parents and others the ability easily to compare school performance. We want to see our best leaders, teachers and schools take on greater responsibility for leading school improvement.

In 2008, a York Consulting evaluation of the previous Government’s new relationship with schools policy highlighted several areas for improvement, including the need for clarity about the role of school improvement partners and schools’ perception that that role was duplicated by other local authority staff. The majority of local authority respondents surveyed as part of the evaluation did not agree that their decisions on intervention in schools were more effective as a result of the school improvement partner programme.

In conclusion, we believe that schools need to be free to take responsibility for their own improvement by defining their improvement priorities and accessing the most appropriate support themselves, either from other schools or from the marketplace, which is why clause 33 should stand part of the Bill.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I am afraid I cannot explain why the Minister got mixed messages from Conservative Westminster city council, but I was simply reading the letter sent to me. However, I do not want to get anyone into trouble.

The experience of history, I am afraid, is that some schools act as islands if we do not put into the system a requirement for them to co-operate, collaborate and act together. We saw that very well in the 1980s, when grant-maintained schools were introduced. I well remember where I taught, some school heads decided that they would act in a singularly unco-operative way, which was not in the interest of children in the whole of the area, and despite the majority of heads disagreeing with them. Sometimes we have to put in a requirement for co-operation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow said as the daughter of a head teacher, so I can say as the son of a dinner lady, that heads slip up sometimes. My mother often told me about such occasions—never on a floor she mopped, but they do occasionally slip up, make mistakes, act in a high-handed way or get out of line. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham has pointed out, they occasionally find themselves under a lot of stress and pressure and in a position in which it is difficult, as the “captain of your ship” to quote the Secretary of State, to reach out and ask for help. In such circumstances, it is important to have a school improvement partner in place and to have a requirement on the local authority to appoint one.

I will not force the Committee to a Division on clause stand part, but I hope that the Minister will think more about the provision, because he might come to rue it. His continual assertions that every head teacher everywhere can always be relied on to do the right thing on every occasion is a bit naive or—I will not accuse him of naivety; that would be unfair—is not borne out by experience and history. Even if he dislikes, as I think he probably does, regulation and prescription—I respect his political philosophy or ideology—he sometimes needs to have a realistic view of human nature. Head teachers are not perfect creatures. They are highly qualified professionals and mostly act professionally, but they may make mistakes and they are not perfect, so sometimes they will need help. As I have said, we have discovered from bitter experience that having that attitude towards people in positions of authority around children is not wise. It is regrettable that the Government have included the clause, but I will not ask the Committee to divide on it at this stage.

Clause 34

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move amendment 147, in clause 34, page 32, line 34, at end insert—

‘(1A) In section 84 (Code of practice) after subsection (2) insert—

(2A) In framing the code, the Secretary of State must require each admission authority in agreeing admission arrangements to ensure fair access to educational opportunity.”.’.

I say at the outset that we do not agree with the Government about the clause, because we have deep concerns about what they are doing on school admissions. We hear a lot about that subject. Recently, the press reported that the school adjudicator is going to stand down. Mysteriously, he will leave his post early, I suspect because of the Government’s work in that area. Frankly, we are concerned that the clause is all about giving schools more wriggle room—the phrase has been used outside the Committee—on admissions. That will be the practical effect of the provision, even if the Minister shakes his head. I hope that the Lib Dems are listening, because they should pay close attention to what the Government are doing.

James Duddridge (Conservative, Rochford and Southend East)

They are part of the Government.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Well, I mean the Liberal Democrat Back Benchers in Committee. They should pay close attention and discuss this issue at one of their group meetings, because the provision is about creating more wriggle room for schools to get out of fair admissions. That is what we are extremely concerned about and why we have tabled amendments.

Amendment 147 relates to a policy that we tried to introduce in government, which was to put fairness and access to schools firmly at the centre of the school system. That is what parents, schools and nearly all teachers want, and I hope that it is what we all want in Committee. I know we will hear many professions of a desire to achieve that from members of the Committee. If possible, we want all children to be able to attend schools, and we want all those schools to be good schools. We worked very hard in government to try to realise that ambition, and I think that the Government sincerely want to improve schools and to have good schools for children to attend. However, it is still the case that some schools are oversubscribed. I suspect that, however long the coalition Government last, some schools will still be oversubscribed at the end of their period in office. That is why it is so important to ensure fairness in the allocation of state school places. Some schools are grammar schools and can select on ability, but we are talking here about schools that are not supposed to select on ability or any other criteria, but to accept pupils on a fair basis. In this amendment and those in the three groups to come, we want to show what can be done to improve the Bill and why changes are needed if we are to guarantee fair access for all children.

The Government say they want to simplify and improve the schools admission code. That is fine. I have a copy of it here. It has a nice cartoon on the front which the Department abolished when the Minister came into office. Our concern, and I will put it frankly to the Committee, is that rather than simplifying it, they may want to dilute its impact on fair admissions. We must therefore scrutinise very closely what the Government are doing in this clause. Paragraph 1.9 of the code states that the Education Inspection Act 2006

“requires local authorities to promote fair access to educational opportunity, promote high standards and the fulfilment by every child of his educational potential, secure choice and diversity and respond to parental representations. These duties, together with this Code, underpin a modernised role for local authorities as the commissioners of school education, ensuring the quality of provision for all in a system that is responsive to the needs of parents and children.”

The Government claim to recognise the importance of fair access to schools. The White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching” states that

“local authorities have a critical role in securing fair access to schools.”

But can a local authority do that all by itself? How important is the admissions forum? How important is the schools adjudicator? How important is the schools admission code? How important is the local authority’s annual review of admission arrangements? The Government’s changes to the legislative framework since the 2010 election require a revisiting of the local authority role to secure fair access to schools, particularly with the significant increase in the number of academies that the Government envisage. I know the Government have something to say about that later in the Bill.

I hope that the Committee will not mind if I quote Councillor Nickie Aikin one more time. She writes:

“As the admissions forum is also to be abolished, it is unclear whether or not the local authority will have sufficient levers over academy admissions to ensure fair access to school places and will be able to place children within a suitable time frame.”

That is another serious point that she makes there. In contrast, the local authority will have to set the admissions arrangements for community and voluntary-controlled schools with a view to ensuring fair access to educational opportunity. Amendment 147 will require all admission authorities, be they foundation, voluntary-aided or academy, to set their admission arrangements on the same basis as local authorities.

Hon. Members will know from their constituency casework of the deep disappointment felt by parents and children on not getting into the school of their choice. Although it affects some areas more than others, we have all probably heard parents saying that admissions arrangements are not fair. Local newspapers are often full of stories of disappointed parents. Even with the changes to the code following the 2006 Act, admissions can still be complicated, time-consuming and stressful for parents. Admissions arrangements will almost certainly become even more complicated as more and more schools become their own admission authorities under this Government’s education plans.

There are 152 local authorities acting as the admission authority for their community and voluntary-controlled schools, but there are thousands of voluntary-aided, trust and foundation schools, and academies—a growing number under the Government’s plans—all acting as their own admission authority. As a result, large numbers of governing bodies go through the process of setting and consulting on admission criteria, organising appeals and responding, if necessary, to the adjudicator.

The fear is that, with this large number of admission authorities, covert selection and complexity will be given a stimulus. There is evidence that when schools become their own admission authority, it gives them the opportunity to exercise covert selection and unfair admissions practices. Although it has not been featured in a letter to any member of the Committee from the Minister, or in a departmental statement, press reports at the weekend suggest that the Government intend to limit the use of lotteries for admission to individual schools, rather than to allow local authorities to conduct them. I do not know whether the Minister can confirm whether the report in the weekend edition of The Telegraph is true.

In his research in 2008, Professor John Coldron of Sheffield Hallam university—

Meg Munn (Labour, Sheffield, Heeley)

A wonderful university.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley says, it is a wonderful university.

In his research for the Department in 2008, Professor Coldron found that schools that were their own admission authority were more likely to select covertly, leading to more socially segregated schools and a greater number of parental appeals. In her research in 2009 into secondary schools’ admissions criteria across the country, entitled “Secondary Schools Admissions in England: policy and practice”, produced for the charity, Research and Information on State Education Trust, Professor Anne West, from the London School of Economics, said:

“Despite improvements, our research suggests that the system is still too complex, particularly for parents and carers who are not highly educated or proficient in English, and especially where there are schools responsible for their own admissions. The complexity is exacerbated by some schools seeking additional information from parents, often of a personal nature and unrelated to the admissions criteria.”

A report for the Sutton Trust in 2010 by Smithers A and Robinson P, entitled “Worlds Apart—Social Variation Among Schools,” found that the most socially selective schools were those that controlled their own admissions.

What can be done to reduce the difficulties of introducing more own-admission-authority schools? Part of the answer must lie in requiring a specific objective to be included in the schools admission code for those schools when they set their admission arrangements. Namely, the admission arrangements should ensure fair access to educational opportunity. That would mean that all admission authorities have the same objective. Amendment 147 is designed to achieve that, and I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to that suggestion.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

Anyone who has ever had anything to do with school admissions will know that it is an aspect of education that greatly exercises parents. The three largest areas of complaint to the local government ombudsman are, and have been for many years, planning, special educational needs and admissions, and that was when the local government ombudsman only had powers to investigate admissions in relation to local authorities, and not in relation to schools.

As we know, the position differs across the country, and there truly is a postcode lottery. The establishment of local admissions forums was an attempt to combat that. Fair access is very important to parents, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West has said, every year at the same time, television programmes on BBC and ITV and the press are full of stories of parents who are extremely angry that they have not got their first, second or sometimes even third choice of school for their child. I have to say that, in the main, parents understand fairness, and will accept arrangements, as long as they feel that they are fair or, as one parent said to me, equally unfair to everyone.

I have worked in several parts of the country. In the north-east, where I worked for many years, up to 98% of parents get their first choice of school for their children because their first choice is the local school, which is often a good school. That is what parents want. They are not looking for something special or different; they are looking for a good school for their children. I have also worked in parts of the country where 50% or less of parents get their first choice of school, and many do not even get their third or fourth choice. Understandably, that makes them angry and frustrated. The local admissions forum was a way of giving parents the opportunity to become involved in admissions locally, and they will be angry at its abolition.

Changes to school admissions under the legislation, and the proposed simplification of the code of practice on school admissions have worried many parents. Those who live in areas where there is a shortage of schools, or where parents perceive, rightly or wrongly, that there is a shortage of good places, and parents of children with special educational needs are extremely worried that simplification will mean “more opaque,” and that it will be easier for schools that want to keep their children out if they want to.

I have seen press speculation that lotteries will be banned, and that preference will be given to those who live nearest to a school—in other words, those who can afford to live nearest to a school, or to move into a catchment area. That is all extremely worrying for parents. I said in the Education Committee, and I am happy to say here, that as a practising Catholic, when I was working in London and saw some of the practices that went on with admissions and exclusions among London Catholic schools, I was frankly ashamed.

I have been contacted by the Special Education Consortium, which told me that it often hears from parents when schools are reluctant to admit their children. The local admissions forum provided an opportunity for parents to be involved in the scrutiny and challenge of admissions arrangements in their areas. The Special Education Consortium told me that it is worried that the schools adjudicator will no longer be able directly to change admissions policy, even when it is judged to be unlawful. It cannot understand that and, frankly, I cannot understand it. The Education Committee recently interviewed the schools adjudicator, and it was clear that he was particularly unhappy about that proposal. I understand that he will leave his post early, which says clearly what he thinks about the Government’s proposals.

I do not understand the proposal that local authorities will no longer be required to submit their annual review of local admission arrangements to the schools adjudicator. That will not save bureaucracy or money, because my understanding is that local authorities will still have to carry out their annual reviews; they just will not have to send them on to the schools adjudicator. The purpose cannot be to save the cost of a stamp, because e-mail can be used. If the Government are serious about openness, transparency and fairness in admissions, why on earth would they not want to gather such information together, publish it, and look at the good and the bad—there is good and bad out there. That seems to go against the Government’s avowed policy of openness and transparency.

I welcome the proposal to bring academies’ admissions arrangements into the remit of the schools adjudicator, but other parts of clause 34 will weaken accountability in schools admissions, make it easier for schools that are reluctant to admit pupils with additional needs to keep them out, and severely weaken parents’ position.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

First, let me say that I agree with the sentiments behind amendment 147. Since coming into office, his Government have tackled the growing inequality in our education system through the introduction of the pupil premium, the SEN Green Paper “Support and Aspiration” and, crucially, freeing schools from the weight of regulation, bureaucracy and centralised control that prevents them from focusing on one thing, namely raising educational standards for all children, especially the most disadvantaged. Choosing the right school for their child is one of the most important things parents can do, and I agree with the hon. Member for North West Durham that going through that process is hugely stressful for some parents. It is right that admissions authorities should be mindful of their communities when setting admissions arrangements.

Let me respond to the comment made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West about whether there is a hidden agenda to introduce covert selection through revisions to the admissions code. Absolutely not. There are more than 660 mandatory requirements in the current code—too many to follow—and the chief adjudicator says that the code needs to be more accessible, That is what we seek to achieve with the revisions. We require admissions authorities to consult their communities, because we want to ensure that access to schools is fair and helps to achieve our agenda of closing the attainment gap. When they amend or set regulations, we will continue to require admissions authorities to consult their local communities.

The school admissions code contains a clear framework for schools and local authorities to set clear, fair and lawful admissions policies. The code ensures that admissions arrangements do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex or disability. It also prevents admissions authorities from asking for information that might lead to children being discriminated against based on their background, and through fair access protocols it ensures that the most vulnerable children are given extra help in securing a school place.

The independent schools adjudicator is available for parents who are concerned about the admissions policies of their local schools and it can decide on the lawfulness and overall fairness of those policies. As hon. Members will know, local authorities are already under a duty to exercise their education functions with a view to as far as possible ensuring fair access to opportunity for education and increasing opportunities for parental choice. All members of the Committee share a commitment to fair access, and successive codes have built on that, so the effect the amendment would have is already in place. I am confident that the codes in force that govern school admissions and admissions appeals already set out the parameters of a system that ensures fairness and that priority and support are given to those who need it most, including looked-after children and those with statements of special educational needs.

The Secretary of State announced a review of the admissions process and I assure hon. Members that the draft codes on which we will soon consult will continue to have fairness and equality as their guiding principles. As I said in the policy statement that we circulated to the Committee, we shall require the local authority to report on the effectiveness of fair access protocols.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I think the phrase used in the White Paper was that that draft code would be available for consultation early in the new year. We are well past the ides of March, so will the Minister tell us when we will see it and why it has not yet appeared?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

It is imminent. I have a good track record on these things.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

The last time the Minister said something was imminent, it appeared the next day, but we are discussing it now. If it is so imminent, why have we not had it in advance of this debate?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

We have sent round a detailed policy statement on the code. It is difficult to time these things precisely to coincide with the Committee stage of the Bill. However, it is certainly imminent and will certainly be available before many of the future stages of the passage of this Bill for the hon. Gentleman to scrutinise. However, that is a separate process from many of the measures in the Bill.

The policy statement given to the Committee says that we shall require the local authority to report on the effectiveness of fair access protocols for children with special needs and children in care. We will retain prioritisation for SEN and looked-after children. Although I agree with the aims and sentiments behind the amendment, as I do with those of a number of the amendments on admissions, I hope that I have demonstrated that the codes, rather than legislation, are best placed to give effect to the aim expressed in the amendment. I hope that with that reassurance and the fact that the revised draft codes are imminently available, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Welcome back to the twilight zone, Mr Williams. I hope that you enjoyed your egg and chips over the way—I enjoyed mine.

I think I know now what the Minister means when he says that something is imminent, but it is not good enough that we have not had sight of the code, not least because the White Paper said that it would be consulted on early in the new year. However, as we have quite a few amendments to get through, I will not prattle about that now.

All that the amendment asks the Secretary of State to do is to require admissions authorities to ensure fair access in agreeing admissions arrangements. I should have thought it would be the easiest of amendments to assent to. I will not press it to a vote, as the Minister has put on record that he believes that that is what should happen, but I reserve the right to return to the issues relevant to the clause and the amendments to it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move amendment 148, in clause 34, page 32, line 35, leave out subsection (2).

The amendment is about admissions forums, which we have discussed under a previous amendment. Their abolition will remove a level of local scrutiny working to ensure fair admissions, in which representatives of schools, including heads, governors, parents and diocesan authorities, are involved. They are a good example of localism—even, I dare say, the big society. Such a move is unwise at a time when the number of schools that set their own admissions criteria is increasing. In a few years’ time, we could have more than 20,000 schools setting their own admissions criteria. Now is not the time to remove an effective local mechanism working in favour of fair admissions.

As has been mentioned, the Sutton Trust study found that the most socially selective schools were those that are their own admission authority. There is well-researched evidence for that. In “Unlocking the Gates: Giving disadvantaged children a fairer deal in school admissions”, Barnardo's drew on its experience of working with poor families and called for greater scrutiny of school admissions, also drawing attention to the increasing number of schools which are their own admission authorities.

The Government have provided no evidence of the need to make the proposed change. The White Paper supports the local authority role to ensure fair access, but then demolishes the support that helps authorities to do that work. Establishing and working with an admissions forum is dismissed by the Government as a bureaucratic requirement, yet the Department for Education’s impact assessment states sets out only a tiny cost saving from the abolition of admissions forums. That shows that they are not much of a bureaucratic burden, especially when balanced against the loss of scrutiny to ensure that admissions are fair.

Perhaps the Government think that the combination of the local authority scrutinising local admissions, along with the powers of some parents, schools and the local authority to complain to the adjudicator at national level, is sufficient, but that is to neglect the importance of those local groups working out fair arrangements, often dealing collaboratively with sensitive issues, such as in-year admissions and the fair access protocol, which are of great importance to parents and schools. It needs to be borne in mind that it is far more efficient to deal with issues locally, involving local stakeholders, than to refer every contentious case to the schools adjudicator. Although important, the latter should be the last resort, used efficiently as the final arbiter when a local agreement cannot be reached.

A key theme of the Bill, as stated in the impact assessment, is to

“give parents a greater role in the system.”

In fact, abolishing admissions forums will reduce the role of parents in admissions, because parents are part of the required membership of the forums. Furthermore, forums can and do invite parent groups to come to their meetings to make representations. Parents, regardless of where they live, are entitled to have an effective, independent monitoring body in each local authority to ensure fair admissions criteria and processes, as laid down in the school admissions code, and to ensure they are operated by all admission authorities. Voluntary forums would not have the same powers, for example, to refer objections to the adjudicator. Voluntary forums were introduced in 1998, but they were soon made mandatory under the Education Act 2002, to ensure that good practice where there was active leadership could be spread throughout all local authorities. Later departmental consultation in 2008 included a proposal to make admissions forums voluntary, but that was rejected by respondents.

The adjudicator, Ian Craig, supports the retention of admissions forums—perhaps that is why he has to go. In his latest report, for 2010, he recommends changes to the content of the local authority annual report and that, before sending, it should be

“discussed, reviewed or possibly approved”

by the admissions forum, allowing the forum to continue to produce its own report or make supplementary comments. He reported that some local authorities had found the restriction to 20 members difficult and that that may need attention. He was disappointed that very few forum reports had been sent, but said that some of those that had been sent represented best practice as a strategic document. He repeated that view in his evidence to the Select Committee on Education, saying:

“As you can see from the recommendations in my annual report last year, I believe, and I committed myself to believing, that admissions forums are good things. It commits all admissions authorities in an area—however we define the area, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a local authority area—to sit around a table and talk over their problems.”

Sound, good work is being done by local people across the country and that should be supported, not abolished. Instead, the Government should be giving those bodies more support, consulting them on their work and finding out how good practice can be spread. The Oxfordshire Governors’ Association has informed the Committee, in associate memorandum 52, that,

“Admissions forums provide a vehicle for local admission authorities and other key interested parties to discuss the effectiveness of local admission arrangements, consider how to deal with difficult admission issues and to advise admission authorities on ways in which the arrangements can be improved. All parents are entitled to know that the local admissions forum is open to them to make representations, as many have.”

The association goes on to note that clause 34, if enacted, will make it more likely that breaches of the admissions code will be missed. It concludes

“that reducing accountability in the way that clause 34 suggests risk adding to the social segregation and stratification of schools, it will erode the principle of fair admissions to schools and reduce the accountability of schools to parents and communities.”

Many organisations have expressed concern about what the Government are doing on admissions. The Minister will have read Comprehensive Future’s press release, embargoed for one minute past midnight this morning, on its survey of admissions forum chairs. Their comments on the proposed changes to admissions arrangements included:

“Admission processes will become more school-centric rather than parent-centric”.

There will be a

“free for all on admissions”,

and abolition will lead to

“less transparency in the admissions system”

and

“Schools will select by ability, the weak and disadvantaged will lose out.”

Abolition will cause

“chaos and unfairness and go against the concept of the Big Society”.

It will

“result in a more piecemeal approach losing an independent and representative body. This could conceivably impact on fairness and equity of access.”

and

“lead to inequitable, opaque admission arrangements that would in turn produce poor outcomes for many children and parents”.

There is powerful evidence of the usefulness of local admissions forums. No doubt the Government will say that they just want to get rid of any bodies that they regard as bureaucratic, but if they are serious about equality of opportunity and fairness in admissions, they should not sweep away important bodies in the name of removing bureaucracy when there is not a great deal there. The forums help to achieve at local level the very fairness that the Government profess to support. I would like to hear from the Minister the rationale for the changes to admissions forums, and how the Government expect the new system to be fairer than the current one, or rather, how they will stop the system becoming less fair.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

I have only a few brief points to make. First, how on earth are we having this debate without having seen the draft admissions code? It is outrageous that we are looking to make wholesale change to legislation without seeing what will replace it.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The debate is about the admissions forum; it has nothing to do with the admissions code. We tried to get the codes ready for this debate, but they are not actually connected. All the proposals are set out in the White Paper, and the Bill implements those aspects of the White Paper that need legislation. There will be plenty of time to consult on the draft codes when they are published, and publication is imminent.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

The problem for me is the Government’s direction of travel. Where do they intend to go? This part of the Bill takes away what I consider to be safeguards for parents and children. We know how easy it is to have covert selection. We have to ask why, nationally, faith schools have fewer pupils on free school meals than non-faith schools. One faith school that I know of told parents that if their child had an SEN statement, which would of course attract money for the school, or was really bright academically, their school was a really good to choose; but if the child was just in the middle or less academically bright, it was not the school for them to choose.

Like all hon. Members here I have people who come to my surgery because they did not get their children into the school that they wanted. The closest school to me, which is just outside my constituency, has been closed those living in to one part of it. The next nearest school, just down the road, is talking about becoming an academy because the local authority is trying to rejig the school’s boundaries, which the school does not want, because it does not want to have to take children from the council estate. That high-flying school is now saying that it will become an academy, so that it can have its own admissions criteria and set its own boundary.

In memorandum E 95 submitted to the Committee, Richard Harris says:

“If it is accepted that fair admissions means children choose schools rather than schools choose children why should any school wish, or need to be, its own admission authority?”

If our diverse system of schools is to maintain a broad and balanced intake of young people, there should be only one admissions policy, common to all the schools in a local authority area, and there should be an admissions forum to monitor it.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Before I address the amendment, it is worth clarifying precisely what clause 34 does in relation to admissions forums. It removes the duty on local authorities in England to establish admissions forums, but does not ban or abolish them. We are advocating not their abolition, but their adoption only if that is the right local solution. Local authorities and the communities they serve must be allowed to make their own decisions on what systems will work for them. It is disproportionate and bureaucratic that legislation should set out such requirements.

Admission forums have no substantive powers; they are advisory groups made up of voluntary members. It is true that they have the power to request information to help them compile a report to the schools adjudicator, should they choose to write one, as well as the power to object to admission arrangements. Such reports contain a forum’s analysis of the extent to which admission arrangements in its area ensure fair access to educational opportunity, as well as any recommendations the forum wishes to make. Despite all that, last year only 14 out of 152 forums actually wrote a report; of those 14, seven were late and missed the deadline, meaning that no action could be taken on the issues highlighted. The role of forums’ reports is better filled by local authority reports that are required annually. As we will discuss later, local authority reports will now be published locally, so that the local community can see and make use of the information provided by the local authority.

Later this year, we shall change the regulations on powers to object, so that anyone with an interest or issue can object to admission arrangements in their area. That gives the public and parents greater powers than those in current legislation. That is far more powerful than a limited and prescriptive list of possible objectors and further reduces the need to mandate such forums. Admissions forums are therefore a duplication of effort and expense, which is not a good use of taxpayers’ money.

In some areas, forums work well, and partners want to work together. We support that voluntary approach, but some local authorities have told us that the arrangements cost them £10,000 a year. If we scale that up across 152 local authorities, we find that £1.5 million a year is wasted. On top of that, ensuring that forums are quorate is often challenging, with poor attendance from the local authority and partners, and those who do attend are often not representative of the local community; in particular, forums have had problems getting parental representation. Other local authorities have told us that their forum is useful in helping to ensure that admission arrangements are fair and non-discriminatory. We therefore have a rather mixed bag. Arrangements should be made locally that work for that locality.

Admissions forums can refer an objection to the adjudicator, but having the forum as a check on arrangements is not reliable. Last year, only five objections of the 151 made to the schools adjudicator were made by a forum, and four of those were made by the same forum, Northamptonshire—three cheers for Northamptonshire on getting its reports in and having its objections taken seriously. However, that raises the question of why only one other forum—Bromley—made any objections. Where forums are effective, they will be continued, but where they are disbanded, local people will still be able to contribute to admissions consultations and to make objections to the schools adjudicator if they feel arrangements are unfair.

As hon. Members will know, clause 60 extends the remit of the schools adjudicator so that he can consider and adjudicate on the admission arrangements that academies adopt. That ensures that parents will need to approach only a single body when they have concerns about the arrangements of any state-funded school. With those fairly killer arguments, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We will be the judge of whether they are killer arguments. I have detected no sign that Government Members will ever disagree with anything that the Minister says.

In the interests of making progress, I will not press the amendment to a vote. I will reflect on what the Minister has said about his plans to change the regulation on objections to include the possibility of objecting to admissions arrangements in certain areas. I will look closely at his statement about that on the record, and we may return to the matter on Report. For the time being, however, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move amendment 149, in clause 34, page 33, line 2, leave out subsection (3).

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.