Education Bill

HL Deb 27 April 1993 vol 545 cc226-338

House again in Committee on Schedule 6.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour moved Amendment No. 160: Page 178, line 41, at end insert: ("( ) the head teacher, and").

The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 160 on behalf of my noble friend, who unfortunately had to leave the Committee because of a previous engagement, I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 255, in her name and mine. I should also like to say a word about Amendment No. 160A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Elton, which covers some of the same areas as Amendment No. 160.

The purpose of the two amendments is to ensure that in each school, whether grant-maintained or local authority run, articles of government clarify the role and functions of the head teacher, particularly in relation to the role and functions of the governing body. Amendment No. 160 does that for grant-maintained schools by amending Schedule 6 to the Bill. Amendment No. 255 amends Clause 225 to make similar provision for local authority schools. In the case of local authority schools, that amendment is not such a simple task, as I shall explain in a moment.

My noble friend and I have tabled the amendments after extensive discussion with the National Association of Head Teachers. The association is concerned that, despite general agreement that the quality of a school depends above all on the head teacher and the quality of his or her leadership and management of the school, there remain some vagueness and blurred borderlines concerning the precise responsibilities and functions of heads which still, in practice, lead to problems in individual schools.

The National Association of Head Teachers had various suggestions to make as to how the Bill might be amended to help resolve those problems. It seems to me and my noble friend that the best way forward is for the Bill to ensure that in local authority as well as grant-maintained schools governors should sit down with the head teacher and think through the precise nature and borderlines of the head teacher's functions and responsibilities, for which he or she is answerable to the governors at the end of the day.

For example, which members of staff does the head teacher select or appoint? Is it all staff, or is the governing body to be involved in certain appointments? Is staff discipline entirely the head teacher's responsibility? What about the dismissal of staff? What about the discipline of pupils? The governors having established a pay policy, is it operated entirely by the head teacher? And so on.

In relation to appointments, Amendment No. 160A in the name of my noble friend Lord Elton, to which he will doubtless speak in a moment, suggests a slightly more prescriptive provision. I shall be interested to hear what he and the Minister have to say about the subject. My own feeling is that different schools may well want to have different appointment policies, and in the case of local authority schools the local authority may have policies of its own which have to be taken into account. In any case, the meaning of junior and senior appointments is not the same in various parts of the country or even in different schools. It seemed to my noble friend and to me that the important point was that the policy should be thought through. Our amendments would mean that that was done and that articles of government would have to be proposed.

I shall listen with great interest to what the Minister has to say about the amendments. I believe that they are very important. The quality of schools depends upon what the Bill has to say concerning head teachers. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take the matter seriously and will either feel able to accept Amendments Nos. 160 and 252 or will come back with similar amendments herself. I beg to move.

Lord Elton

Perhaps it would be a useful moment for me to speak to Amendment No. 160A. I am entirely in agreement with my noble friend, who has just moved an amendment which has a very similar purpose. She is quite right to say that the success or failure of a school depends more on the single factor of the contribution of the head teacher than on any other factor. It is important that the head teacher should have a degree of control sufficient to ensure that he or she can run the school in a way which suits him or her and which will deliver the policies which he or she has promised to the governing body.

As my noble friend said, different schools have different needs. Different head teachers have different styles and different governing bodies have different expectations. Therefore it would be wrong to set on the face of the Bill exact details as to who should decide what. However, I am aware that the most lively concern of head teachers relates to the control of the staff who teach under them. That is understandable. In my amendment, which also relates to Schedule 6, I have sought to make certain that the head teacher shall have responsibility for selecting junior staff for appointment by the governing body, which is the employer, and shall be consulted by the governing body on the appointment of senior teachers.

My noble friend rightly pointed out that in statute there is no such thing as a junior or senior teacher. Indeed, what is regarded as senior in a village school may be regarded quite differently in a comprehensive school with 1,500 pupils. My amendment would require a definition of a junior or senior member of staff. It could well be that the amendment could be improved simply by adding words so that it would read: The articles must make provision for the headteacher to be responsible for the day to day organisation, management and control of the school, including the selection of junior staff as defined in the articles for appointment by the governing body". I have no proprietary interest in the amendment. I do not prefer it above the amendments in the name of my noble friend. Like her, I ask the Government to choose a route which resolves the issue rather than leaving it in doubt. Where there is doubt there will be friction. Where one has friction between the governing body and the head teacher one has a school which will be a great deal less efficient and satisfactory than it would be if they were working together.

Lord Northbourne

I support the intention of the amendments. I am entirely in sympathy with the idea behind them. However, I draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that making mistakes in hiring and firing teachers can be extremely expensive nowadays under the current employment legislation. It is important, therefore, that proper arrangements are made for consultation between the head teacher and the chairman of governors, or whatever may be appropriate. The words "subject to the policy of the governing body" will have to be in the Bill.

Lord Hylton

It may be appropriate at this point to quote a Polish proverb which states that a rotten fish stinks from the head downwards.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

Follow that!

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

I have no intention of following that. I wish to address my comments to Amendment No. 160AA, which refers to teacher training. It is a different topic which is grouped with this set of amendments. The intention of the amendment is to secure that continuing attention is given by grant-maintained schools to teachers' professional development.

The current provisions in respect of the contents of articles of government for grant-maintained schools are given in the first place by Section 38 of the 1988 Act, which is being replaced by Schedule 6 to the Bill. Further detail is then given in the form of the Secretary of State's model articles for grant-maintained schools. The model articles currently contain the following statement in paragraph 18: It is the duty of the governing body to make arrangements with respect to the … in-service training and professional development of teachers at the school". Amendment No. 160AA seeks to improve that in two ways. The first is by requiring the governing body to consider the matter annually. Such a requirement should properly be reserved for matters of importance, and we think it appropriate in this case. The second is by using the wording "the requirements for the in-service training and professional development of teachers" in place of the wording "arrangements". The different emphasis that we seek is actively to promote consideration of the needs of individual staff members rather than merely an overview of the existing arrangements.

In particular, the existence of arrangements might be nullified without a suitable budgetary commitment being made by governors each year. Amendment No. 160AA, of course, provides for the involvement of the head teacher, whose advice to the governors would be most crucial in the matter.

The Minister may well agree with the importance of in-service and professional development but perhaps holds a different view about the best technical way of improving present arrangements. A commitment to incorporate the substance of the amendment in the model articles of government would probably be sufficient for the purposes of the amendment. However, I await with interest the Minister's reply.

Lord Addington

I wish to speak briefly to the amendment to which my noble friend Lord Redesdale has put his name. The position of the head teacher should be borne in mind. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, it influences everything else in the school. We should know a little more about the professional relationship between the head teacher and governors. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.

Also we should seek a more constructive approach to in-service training than appears in the Bill as currently drafted. We should then have some way of enhancing the quality of staff already in schools.

8.45 p.m.

Baroness Blatch

It is absolutely true that the relationship between the governing body, the head and the proper running of the school is an important issue. Amendment No. 160 in the name of my noble friends Lady Young and Lady Carnegy seeks to amend paragraph 2(1) of Schedule 6 by adding a specific reference to the head teacher. Paragraph 2(1) requires the articles to specify as regards each function relating to the conduct of the school which person or body is to be responsible for its exercise. That provision includes specific references to such bodies as the Secretary of State and the governing body. It does not include an express reference to the head teacher. That does not mean, however, that the articles cannot specify the functions to be exercised by the head teacher in relation to the conduct of the school. In fact, that is precisely what happens under the present articles for grant-maintained schools. The head teacher is included in the general category in paragraph (e) of Schedule 6(2) (1).

Despite that, I should like to consider whether there should be such a reference and, if appropriate, bring forward an amendment at a later stage in the Bill. I believe that it is an important subject. I should like to give it more thought.

Perhaps I may say this to my noble friend and curtail unnecessary debate. I believe that my noble friend Lord Elton also raises an important point. He has already hinted that there is room for thinking again about the wording of the amendment because there is the point of the definition of a junior teacher. However, the principle raised by the amendment is important. I wish personally to give it more thought between now and Report stage. I hope that my noble friend will agree that I should take the matter away and give some thought to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, supported the principles of the amendments. Clearly I shall consult with him between now and Report stage if I come to any conclusions. I venture a personal view. I believe that the judgment about the professional development needs of a teacher must reside with the head. Head teachers are charged with the professional responsibility to make that judgment. In line management terms, of course they are accountable for that because they are accountable for the proper running of the school, and it would be for the governing body to have a view about the proper judgment being made by a head teacher. However, I venture that as a personal view. Clearly that will be part of the consideration between now and the next stage of the Bill.

I turn now to the amendment spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, Amendment No. 160AA. It deals with in-service training references in articles of government. That I find more difficult. The details of the articles of government for grant-maintained schools as set out in Schedule 6 to the Bill provide a broad framework for the conduct of the school. However, Schedule 6 is not exhaustive. It already requires grant-maintained schools to include certain requirements in their articles of government. Among those are existing Education Reform Act staffing requirements such as an employee's right to appeal against dismissal.

As I have mentioned already, Clause 53 requires that the initial instrument and articles of government shall be as prescribed in regulations. The Bill, quite rightly, does not seek to deal with every possible part of the conduct of a school, including the training needs of staff. Clause 52(2) (b) expressly makes clear that the instrument and articles can make provisions other than those specified in the Bill. It is not necessary to include all requirements concerning the management of the school on the face of the Bill. There will still be scope to include these in regulations. That links with the point that I made in response to the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

It is therefore unnecessary to add further detail in the Bill to what will be contained in a grant-maintained school's articles of government. This is not something required of grant-maintained schools. But we would expect that the regulations to be made under Clause 53 would include provision for all grant-maintained schools to make arrangements in their articles of government with respect to the induction of newly qualified teachers at the school and the in-service training and professional development of teachers at the school. That might follow the terms already set out in the model articles of government for existing grant-maintained schools. We shall, of course, be consulting relevant bodies about the content of these regulations and, once again, I can assure you that the concerns expressed here will be taken into account when drawing them up.

I hope that Amendment No. 160AA and the other two amendments will be withdrawn in the light of the fact that I shall give considerably more thought to the matters between now and Report stage.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour

I thank everyone who has supported Amendments Nos. 160 and 255. My noble friend did not refer to Amendment No. 255. I made the specific point that it states something different. Will she examine the principle of that as well? It is important, although it is a different point.

Baroness Blatch

I am sorry, my noble friend is right; I did not refer to Amendment No. 255. I have sympathy with the head having clear responsibilities in all schools—I have already made that clear—including local authority schools, although the situation is different. There, LEA schools are less self-governing in the sense that we now all understand the situation. That must affect the functions of the head teacher. Behind all that is the relationship in grant-maintained schools between the very serious responsibilities of' the governing body and the ability of the head professionally to run the school.

However, the amendment would conflict with the current provision for making articles of government for local authority schools, the Education (No. 2) Act 1986. Nevertheless, I am sympathetic and, together with the other two amendments, I am happy to consider the matter between now and Report stage.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour

I am most grateful to my noble friend and look forward either to amendments being tabled by her or, if she wishes, perhaps she could meet my noble friend and myself to discuss the matter. That being the case, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 160A not moved.]

Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 160AZA: Page 179, line 7, at end insert: ("( ) The articles must request the governing body to assist local authorities in the exercise of their statutory child protection functions and to comply with any circulars and guidance issued under section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 and section 27 of the Children Act 1989.").

The noble Lord said: The objective of the amendment is to ensure that all schools have a duty to assist local education authorities with their statutory child protection responsibilities and to ensure that all children in their charge receive adequate protection from abuse. Under Section 27 of the Children Act 1989 and Section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, local education authorities have a duty to assist local authorities in the exercise of their statutory responsibilities for child protection. Accordingly, all schools under LEA control are required to adhere to local authority child protection guidance and circulars to provide relevant information, to attend court proceedings, if necessary, and generally to act in accordance with local child protection procedures.

It is significant that the NSPCC and others are concerned that schools opting out of local education authority control will no longer be bound by local child protection mechanisms. The issue of child protection becomes more dissipated as schools are decentralised under the new system.

The NSPCC provides specialist training for teaching staff on child protection procedures. Indeed, the society published for teachers a guide on child abuse intended to complement the Department of Education and Science's circular: Working together for The Protection of Children From Abuse: procedures within the education service, which should be available in schools to all teachers. Furthermore, as part of the NSPCC's preventive work, I understand that it provides for school pupils awareness teaching on child abuse.

Teaching staff and education professions have a vital role to play in child protection. Teachers are particularly well placed to identify cases of child abuse. Apart from their parents, children see more of their teachers than of any other group of adults. Teachers are often well respected and children will confide in them. Teachers are also familiar with normal patterns of childhood behaviour and therefore should be able to identify subtle or significant changes in behaviour or educational performance, which can be the outward symptoms of abuse.

The Government themselves place emphasis on the role of educational professionals. In Working Together (guidance issued under the Children Act, 1989) they state: all staff in the education service—including those in grant-maintained and independent schools … should be aware of the need to alert the social services, the NSPCC or the police, when they believe a child has been abused or is at risk of abuse". Despite government intentions that present mechanisms should extend to protect children in the growing grant-maintained sector, I understand that the NSPCC has evidence derived from its network of over 80 child protection teams and projects that co-operation of grant-maintained schools in existing procedures has not always been fully understood or automatically forthcoming.

In some cases, LEAs have contended that they have no role in referrals made by staff located in the grant-maintained sector, while in other instances schools outside LEA control have refused or been reluctant to allow teachers the necessary time to attend child protection case conferences or court hearings. Such situations have arisen precisely because there is no explicit duty upon schools to assist. Of course, as is very evident, there are competing demands on teachers' time. But co-operation in local arrangements is essential if children are to be protected and prevented from being abused. The NSPCC, for example, has drawn attention both to an absence of resources and to an unwillingness to commit additional resources to employ teachers to cover colleagues' absence, enabling them to attend protection hearings or conferences.

What are the effects of this non-co-operation? Schools refusing to co-operate risk jeopardising the personal safety of children and in some cases perhaps even their lives. Refusal to release teaching staff so that they may attend case conferences or protection hearings deprives those proceedings of vital detailed information and of the insight gained by teachers through close and continuous contact with the child. When hearings are compelled to depend on written submissions from teaching staff, submissions which cannot be open to immediate clarification or challenge, that may lead to unnecessary delays or to only a partial understanding of the child's situation. At the same time, teachers may be excluded from important discussions and decisions on how to respond appropriately to the behaviour of an abused child on an individual level in the classroom or generally at school.

Similarly, teachers may not receive the necessary training in the recognition of early detection of child abuse and operation of local procedures. Consequently, they may lack confidence and find themselves ill-equipped to deal with cases of abuse as they arise. Teachers may become unwilling to report their suspicions or to participate in child protection procedures in future cases, knowing that they will face difficulties in securing the full support of the school authorities.

It is important, along with the NSPCC, to commend those measures which some grant-maintained schools and individual teachers within the sector are convincingly taking to ensure child protection. However, I believe that co-operation between the relevant authorities and educational professionals should not be left to chance or just to the positive efforts of a few individuals. Child protection must be a priority, underpinned by a duty upon governing bodies to ensure full co-operation by their schools. The passage of this Bill provides a key opportunity to ensure that children attending schools in the grant-maintained sector receive the vital support and protection from abuse which should be their right.

The purpose of Amendment No. 246ZB is to protect children from the possibility of the presence on the governing body of someone who would be unacceptable. In speaking to it, I should say that we are well aware of the dangers of insensitive behaviour where the protection of children is at issue. However, one must always bear in mind that suspicions may prove to be unfounded or allegations unsubstantiated. In protecting children we must take care also to protect the rights of individuals to be presumed innocent.

The amendment, carefully balanced, seeks to do both those things. There is an initial power to suspend where the authority or the governing body, as appropriate, believes that there is good cause for concern. However, the new clauses are careful to state that the initial step is taken on the grounds that the governor, appears to present a risk".

The suspension must then be approved by the Secretary of State before it becomes permanent. Until that point, suspension is a precautionary step, not to be lightly undertaken, but equally not in itself a declaration of guilt. It is presumed that before suspension is confirmed, there would be detailed consideration of the case and the opportunity for representations to be made. One might draw a parallel with the way in which an allegation against a member of staff is dealt with, where suspension—should that be judged appropriate—is simply an interim measure, pending further investigation.

I am sure we would all agree that this area is very difficult. At stake, on the one hand, is the welfare of the children. I believe that that must be paramount. It would be wanton irresponsibility to apply any other principle. But at stake, on the other hand, is the good name of the individual. The sensitivity of the subject can hardly be over-emphasised. I hope that the new clauses strike the right balance. I beg to move.

9 p.m.

Lord Addington

On these Benches we support the thrust of the amendment. We look forward to hearing what the Government have to say. The issue is very important, and we should have more guidance in this area. It is one where natural holes have occurred. We are interested in the Government's reasons for blocking the amendment.

Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn

I have no comments to make on Amendment No. 160AZA, in which I see a number of merits. But I am distinctly uneasy about the wording of Amendment No. 246ZB, and indeed of 246ZC. Amendment No. 246ZB reads: If at any time a governing body are satisfied that any member of the governing body is unfit to discharge the functions of a member on the grounds that they appear to present a risk to the physical or emotional well-being of pupils". The intention is obviously a very good one, and I entirely agree with the remarks made by the noble Lord who presented the amendment. But it is extraordinarily nebulous. And it is not at all clear to me how a member of the governing body presents a risk to the physical or emotional well-being of pupils. It is not clear to me how members of the governing body, other than teacher-members, come into contact with pupils. Obviously, if we are talking of teacher-members in the other provisions, it would be a teacher at the school. I do not understand what sort of opinion or activity is referred to. I think we must be explicit. What is that member of the governing body supposed to be doing or opining? I find the idea vague and I see that it could be twisted.

In Amendment No. 246ZC the phrase, Where the local authority has good cause could no doubt be challenged in the courts. But if the other members of a governing body think that Mr. X is rather an undesirable person, they could say that they were satisfied and in that case I am not sure that there would be any recourse in the courts. I should like clarification on that point. The phrase, Where the local authority has good cause", relates not only to county or voluntary controlled schools but also to grant-maintained schools: The provision allows the local authority effectively to suspend a member of the governing body of a grant-maintained school.

Clearly if there were real grounds to fear that child abuse was occurring or was likely to occur, which is I believe what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, implied, then it would be right to give the local authority a power to intervene. But the whole thing seems exceptionally nebulous. I think that we must ask the noble Lord to be a little clearer. How does that "bad egg" on the governing body notionally present a risk to the emotional well-being of pupils? If it is simply a question of the expression of opinions, I think that this is a very doubtful amendment.

Lord Judd

Perhaps. I may deal with that very important point. We are dealing not only with the protection of children, which is, as I have said, of paramount consideration for us all, but also with the most important issues of civil rights, reputation and so on. It is a difficult path to tread.

Perhaps I may assure the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, that the amendment is not plucked from the air. It is put forward in the context of genuine concern about real situations that have arisen. Perhaps I could briefly say a word or two about the context.

I would not suggest for one moment that many child abusers will attempt to become school governors. Furthermore, it is quite unlikely that governors would usually have much opportunity to present such a threat to pupils. The noble Lord is right. However, by becoming a governor, a child abuser may have the opportunity to become known as a figure of authority to children and obtain relatively free access to school premises. Governors, rightly, may well help out at school events. I suggest that it would be complacent to suppose that out of over 3,000 school governors there is none whose motives are questionable and who might not attempt to take advantage of that position. Serious allegations come to light. For that reason we believe that there should be means by which rapid action can be taken.

It is obviously proper that the rights of any individual who is subject to such allegations should be respected. I am sure that we are all agreed on that point. However, such consideration needs to be balanced against the importance of protecting children, as in the child protection legislation generally. The law currently fails to achieve such a balance in relation to school governors. That is why we move the amendment.

I want to be helpful, and obviously we want to proceed. We have a lot of business to get through tonight and there is a lot of pressure. I hope that the Minister, who obviously shares this concern, will be able to say something reassuring. So long as the spirit of what we say is taken on board and we receive convincing reassurance that something will be done, we shall be very willing to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Elton

If the noble Lord, Lord Judd, had moved the amendments simply to draw attention to the delicacy and importance of the matter under discussion, I would have had more sympathy. In the light of what he has just said, I remain as mystified as I was before. He answered the question of my noble friend Lord Renfrew about how the proposals would work. As he rightly says, this is a sensitive area. He is giving the members of a governing body collectively the right apparently to blast the reputation of one of their members to smithereens with little chance of recovering it through the courts. I hope that my noble friend will be careful about that.

I rose to my feet in order to ask my noble friend, without notice and therefore with no expectation of an immediate answer, whether, if she returns to the subject, she will be able to tell us a little about the tensions between the need on the one hand for confidentiality in regard to warnings about the possibility that the child is at risk of non-accidental injury—which is another term for abuse but which goes rather wider—and, on the other hand, the need for parents to have access to school records.

I am aware that there is a confidential non-accidental injury register which was, I believe, instituted as a result of work in this Chamber following the Maria Caldwell case many years ago. That register is confidential except to professionals.

But if a child is believed by its teachers to be at risk of non-accidental injury, or possibly in receipt of such injury, and moves to another school in another local authority area (it happens all the time when people move jobs), it is very important, indeed vital for the safety of the child, that that information should travel with it. The only way of which I am aware that one could rely on it travelling with a child is in the school records. But what teacher will readily put a note on the child's school record to the effect that the child is at risk of non-accidental injury from its parents if those parents have access to the records.

I hope that my noble friend either by more graphic enlightenment during these exchanges, or, more likely at the next stage, will be able to enlighten us on this very important issue, which, for a handful of children, may mean the difference between life and death.

Baroness Faithfull

In my experience the right method is for there to be a good relationship between the education department and the social services. If there is a good and understanding relationship, the school will refer the case to the social services department under the Children Act 1989 or an earlier children's Act. That is usually done by way of a case conference between the education department and social services. Not a great deal is put down on paper at that stage. Together, the education department and social services make a plan and decide what is to happen in that particular case in those particular circumstances.

Lord Swinfen

I understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, but the two other amendments to which he spoke appear to me to be trial by innuendo. Therefore I feel that a better way should be found of removing school governors who could possibly be a danger to the children at their schools. In particular, if a local authority is to have a governor removed, it will have to discuss the matter and to make a decision. Presumably that decision would be open and the school governor, if innocent, would have no recourse to clear his name afterwards or to any damages. That decision, being an open decision would be published in the local papers. I fear that mistakes could be made. There should be another and more satisfactory method found to deal with this matter.

Earl Russell

I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, says. I want to say a brief word in support of Amendment No. 160AZA, which has my name attached to it.

It has not been brought out sufficiently that the local authority has a statutory duty in this respect. We are ready enough to reprove and criticise the local authority if it does not discharge that duty, and indeed sometimes if it does. In the course of discharging that duty it may possibly require access.

Most institutions are ready enough to take up a defensive mentality when someone from outside criticises a member of that institution. It is perfectly possible to imagine a school saying, like the mythological Oxford college porter when the police were told that there was a murder in the college: "You can't come in 'ere, Sir. You 'ave to speak to the Dean, Sir". There should be something to deal with that situation.

I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said about the good relationship between the education department and the social services department. That is crucial. But where a school has opted out, there will not be an education department to help out in the process. It is not utterly unimaginable that a school that has just opted out might have a bad relationship with a local authority and, with even more defensive reflexes, might not co-operate with the local authority in carrying out its statutory duty. So long as that duty rests on it, it must be able to discharge it.

Lord Hylton

I should briefly like to support what the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said about the importance of the good relationship between an education authority and a social services authority. When the Minister comes to reply perhaps he can take particular pains to deal with the case which has just been mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Russell; namely, what happens to a school after it becomes grant-maintained, where that same relationship may no longer apply. Can he also deal with the related point as to what happens about records and passing on information when parents and their children cross boundaries between authorities?

Lord Pearson of Rannoch

I do not know whether the Committee remembers a recent debate on the selection and training of those involved in the residential care of children. One of the difficulties encountered in that debate was that under recent legislation which stems from our membership of the European Economic Community, we now have no way of preventing undesirable members of other Community countries from entering this country and thus possibly our education system. I do not know whether I am being helpful to my noble friend but I feel that this is an area which we should bear in mind. It may render much of the amendment irrelevant.

9.15 p.m.

Lord Henley

I agree with all Members of the Committee, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that these are important amendments. It is worth taking time to air them and say a few words. I hope that I can give the noble Lord and the NSPCC the appropriate assurances that Amendment No. 160AZA is unnecessary. I shall then go on to deal with the other two amendments.

My right honourable friend has already announced his intention to make grant-maintained schools and CTCs subject to the provisions of Sections 27 and 47 of the Children Act 1989 which require co-operation with local authorities acting on behalf of children in need or investigating child abuse. The department has written to the chairmen of the CTC Governors' Forum and of the GM Standing Advisory Committee, and will shortly be writing to the schools concerned, to explain the Secretary of State's intention. The Secretary of State will then make an authorisation under Sections 27 and 47 bringing both GM schools and CTCs within their scope. That should be sufficient to ensure appropriate co-operation by those schools and colleges with local authority social service departments.

I am grateful that the noble Lord mentioned the guidance which states that the schools should be aware of the dangers of abuse. I underline that guidance and what the noble Lord said. The schools should be prepared to inform the appropriate agencies where such abuse occurs. I underline also the point made by my noble friend Lady Faithfull and repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, of the need for good relations between both social services on the one hand and LEAs on the other or, in the case of a school that has recently opted out, of the new grant-maintained schools. Bringing in Sections 27 and 47 should be sufficient to meet those specific concerns. I hope therefore that the noble Lord will feel that it is not necessary to press Amendment No. 160AZA.

I turn to Amendments Nos. 246ZA and 246ZB. Again I understand the concerns that pupils should be safeguarded against the risk of abuse by those who, by reason of their position—a position of authority as the children perceive it—have access to schools and contact with pupils. We all share a concern that pupils should not be subject to such a risk. That said, I do not believe that a provision which targets governors has any place on the face of the Bill.

In explaining the existing protections within regulations, I shall describe the position in LEA-maintained schools. There are similar protections in the model articles for grant-maintained schools which, subject to this Bill, will in future be governed by regulations.

Existing regulations for LEA-maintained schools provide that a serving governor who is convicted of any offence carrying a custodial sentence of three months or more without the option of a fine must cease to hold office. And a person who has at any time in the past been convicted of an offence carrying a prison sentence of five years or more cannot take up office as a governor. Disqualification also applies to persons with convictions carrying lesser prison sentences.

These provisions were drawn up with great care. They serve to ensure that individuals who are not fit to be governors of our schools are prevented from taking up or continuing to hold office. The test of fitness is whether the person in question has a criminal conviction—of whatever nature, and including child abuse—which the courts have considered serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence of a particular length. A boundary is drawn to exclude offences which the courts, having regard to all the circumstances, have viewed as less serious.

The effect of the regulations is therefore that a serving governor would continue in office while a criminal investigation was in progress. If there is a conviction which brings into play the disqualification provisions of our regulations, then the governor would be removed from office. If there is no such conviction, then the disqualification provisions do not bite.

I have considerable anxiety in regard to the two amendments. I appreciate that the noble Lord was trying to do the almost impossible task of finding the appropriate balance. That is important when we are dealing with the question of an individual's civil rights. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Swinfen that there is a danger that it may amount to trial by innuendo, in that the amendments give governing bodies powers to act beyond the scope of the criminal law. In circumstances where the police had decided against investigating an allegation of child abuse, or where the courts had found a governor not guilty or decided against a prison sentence, the amendment would allow governing bodies and LEAs to suspend the governor from office. I do not believe it is a sufficient argument that governing bodies and LEAs will use their powers sensibly. I am sure that in 99 per cent. of cases they will do so. But we should be careful about granting powers to governing bodies and LEAs unless we believe that there will be circumstances in which they would use them. I do not believe that such circumstances are not already covered by the disqualification provisions contained in existing legislation.

Following the point made by my noble friend Lord Renfrew, it is important that we are clear about the circumstances in which governing bodies will have access to schools and contact with pupils. That was certainly the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. By virtue of their office they can expect to be welcomed into schools. It is by visiting schools that they acquaint themselves with the life of the school community and so perform their function better. But I must stress that governors do not have the freedom to enter schools as they will without the permission of the head teacher who is responsible for the internal organisation and management of the school. Nor do their positions as members of a governing body give them any right to expect unsupervised contact with pupils. I believe that we must keep in perspective the potential risk represented by such occasional visitors to schools.

I turn to the question raised by my noble friend Lord Elton, which I appreciate was raised without notice. I believe that the point was also touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. As I understood it, a teacher might be loathe to put on a pupil's record that the pupil was at risk from his parent or parents because the parent or parents might at some later stage see that record. I certainly understand the point that my noble friend makes, and I will consider whether further safeguards are necessary. We can come back to this at a later stage.

With those assurances and my description of how we see things working, I hope that the noble Lord will accept that his amendments are unnecessary. I believe that the later two are not only unnecessary but undesirable. They do not recognise the realities of governor contact with pupils and will give governing bodies and LEAs powers that go beyond the criminal law. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw or not press all three amendments.

Lord Judd

I am grateful for that very considerate reply. Obviously, this is a very important issue. In recent years there has been a lot of social evidence of cases where sensitive steps have not been taken in time and calamities have arisen. When that happens all hell is let loose—not least in this Chamber—and everybody asks why action has not been taken in time. The noble Lord in his helpful reply has managed to persuade me that Ministers take this issue at least as seriously as I do and are determined to see that the right guidance and advice is given to schools on this matter. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 160AA not moved.]

Lord Northbourne moved Amendment No. 160AB: Page 180, line 15, at end insert: ("Ethos and Values —(1) In the case of any grant-maintained school established under section 46 of this Act, the Articles must include a mission statement setting out—

1. (a) the objects and strategy of the school;
2. (b) the spiritual, moral, and social values of the Governors of the school; and
3. (c) the religious and denominational character of the school if any.

(2) The Articles must include a statement of the policy of the school in relation to—

1. (a) behaviour, discipline and citizenship;
241
2. (b) mutual respect and tolerance between:—
   1. (i) staff and pupils and the community;
   2. (ii) persons and groups of different race, colour or ethnic origin;
   3. (iii) persons of different gender or ages;
   4. (iv) persons and groups of different creeds, beliefs and opinions.").

The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 160AB, I also wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 160AD, 160BA and 241. I acknowledge at once that the wording of these amendments may need technical improvement if they are to be brought back at a further stage of the Bill. Clause 46 offers an invitation to promoters to apply for grant-maintained status for new schools. In his introduction to Choice and Diversity the Prime Minister said that the White Paper enhanced parental choice by opening the way for greater variety in education through the formation of new schools and by the encouragement of specialisation.

In this country today there are some 91 independent Christian schools operating on a shoestring. Parents and teachers suffer very great financial disadvantage in order to give children the denominational Christian education that they believe is important. This group is eager to be taken into the family of grant-maintained schools.

The Moslem community in this country, which now comprises about 2 per cent. of the population, feels very deeply the injustice of its present exclusion from the educational partnership arrangements enjoyed by the Church of England, the Roman Catholics and the Jewish community. There are also non-religious groups, such as the Steiner schools, which believe that they have an important contribution to make to the education of this country. They want to be part of the new national family of grant-maintained schools. And there will be others.

I believe that there is anxiety in this House and in the country that if we open this door some of the new grant-maintained schools might become hotbeds for the promulgation of unacceptable values of one kind or another or might encourage a ghetto mentality among their pupils. The kind of unacceptable values I have in mind are those which encourage hatred or prejudice, ideas about the role of women in society, attitudes to the family and so forth. I believe that it is very important to try to ensure on the face of the Bill that all new entrants to the national family of grant-maintained schools will be responsible and accountable.

How can this be done? After much discussion the solution that has been suggested to me, which seems to me to be the best, is entirely to duck the hot potato of actually attempting to lay down boundaries of acceptable values, but rather to ask each school itself to set out its philosophy and values on certain specified issues. That declaration would then become part of the articles of government of the school and all that would remain to be done would be for the national inspectorate, when making its inspection, to ensure that the school is doing what it said it was going to do.

I should like to turn briefly to the detail of the amendments. Amendment No. 160AD clarifies that the Secretary of State rather than the governors promulgates the articles of government. I understand that the amendment is unnecessary and I shall withdraw it when it arises. Amendment No. 160BA requires the Secretary of State to consult with the promoters and the governors of the school before they agree the final form of the articles. I draw the Committee's attention to the fact that the amendment applies only to new grant-maintained schools, so it does not apply to the great family of county and voluntary aided schools which may or may not become grant-maintained schools. It applies to new grant-maintained schools being started by promoters or sponsors. I believe that it is important anyway that new grant-maintained schools should have the opportunity to establish their identity and to have that identity proved before they go into business.

Amendment No. 160AB, which is in a sense the meat of the matter, adds another sub-paragraph to Schedule 6. It requires schools to set out in their articles of government their policy and attitudes on certain specified issues. It may be here that I have got the issues slightly wrong. This may be a matter for discussion and my wording could be changed.

In the context of Amendment No. 160AB I should like to draw the Committee's attention particularly to the second part of the amendment. I have used the phrase "behaviour, discipline and citizenship". I have introduced the word "citizenship" because I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that behaviour and discipline are only part of the much wider picture about the way in which a school is run. At a recent meeting of the all-party children group the headmasters of four schools were invited to come to speak to us. Each one brought with him a senior pupil. They talked about their schools and about the school councils. Perhaps I may take the time of the Committee for a moment to read a little from the presentation which was given to us by a very personable young lady called Rebecca, aged 10, from Muswell Hill School. She said: Our school is lucky to have a school council and I think every primary school should have one. It puts children's views forward so that the teachers don't make the wrong decisions. Our council has made a lot of decisions to improve the school. For example, the state of the toilets has been improved by changing the toilet paper from nasty hard paper to soft paper … The water fountains weren't working. They have made them work". There are a great many other things such as a survey on bullying. They have done something about litter and so forth.

I would also like to draw the Committee's attention to the wording of the amendment relating to tolerance. It is a wording which goes a great deal further than a simple equal opportunities' amendment. The Committee may feel that the wording is over-elaborate, but I believe that the issues it covers are crucial and need to be spelled out.

Amendment No. 241 refers to the inspection of endowed grant-maintained schools by the national inspectorate. It confirms that the inspectorate is required, to inspect not only the secular activities, but also religious education and worship, but only in so far as it is necessary to ensure that the school is complying with its articles and to report on its spiritual, moral and cultural development of the pupils. That inspection will be additional to the inspection which is carried out by the inspectors appointed by the diocese to cover religious education and worship.

There are three possible objections and I should like briefly to anticipate them. It has been suggested that the promulgation of values which are unacceptable to society would in any case be outside the law and could therefore be dealt with by the courts. I do not believe that that is necessarily the case. By way of example, I can tell the Committee that I am assured by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, that the teachings and practices of the Unification Church, which is better known as the "Moonies", were not outside the law and yet they were profoundly repugnant to most members of our society.

It may be argued that an increase in the numbers and variety of maintained schools could lead to a ghetto mentality in some of them. I suggest that ghettos are caused by oppression and a sense of injustice. The new faith-based, grant-maintained schools will have to follow the national curriculum, national testing, and they will have to be regularly inspected. If the Committee is minded to approve these amendments, the schools will be unequivocally committed to abiding by the ethos and values which they have proposed and which were agreed when they were founded.

It could be argued that the Secretary of State already has enough powers to deal with these matters. That may be technically true, but it is certainly not well known. Those powers are sometimes difficult to apply. It is important that people in this country should feel comfortable with these new schools. By having these amendments, or something like them, on the face of the Bill, the Committee and the public will be reassured that any expansion in the number and variety of faith-based, grant-maintained schools need not be a threat to themselves, their children or to the communities in which they live. I beg to move.

9.30 p.m.

Baroness Cox

I wish to speak very briefly in support of these amendments which seek to ensure, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has said, that the new grant-maintained schools promote acceptable values. I believe that the amendments are prudent and far-sighted in what they hope to achieve.

As the Committee may know, I have for many years supported the idea of allowing new schools, including new religious denominational schools, to opt into the state sector. Under Clause 46 they may indeed have this opportunity. I would like to repeat how much I welcome that provision in this legislation.

Of the new schools now eligible to apply for opting in, many will be denominational. As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has said, there are some 90 Christian schools belonging to the organisation Christians in Education. There are also Jewish and Moslem schools keen to apply for state funding. The long-suffering Yesodeh Hatorah schools serving the Jewish community in North London, have been striving unsuccessfully for nigh on 20 years to obtain voluntary-aided status. More recently, Moslem schools such as Islamia School in Brent, have been applying for state funding and so far unsuccessfully.

Many people have expressed their misgivings on these developments, some publicly and many privately. They are especially concerned about extending state funding to new, non-Christian, religious-based schools. However, I have to say that, by contrast, I very much welcome these proposals. For example, I believe that to reject the Islamic community's wishes for state-funded Moslem schools, would be to deny the principles of natural justice. While we have long-established Anglican, Roman Catholic and Jewish schools, we cannot deny other faith communities the same rights to an education based on their own sacred beliefs and moral values. Such a denial would also violate the right, enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, of parents to have their children educated according to their own religious beliefs and philosophical convictions. Such a denial might also engender feelings of anger and rejection in the Moslem community.

However, I am sensitive to the point frequently made to me that all religious faiths may contain some elements which suffer from extremism. Christianity and Islam are no exceptions. It would be unacceptable to use taxpayers' money to support schools which promote values incompatible with the basic values of democracy, especially those which might threaten tolerance and pluralism.

Amendment No. 160AB addresses those worries by ensuring that a newly proposed grant-maintained school's mission statement specify how it intends to promote tolerance between persons of different race, ethnic origin, gender, age or creed. The schools inspectorate, Ofsted, should ensure that each school complies subsequently with its mission statement. The Secretary of State's powers will ensure that any school, which is not promoting tolerance in accordance with its mission statement, may, after due process, be excluded from receiving further state funding.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be sympathetic to the spirit of the amendments. They are not just a safeguard against the misuse of taxpayers' money. More importantly, they are a safeguard for children and for respect of the values of tolerance and pluralism in our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-faith society.

Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

Perhaps I may intervene on one small point. I imagine that in Amendment No. 160AB the reference to Section 64 as it appears on the Marshalled List should read Section 46. I believe that there has been a misprint. Section 64 deals with something different.

Lord Northbourne

Yes, it should be Section 46.

Lord Renton

I support what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, although I do not commit myself to the wording of his amendments. We now have a varied and complex multi-faith society, but we have had necessarily to legislate in a somewhat general way in the Bill. When legislating, we should take note of the reality of the situation in our society. We have a multi-faith society.

Those of us who are Christians hope and believe that our society will continue to be mainly Christian in attitude and sentiment. However, that desire should not prevent us from doing justice to other faiths if they are acceptable and recognisable. My noble friend Lady Cox rightly said that the new types of schools should be able to opt in to the state structure. In my opinion they should not be forced to do so. They should be given the opportunity, and it should be a voluntary movement. That is what I hope is the purpose of the amendments. If we want a contented society, we should try to treat all religious bodies of an acceptable kind in the same way.

Lord Hylton

I support the amendments. For many years I have been active in support of integrated schools in Northern Ireland. Those schools came into being amid the greatest possible difficulties simply and solely because parents wanted them for their children. If one supports such a development in Northern Ireland, it is only logical to support parental choice in England, Wales or anywhere else.

I am aware that there are considerable anxieties lest new schools arising from particular faith communities lead to the indoctrination as opposed to the education of children. That is why it is so important that the amendments specify mutual respect and tolerance.

We are well aware that in France, for example, there has been a massive controversy in schools about the wearing of a garment called a chador. We are also aware that in Iran, which has a fundamentalist government, people such as the Baha'is are severely persecuted. There have also been considerable difficulties for Christians in countries such as Sudan, Egypt and Pakistan.

Those are the types of situation which we are anxious to avoid in this country. I hope that the Government will take the amendments extremely seriously because they have the potential to end anxiety in this country and to enable new schools to come forward in the grant-maintained sector, if that is appropriate, on a better basis than might otherwise be the case.

Lord Elton

I had supposed that Clause 46 had been designed for the proposals for brand new schools. The amendments treat the clause as though it were also a vehicle for the introduction of existing schools. I hope that my noble friends are right but, if not, that some other means can be found of achieving the ends which the amendments seek.

The group of amendments addresses two pressing issues. The first is how to bring into the existing system good schools which will add strength to it and which subscribe to the religious and moral traditions of this country, which are sadly weakened. The second issue is how to cope with the development of denominational schools which are not of the Christian faith and which too many people see as a real threat to our society. The basis of that fear is in part the fear of a different religion, which would be diminished on acquaintance. But it is much more the fear of the unknown. The charm of the amendments is that they create a system of absolute transparency so that we the people will know what is happening in those schools, what is proposed for them and whether that is taking place.

That relates to a debate which we had two years ago concerning the inspection of denominational education. I hope that my noble friend will look at that issue between now and Report. That transparency will give the confidence that we need in schools which subscribe to what I hope will remain minority religions in this country. If that confidence can be obtained, and if we can see that the extremists are in a minority in all religions, there will be the beginnings of the possibility of a growth of confidence between different ethnic communities in our cities. That is to be earnestly prayed for.

I hope that my noble friend will not underestimate the great importance of the principles addressed by the amendments and will recognise that they go a long way towards securing those principles in a workable way. I hope that she will consider them with great care and that on Report we shall see in their place proposals which are a little more workable.

Baroness Blatch

I do not underestimate the importance and significance of the amendments and the principles which underly them. I am grateful to my noble friends and to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for their thoughtful remarks on this important subject. Like them, I fully believe that the moral and spiritual mission of a school is vital. I hope that I shall be able to reassure them that the Government take the moral and spiritual dimension very seriously and that existing legislation, together with the action which we have in train, already offers significant protection against the possibility that schools will harbour values that are offensive to the majority.

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is currently consulting on a requirement on schools to set out in their prospectus a statement on school ethos and values, including details of the way in which they meet their duty to secure the moral, spiritual, social and cultural development of their pupils through the national curriculum, through religious education, and more generally.

The national curriculum council has just published guidance on the moral and spiritual dimension of the curriculum. Furthermore, Circular 7/92 noted our commitment to requiring from 1993–94 that all maintained schools should include in their prospectuses a statement about the way in which they seek to secure the requirements of the Education Reform Act in this respect.

We touched on related issues during the course of our debate last week on amendments to Clause 46. I said then that when considering an application for a new GM school my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will consider the suitability of promoters to run a new GM school. Clearly he will not approve proposals from promoters whose values run counter to those expressed in my noble friends' amendments.

The existing model articles of government for self-governing schools also already contain relevant provisions. They require that it be the duty of the governing body: to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups". There are also a number of other provisions relating to self-governing schools which secure the ethos of the school.

It might be helpful if I set out the procedure for making the articles of government of a GM school. That will be done under Clause 5.3 of the Bill in regulations made by the Secretary of State. We will of course be consulting widely on these regulations. Governing bodies will be empowered to suggest alternative provisions to the Secretary of State but he will have the final word. Amendment No. 160AD is therefore otiose: there is no question of the initial articles of government being made by anyone other than the Secretary of State. Similarly I am not persuaded that Amendment No. 160BA is practicable. The articles of government should conform to a model or one of several models. It is not possible or desirable to make bespoke articles even for every new GM school where statutory proposals are published under Clause 46. But I am ready to reflect further on whether the standard articles of government for such schools might contain additional provisions relating to the school's ethos. With those explanations and reassurances I trust that Amendments Nos. 160AD and 160BA will not be moved. I hope that the dialogue between the officials of my department and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and others will continue on these matters.

Amendment No. 160AB would make it a requirement that the articles of government for self-governing schools include a mission statement and a statement on the behaviour and discipline of pupils including their mutual respect and tolerance towards others. I am not persuaded that the amendment will work as it stands. The purpose of the articles of government is to set out how GM schools should be conducted. Many of the articles impose duties and obligations on the governing body such as those that I have already mentioned. I see little point in requiring that the articles include statements of policy rather than specific obligations to conduct the school in a particular way. And some of the information that the amendment would require to be included in the mission statement would already be public knowledge: the religious and denominational character of the school will have been included in a school's proposals for self-governing status.

But I am attracted to the notion of allowing governing bodies to exercise their functions with a view to securing, for example, that the school is conducted in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance. I hope that I shall be allowed to resist this particular amendment to the Bill and to consider these issues further. I should like to consider whether the wording and content are appropriate and, if so, whether reference to moral and spiritual values should be made in Schedule 6 or whether these are matters best left to the articles themselves.

Amendment No. 241 concerns inspections under Section 9 of the Education (Schools) Act 1992. All inspections carried out under Section 9 of the Schools Act by a registered inspector will cover the way a school promotes the spiritual and moral development of pupils across the curriculum. The registered inspector will state his findings in a published report, and the governors are required to publish an action plan in response, setting out the action they propose to take to remedy any deficiencies identified.

In addition, in any. school which offers denominational religious education, either by virtue of its trust deed or a statement annexed to statutory proposals, the governors are under a duty to arrange for the inspection of that denominational provision, under Section 13 of the Act. The Section 13 inspector, who is solely appointed by the governors, will also be able to report on the way in which a school is meeting the requirements of its trust deed in terms of pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. The Section 13 inspector will also look at the content of private acts of corporate worship, such as mass. That report, and the governors' response to it, will also be published and made widely available so that parents and others can see that the school is delivering its religious ethos in a satisfactory manner. Those are important safeguards to preserve the character of a school.

Just before I conclude, I should like to say a few words to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. He mentioned very specifically the integrated schools in Northern Ireland. I very much agree with him. Apart from being a successful policy, I actually think that it is quite a courageous policy. I hope that, along with me, Members of the Committee will recognise the efforts of Dr. Brian Mawhinney in setting them up. They bode well for the future of young people in Northern Ireland. However, I hope with those reassurances and explanations that my noble friends will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Elton

As my noble friend referred to Section 13, I should point out that that is in fact the section which was debated and to which I referred. She raised an important point. The welcome I gave to the amendment was, in large part, due to the fact that it would produce transparency for the nation as a whole as to what was going on in those highly specialist religious enclaves—that is, both Christian and otherwise. Section 13 provides that, an inspection under this section shall be conducted by a person chosen by—(a) the foundation governors, in the case of a controlled school; and (b) the governing body, in any other case". However, that is not the case. It is an internal fix, or can be seen as such. It just does not answer the point. We are seeking to open up the whole field of religious instruction to inspection, not by any sort of inquisitor but by someone who will be able to see whether what is going on is in accordance with what has been agreed with the Secretary of State as proposed under subsection (1) of Amendment No. 160AB.

My noble friend the Minister talked about an inspection by a Section 13 inspector appointed by the governors under criteria which are laid down elsewhere externally. I hope that, in her reflections, my noble friend will bear in mind the following: first, that we need an answer on the principle as to whether this great evil of the ghettoisation of minority religion can be removed by bringing the schools into the national system; and, secondly, whether that can be done in a way which promotes the confidence of the rest of the country. It must of course promote the confidence of the minority. Being excluded at the moment, it is not surprising that they do not have such confidence. If my noble friend takes the essence of.the amendments on board, she will realise that they are very important.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour

I should like to say a few words before my noble friend responds. I tried to listen very carefully to her reply to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. However, I have a feeling that she did not entirely pick up the point that what is proposed is a positive approach as opposed to laying down that which should not be. Although the amendment may not fit in easily with the ideas of the moment for the articles of government of schools, I believe that a way should be found somewhere—whether it is in the articles or elsewhere—to get the process moving. It is really extremely imaginative and might work in such a way that possibly nothing else could. This is such an important matter. I hope that my noble friend will carefully consider the angle from which the noble Lord has approached the issue before we reach the next stage of the Bill.

Baroness Seear

I wish to say from these Benches how much importance we attach to the possibility of other religions being drawn into the whole framework of religious education within schools. Tomorrow at 10.30 in the Moses Room the Moslems are to hold a meeting about this very matter. The position will be difficult if they believe that this kind of approach is being rejected.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I give general support, as I believe I did when we were discussing this matter on a previous occasion. However, I am a little confused as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, spoke to Amendment No. 241 which deals with inspections. There are a number of amendments on that matter. I would not wish the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to be recorded as the only statement on inspections. I hope that that aspect of the matter can be left until we reach the relevant part of the Bill.

Baroness Blatch

I say to my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour what I have said a number of times during my response to the amendment. I wish to take this provision away and reflect on a number of issues that have arisen during our discussions. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for what he has just said. I do not believe we should look at this form of inspection in isolation from other inspections that will take place in these schools.

I understand the tensions, sensitivities and concerns of the Committee, but I also believe that there will be some overlap between general inspections and specific inspection of the quality of Mass, for example, or specific inspection of the quality of worship in a Moslem school, and/or a Jewish school. That issue will need some careful handling. I accept the advice of the right reverend Prelate that the matter we are discussing should not be considered in isolation. However, I shall reflect on the entire debate between now and Report.

Lord Northbourne

I am most grateful to Members of the Committee who have supported the amendment and to the noble Baroness for her kind comments. However, I do not feel that the points she was able to make from the Dispatch Box entirely cover the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has often put his finger on the nub of the matter as regards the concept of transparency. He also put his finger on the nub of the matter in relation to the Section 13 inspection, which constitutes an inside job. We must try to find a way in which the Section 9 inspection can cover these issues without offending the sensibilities of the existing Churches or anyone else. That is what I hoped I had achieved. Perhaps the noble Baroness will feel I have achieved that when she studies the debate.

I was troubled by the idea of standard articles. If we are looking for choice and diversity, we cannot really have standard articles. If we are looking for different sorts of schools, we must allow for the possibility that the schools will wish to have articles that vary in some specific elements. The richness of the concept of grant-maintained schools would be weakened if it were not possible to have some variety in the articles on sensitive issues. It may be that the prospectus of a school is the right vehicle for the governors to state their intentions in this regard, but I am not at all sure about that. I am not at all sure that a prospectus has to be approved by the Secretary of State whereas the articles do. That matter needs some further consideration. I do not wish to waste the Committee's time. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for saying that she will take these matters away and reconsider them. I hope we may be able to work together to achieve agreement.

Baroness Blatch

I hope that I may reply to the noble Lord so that the reply is on the record for the purposes of any subsequent debate. When I referred to standard articles, I referred to standard articles with additional provisions. The additional provisions would take account of the particular characteristics of individual schools. I talked about standard articles as they related to all schools and then additional provisions as they related to particular characteristics of individual schools.

Lord Northbourne

I understand that many of the provisions would be standard. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 160AC not moved.]

Schedule 6 agreed to.

10 p.m.

Clause 53 [Initial instruments and articles of government]:

[Amendment No. 160AD not moved.]

The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 160B: Page 29, line 42, at end insert: ("( ) The Secretary of State shall, in respect of subsection (1) above and before prescribing such instruments and articles in the case of endowed grant maintained schools, consult with the Board of Education of the General Synod of the Church of England and the Catholic Education Service and such other persons or bodies as appear to him to be appropriate.").

The noble Duke said: As we read this and related clauses, we can see that there is a good and urgent administrative reason for prescribing model instruments and articles of government for grant-maintained schools. In the case of endowed grant-maintained schools the amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult the bodies listed. For us that is important in that, as both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford and I observed at Second Reading and earlier in Committee, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are anxious to see clear and unambiguous references in both those important prescribed documents to the distinctive nature and character of church schools.

I am reliably informed that such consultation took place following the passing of both the Education Act 1980 and the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 and the consequential issue of revised model instruments and articles of government for voluntary aided, controlled and special agreement schools. I trust that my noble friend the Minister will confirm that the benefit of consultation and co-operation evidenced in those exercises will be repeated when Clause 53 is finally redrafted. I beg to move.

Lord Northbourne

I should like briefly to support the amendment, which follows neatly from what we said in relation to standard articles and model clauses. It is desirable to have model clauses. It is hoped that there will be some specific model clauses which will relate to Roman Catholic Church schools, some which will relate to Church of England schools and some which will relate to Jéwish schools. It is entirely desirable that those consultations should take place. I hope that the noble Baroness will agree.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I wish to indicate that in general terms I am in full agreement with the noble Duke. We have consulted together over the preparation of the amendments.

Baroness Blatch

Clauses 53 to 55 of the Bill relate to the instruments and articles of government for self-governing schools. Clause 53 provides for the initial instrument and articles to be set out in regulations. Clauses 53 and 54 allow for those initial instruments and articles to be varied.

The amendments relate to self-governing schools which were formerly voluntary schools or were established by promoters. My noble friend referred to such schools as "endowed schools".

The noble Lords would like to make it a requirement on the face of the Bill that, in the case of those grant-maintained schools which they term "endowed schools", the Secretary of State would have to consult with the Church of England Board of Education and the Catholic Education Service and such other bodies as appear appropriate before making regulations under Clause 53. As I have said, the initial instrument and articles will be made under regulations. The Government will certainly be consulting widely about those regulations. I can assure my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk and the right reverend Prelate that the consultation will include national bodies representing the Church of England and the Catholic Church. That is because we are dealing here with policies which apply nationally. All grant-maintained schools will have their instruments and articles set out in regulations.

Given that commitment to national consultation, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. First, it is not appropriate for such requirements to be included on the face of the Bill. It is not usual to seek to list consultees. Secondly, I do not believe that such singling out of two bodies for inclusion in the Bill is desirable. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, introduced a third name, and there may be more. There are other interests—particularly those of individual schools—which also need to be consulted. I ask, therefore, that the amendment is not pressed at this time.

The second and third amendments, Amendments Nos. 160C and 160D, are less appropriate. They relate to consultation about the instrument and articles of government of individual schools. I do not believe that it is necessary for the Secretary of State to consult the bodies mentioned in the case of amendments to the instruments or articles of individual schools. Under the clauses as they stand, the Secretary of State will consult the governing body of the school before making any change. As my noble friends will know, the governing bodies of endowed schools will contain foundation governors. In Church schools those will normally be appointed by the local diocese. In non-denominational schools they will be appointed by other bodies—for example, by the school's foundation. The foundation governors form a majority on the governing body of former voluntary schools which become self-governing. They will therefore be well placed to consult with and put across the views of the bodies who appoint them. There is also nothing to prevent a school consulting anyone else it wishes about a change to its instrument or articles.

I hope that with that explanation the amendments can be withdrawn.

The Duke of Norfolk

I am not entirely happy with what the Minister says. However, I understand the sincerity with which she speaks. I believe that the initial articles of government are extremely important and that the religious background to them should be considered. However, in view of what the noble Baroness said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. If the situation is unsatisfactory, perhaps I may bring the provision back at Report stage.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 160BA not moved.]

Clause 53 agreed to.

Clause 54 [Subsequent instruments of government]:

The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 160C: Page 30, line 34, at end insert: ("( ) The Secretary of State shall in respect of subsections (1), (2), (3) and (4) above, consult—

1. (a) the relevant Diocesan Board of Education (in the case of Church ofEngland endowed grant maintained schools);
2. (b) the relevant Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishop and Trustees (in the case of Roman Catholic endowed grant maintained schools);
3. (c) the person or persons named in the school's Instrument of Government as being entitled to appoint foundation governors (in the case of other endowed grant maintained schools).").

The noble Duke said: Clause 54 provides that the Secretary of State may himself modify an endowed grant-maintained school instrument of government, either at his own behest or at the request of the governing body of the school.

While I think that it would be unlikely that the Secretary of State would wish radically to alter an agreed model as described under Clause 53, both the Churches deem it important that, before amending an endowed grant-maintained school's instrument of government, there should be consultation on his part with the relevant diocesan authority.

I would add that we are a mite more concerned about Clause 54(1) (a). Although I am confident that the majority of endowed grant-maintained school governing bodies would rest content with an instrument which they would know was drafted with the co-operation of the relevant national agencies, the possibility of a unique governing body "going native", so to speak, and attempting to undo a carefully-crafted model, which in turn might well undermine the denominational character and composition of the governing body worries us.

I acknowledge that the thrust of the amendment will not stop a governing body from so proceeding. However, a duty to consult as set out in the amendment might well curb potential excesses. I beg to move.

Lord Hylton

I support the amendment. I hope that the Government are fully aware that the systems of the major religious denominations which provide schools are of a particular pattern in a city, district or diocese, and that something which happens to a particular school is very likely to have repercussions on all the other schools. That will be seen with force, for example, when a sixth-form college draws its pupils from a wide range of contributing secondary schools. There have been cases which illustrate that point both in London and Birmingham.

Lord Northbourne

I ask the noble Baroness to reconsider what she said on the earlier amendment but relating to this amendment. Perhaps I should have intervened before. Surely we are not talking about any old group of schools, we are talking about the two major partners. It depends on whether we take the figure of the number of pupils or the school population, but between 25 and 30 per cent. of the school population has historically been and is at present subject to a partnership arrangement between the two major Christian Churches and the Government.

Here we are partners negotiating for some of those schools to be free to transfer into the grant-maintained sector. I should have thought that the Churches had a legitimate anxiety, particularly in the context of what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said about the desire of the Roman Catholic Church to make a coherent provision for its flock in each area. If it is not consulted on such changes, that coherent provision will not be possible.

Lord Renton

Whether or not the provision is written into the statute, it is important that in the case of a group of denominational schools within one area—that is to say here, one diocese—there should be an element of consistency in the articles for the governing of each school. We do not want too much disparity. We can avoid that if there is consultation with the diocese in each case. Of course, the governors must be consulted but if only they are consulted, then there may be some disparity.

In saying that, I am not wedded to the idea that we should write it into the Bill because there is a well-known saying about interpretation of statutes to the effect that, if one expresses one thing, one is deemed to exclude others like it. It may be that some other form of consultation as well should be contemplated. Therefore, it may be best to leave it broad and open. However, as a matter of policy, I hope that the Government will bear in mind the desirability of achieving consistency in the way I have mentioned.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I do not wish to detain the Committee because I am sure people are anxious to get on. I thought that this amendment was grouped with the previous amendments, so I am confused. However, now that the point has been raised I should like to say in answer to what the noble Baroness stated on a previous point that, although she is quite right that there is a majority of foundation governors in a grant-maintained school, those foundation governors are not necessarily appointed by the diocesan board of education, but will probably be appointed by the local parish. The foundation governors may not, therefore, bear in mind the whole strategy of Church schools across the diocese as a whole. Thus, especially in the case of the Church of England, there is a case for consulting the diocesan board of education. I recognise that there is some doubt as to whether it is necessary to put that on the face of the Bill. To that extent, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton.

Baroness Blatch

Like the right reverend Prelate, I am confused. I not only believed that my noble friend the Duke, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and other Members of the Committee had spoken to Amendments Nos. 160B, 160C and 160D because we were talking about consultation generally but also I responded to the two amendments relating to Clauses 54 and 55. I made the point that foundation governors are appointed by the umbrella bodies, whether it be the diocesan board or, in another school, the trust foundation.

I am open-minded, I should like to take the matter away and think about it. The one thought I am left with is the point made by my noble friend Lord Renton and the right reverend Prelate. I am not sure, even if we come to an accommodating view about it, that the face of the Bill is the appropriate place for the provision. However, I take seriously on board the principle of proper consultation and the level playing field in these matters.

The Duke of Norfolk

Again I thank the Minister for what she has said. I should like to consider this matter further. I beg leave to. withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 54 agreed to.

10.15 p.m.

Clause 55 [Subsequent articles of government]:

The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 160D: Page 30, line 47, at end insert: ("( ) The Secretary of State shall in respect of subsections (1), (2) and (3) above, consult—

1. (a) the relevant Diocesan Board of Education (in the case of Church of England endowed grant maintained schools);
2. (b) the relevant Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishop and Trustees (in the case of Roman Catholic endowed grant maintained schools);
3. (c) the person or persons named in the school's Instrument of Government as being entitled to appoint foundation governors (in the case of other endowed grant maintained schools).").

The noble Duke said: The amendment seeks to put in place a not dissimilar safety valve to that which I have adverted in Amendment No. 160C. On balance—and it is a fine balance —the careful drafting of model articles is even more important than the instruments. The articles set out in great detail the statutory and respective roles for governors, the head teacher and the management of the school. That includes, inter alia, provisions for the oversight of both religious and secular curricula, the admission of pupils, disciplinary arrangements and the appointment and dismissal of staff, both teaching and non-teaching.

It is of the utmost importance therefore that, before replacing or modifying this key working document, much of which in the case of the grant-maintained schools will in model form carefully reflect the denominational ethos and character of the school, the Secretary of State should consult the relevant diocesan authority. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree. I beg to move.

Baroness Blatch

I wonder whether the Committee will allow me to take this amendment, together with the other two amendments, and consider all three between now and Report stage.

The Duke of Norfolk

I am willing to withdraw the amendment. Perhaps we may bring it forward again at Report stage if the Minister has not been able to make the changes we ask for.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 55 agreed to.

Clause 56 agreed to.

Schedule 7 [Categories of governors]:

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 160E: Page 184, line 10 at end insert: ("Support Staff Governors (1) "Support staff governor" means a governor elected by the non-teaching staff at the school. (2) To qualify for such election, the person must himself when he is elected be a member of the non-teaching staff at the school.").

The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 160E, I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 161, 162, 163, 161C, 161D and 162A.

Amendment No. 160E seeks to ensure that school support staff are placed on the governing body. School support staff are a diverse group which includes caretakers, secretaries, technicians, bursars and accounting staff. At present they are unrepresented on school governing bodies. It seems to us that it is anomalous for teaching staff to be represented on the governing body when the support staff are not. We believe that all staff have a contribution to make to their school regardless of their occupation.

The current position reflects a view which is all too often found in government that support staff are somehow second-class staff. The absence of a support staff governor is even more anomalous in special schools, where the majority of staff will be non-teaching staff. In those schools the support staff can additionally be house parents, other welfare helpers, interpreters and other specialists, whose direct input, especially in terms of their own expertise, would be useful to the governing body.

We accept that some may be unhappy with the idea of an additional staff governor. We would have no objection to the appointment of a further non-staff governor to balance the situation.

Perhaps I may now address Amendments Nos. 161, 162 and 163. The purpose of Amendment No. 161 is to encourage the appointment of one parent governor from among the parents for children in any special unit of a grant-maintained school. The purpose of Amendment No. 162 is to ensure that in a grant-maintained school that was previously a county school there is at least one governor with an understanding of special educational needs.

With Amendment No. 163 the purpose is to ensure that in a grant-maintained school that was previously a voluntary school there is at least one governor with an understanding of special educational needs. Where there is provision at a school for a group of pupils with special educational needs, the work and understanding of the governing body of that school may most helpfully be informed by the parent of a child placed in that position. Such parents will have a particular perspective on the work of the school that may assist the governing body in considering the school's approach both to the specific provision and to the children with special educational needs more generally.

The proposed amendment would not make an absolute requirement that one parent governor should be the parent of a child with specialist provision but simply that that should be the case where it is reasonably practical. Governing bodies will increasingly need an understanding of special educational needs issues, particularly in view of the proposed requirement in Clause 153(4) to publish their policy on special educational needs.

The willing and able parent of a child in specialist provision at the school would bring particular insight, understanding and skill to inform the school's policy. In carrying out their new duties governing bodies need to be able to draw on an understanding of special educational needs, whether it comes from the parent of a child at the school or from another source.

Many governing bodies have recognised the importance of their existing duties and have appointed a special needs governor to assist them in meeting their responsibilities. The passage of the current Bill provides an excellent opportunity to establish good practice more firmly. The proposed amendments to Clauses 60 and 62 will ensure that, as county and voluntary schools respectively become grant maintained, they appoint at least one governor with recent knowledge and understanding of special educational needs.

I turn now to Amendments Nos. 161C, 161D and 162A. The purpose of these amendments is to ensure that first governors do not outnumber other governors of a grant-maintained school and that one of the first governors is appointed by the local authority.

Clause 60 of the Bill requires that the instrument of government of a grant-maintained school would provide for the first governors to outnumber the other governors. This continues the concept of the Education Reform Act 1988; namely, that the first governors should be in a majority and should include parents and community business representatives.

Ensuring that the first governors always outnumber other governors means that those who establish the school have a natural majority and can continue to press the original philosophies of the school without being challenged. The value of the amendment is that it would ensure that the number of other governors is equal to the first governors and that they do not therefore have that natural majority.

The second of the amendments would ensure that the local authority is able to have a representative on the governing body of a grant-maintained school. It is an important amendment. While the local authority is no longer responsible for running the grant-maintained school, the funding arrangements for grant-maintained schools have an important effect on the local education authority's schools. Since grant-maintained schools operate within the framework of the maintained sector, it is important for the local authority to be aware of what is happening in the grant-maintained schools within its boundaries. Having a governor on a grant-maintained school enables a formal link to be created between the local authority and the school. I beg to move.

Lord Redesdale

I support the amendments in this grouping. I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 161A and 161B. The purpose is to allow two teachers to sit on the governing body and to present their views. Teachers are probably one of the most important groups in the school and their views will be invaluable to a governing body. The argument about having two representatives rather than one has arisen in a number of contexts. I shall not go through the argument again.

However, I should like to raise one aspect; namely, that a teacher governor, especially in a religiously oriented school, might put forward a view that is not shared by the entire staff. By having two teacher governors, a more balanced view can be given to the governors.

Baroness Darcy (de Knayth)

I should like briefly to support what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, in regard to Amendments Nos. 161, 162 and 163 which are in my name and the name of my noble friend Lady Warnock. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, explained the position clearly so I shall not say a great deal.

The amendments are important, particularly now, because under Clause 153(4), governing bodies will have to publish their policy on special educational needs. I underline what was said by the noble Lord on Amendment No. 161, that it would not be an absolute requirement to have a parent governor from within a special unit in a grant-maintained school, but only where it is reasonable and practicable to do so.

When schools become grant-maintained, they are given greater autonomy and have continued responsibilities to children with special needs. They have much greater independence from their previous sources of support to meet those needs. I therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, that it is surely time to stress that. I hope that the Minister will recognise that in his reply and if he can give an assurance that the requirement will be contained in guidance, I shall be content and will not move the amendment.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch

I speak to Amendment No. 161. As the father of a mentally handicapped child I must confess that I was tempted at first sight to support it. However, on closer inspection it appears to have two defects. The first is the general difficulty that the expression, where it is reasonably practicable to do so", is possibly already a little vague when it applies under Clause 57(4) (a) to parents of ordinary pupils at a school. However, I suggest that the expression, where it is reasonably practicable to do so", may be even more difficult to apply to what may be a small number of parents in a school.

The extent of the first difficulty may depend on the number of parents with children in the school with special educational needs. The number of those children and their parents may depend upon how widely one draws the definition of children with "special educational needs".

I tabled an amendment to Clause 152 which, if accepted, would exonerate children suffering from mental handicap from the general presumption in that clause that all children with SEN should be educated in schools for children without mental handicaps. The trouble is that, in my view, "special educational needs" covers a broad range of needs. It may cover all forms of physical handicap as well as mental handicap, about which I am particularly worried, and it also legitimately covers dyslexia and many other causes of learning difficulty, as the jargon has it.

At this stage of the Bill I make no further comment on the vagueness of the meaning of the expression "special educational needs". I merely point out that it is extremely vague and it is therefore difficult to decide who are the parents who are to be the subject of the amendment. For my part I hope that our present enthusiasm for educating mentally handicapped children in normal schools will wane. Whether or not that hope is granted—as I am sure that it will be in the fullness of experience—the definition of SEN seems to me to be already so vague as to make this well-intentioned amendment unworkable in practice.

Lady Kinloss

I support the amendments of my noble friends Lady Darcy and Lady Warnock. The amendment only asks that, when it is reasonably practicable, it is desirable to have as a parent governor the parent of a child with specialist provision in the school who would be able to bring specific insight, understanding and skills to the governing body.

Lord Swinfen

I too support the generality behind Amendments Nos. 161 to 163. Where a school caters for special educational needs there should be at least one governor on the governing body who has knowledge of those specific special educational needs. As my noble friend said, there is a wide variety of special educational needs and not all schools will cater for them all. In fact, it is probably better that they cater for only a small band of special educational needs at any one time because then the job will be done properly.

I believe that there should be a governor who is aware of those specific special educational needs so that, even if the school does not have all the information, that governor would know where to obtain it. Not everyone can know everything.

10.30 p.m.

Lord Renton

We must keep a sense of proportion. There may be a mainstream school with 100 pupils. We say that two or three may have a hearing difficulty and two or three may have an eyesight difficulty. I hope that there will not be any mentally handicapped children there because that is wrong. I am all against mentally handicapped children being in mainstream schools. It is ridiculous. It holds back other children and embarrasses the mentally handicapped children. I speak as the father of one.

Let us bear in mind that subsection (2) of Clause 57 says that in the case of a primary school not less than three and not more than five shall be parent governors, and in the case of a secondary school the figure is five. Suppose that there were 100 children in a school and only half a dozen had special educational needs. It would be utterly disproportionate to say that one of the five governors should necessarily be elected. Is he or she to represent those with hearing difficulties, those with eyesight difficulties, or what? In the unlikely event of 40, or even 20 or 30, out of the 100 children, having special educational needs in a mainstream school—I have never heard of it happening—there would be some reason for the suggestion.

I dislike disagreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth). I nearly always agree with her and generally vote with her, but on this occasion I must implore her to think again.

Baroness Darcy (de Knayth)

Perhaps I may reply to the noble Lord, Lord Renton. As I understand the amendment—if I am wrong, I will find out —one is talking about a designated unit for pupils within a grant-maintained school. One is saying that where possible one parent governor from that unit should be elected, where practicable. One understands that there are lots of different disabilities, but the parents of a child with special needs have a general understanding of special needs. I contend that they bring a perspective and understanding of those pupils and their needs.

Lord Renton

We should be grateful to the noble Baroness for drawing attention to that point. However, the designated unit may be a very small one containing only a tiny proportion of the children in the school.

Baroness Darcy (de Knayth)

In that case it would not be practicable to have one.

Baroness Warnock

The more competitive schools become, the easier it is for people to overlook the fact that children with special needs —whatever their disability—tend to be marginalised without someone on the governing body to speak for them. Whatever the disability the child or parent may have, I believe it is the case that parents of children with disabilities understand one another and understand other children with different disabilities. I hope that they will be constantly acting as gadflies and saying that children in the school with special needs need to be treated with as much consideration and given as many chances as other children. The amendment is a simple one and framed in as flexible a way as possible. It may well be that in certain schools what is proposed is not a possibility. Nevertheless, it is an ideal to which one should look in composing the governing body.

Lord Elton

The noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), mentioned specialist provision, which is referred to in Amendment No. 161. She also spoke to Amendment No. 162, which deals with schools where there is no specialist provision, in which case the remarks of my noble friend Lord Renton have a very strong bearing. I would support him on that.

I want to speak only briefly to bring us back to the first amendment in the group which deals with support staff. What my noble friend Lord Renton said about particular categories of governor in small schools applies with equal force there. A small school has a small board of governors and a limited choice of people who can go on it. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, knows very well that I am strongly of the view that members of the non-teaching staff are important members of the staff of the school and have a notable and important effect on the way in which children behave in those schools and profit from those schools. Therefore, I have no reason to act harshly against them. But it is very desirable that, if there is an appropriate member of the support staff, if the school is the right size, and if there is a vacancy on the board of governors suitable for that person, that person should become a member of the board of governors. But that can happen under the Bill as it is presently drafted. It is desirable; it is not essential; and there will be occasions when it is not possible. I hope that the noble Lord does not press his amendment.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Perhaps I may press the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, on what she said because I am sure she will agree that special educational needs encompass, as I mentioned, physical handicap, mental handicap, dyslexia, and other causes of learning difficulty which may be the result of some particular form of violent home background and may be reflected in the child. Is the noble Baroness saying that each one of these categories should be represented by the relevant parent governor? I am sure she will agree that they all require very different treatment. I may not be sufficiently familiar with the Bill but I do not see that the clause necessarily makes provision for the particular unit to which she referred.

Baroness Warnock

Children with different disabilities will have different forms of education in the school. But, given the policy that has to be published for each school for children with special needs, it is important to have a member of the governing body who may have the special duty of ensuring that the policy is carried out. It is one thing to publish one's plans and policies and quite another to make sure that the children with disabilities have the support and, for example, the use of the swimming pool or the gymnasium on equal terms with children without disabilities. That is just one example.

It would be helpful if there was someone who has a special interest in this area or who is a parent of a child and therefore naturally has a special interest. I would certainly not suggest that all children with special educational needs will require the same amount of support, but we do hear a lot nowadays about a whole school policy which includes children with special needs. It is very important that the governors should be fully aware of what that whole school policy is and do as much as they possibly can, probably through one member of the governing body who is specially interested in it, to ensure that that policy is carried out. I do not think that the amendment hopes to achieve more than that.

Lord Addington

Perhaps I may briefly intervene. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), shows the way forward for the simple reason that someone who has experienced one area of special educational need tends to be someone who is not looking at the system as one that is running properly. He is looking at the way things break down. The moment one does that the system starts to be looked at in a different way.

For instance, if one is catering for people who have conceptual learning difficulties such as dyslexia, the way in which lessons are constructed has to be looked at and also the type of teaching. That means one would probably be better adapted for dealing with people who have hearing difficulties because, once again, they need new teaching techniques. We then take a step sideways and it is realised that there are a whole new set of problems. I agree that the term "special educational needs" is something of a blanket expression. One of these days one hopes that we shall be able to break it down into more specific groupings.

A person in a wheelchair will have motor difficulties and the basic problem is getting to the lesson. That is a new problem. It tends to be the case that once one begins to look at the school functioning along what is generally regarded as normal lines, one has a better chance of spotting these difficulties and being exposed to what they are. When we have an answer to these problems I hope that the Government will give us some idea as to how they are looking to meet them. That will probably help us all when we come to Part III of the Bill.

Lord Henley

We have a number of amendments dealing with, in a sense, whether members of four different groups of people should be governors or representatives on governing bodies of self-governing schools. The amendments relate to SEN, non-teaching staff and foundation governors and a pair of amendments are directed towards the number of teachers on a governing body. Perhaps I may first spell out the basic principle that has guided our views on what the governing body should consist of.

The governing body of a self-governing school is not intended to be purely a representative body. It is there to manage the school effectively. As such, it is not necessary or desirable for all possible constituencies, or permutations of constituencies, to be represented on the governing body.

I turn to the four particular groups. Perhaps I may start with Amendments Nos. 161, 162 and 163, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), which deal with the special educational needs about which we have already had much discussion—and there is much more to come.

They concern three separate clauses in the Bill which deal with parent, first and foundation governors. Amendment No. 161 to Clause 57 deals specifically with self-governing schools which provide specialist SEN provision for a particular group of pupils. For example, such provision may take the form of a unit for pupils with hearing impairments. If the amendment is accepted it will mean that parents of the pupils receiving specialist provision would have their own special representative on the governing body.

The number of pupils receiving the specialist provision is likely, as my noble friend Lord Renton suggested, to be a very small proportion of the number of pupils in the school. As the schools will have between three and five parent governors we believe that it would be inappropriate for a particular group of parents, no matter how few, to be guaranteed their own representative. Their influence might then be disproportionate to their relative numbers.

It is important, again, as my noble friend Lord Renton suggested, to keep a sense of proportion in these matters. I believe that we would all agree that children with special needs who are integrated —we are talking about children who are to be integrated into mainstream schools —should be treated in a similar way to the majority of pupils wherever possible. That is what integration is all about. All governors, and not just the elected ones, will need to take account of the requirements of those pupils.

I am not convinced that there is a need for there to be a representative of any particular group of parents on the governing body, nor would I want to see SEN matters appear to become what one might refer to as a "ghetto subject", suitable only for a particular SEN governor and not a matter that all governors, particularly all parent governors, should concern themselves with.

I certainly understand the notion behind these amendments, but I believe that they raise considerable practical difficulties and may well have significant, deleterious and unintended snags. On those grounds I certainly hope that the noble Baroness will not feel it necessary to press them.

I turn to Amendments Nos. 161A and 161B tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. They suggest that there should always be at least two teacher governors at self-governing schools. That would mean that the teachers at such schools would enjoy greater representation on the governing body than their colleagues in schools still maintained by the local education authority. At present in all schools, whether LEA-maintained or self-governing, there are either one or two teacher governors. In self-governing schools it is for the governing body as a whole to decide whether there should be one or two teacher governors.

The Government agree that teachers should have a say on the governing body of the school at which they work. They provide valuable professional expertise and can put across the views of those people employed at the school. We do not, however, believe that they should have a disproportionate say on that governing body. Amendment No. 161A does not specify any upper limit on the number of teacher governors. We should not for instance wish to see a situation where the teachers on the governing body outnumbered the parents. The teachers at a self-governing school are employed by the governing body. The governing body is therefore given numerous duties relating to teachers' appointment, pay and conditions and promotion. It is also responsible for staff discipline. A governing body packed with teachers would lead to difficult conflicts of interest and possibly to allegations of unfair practice.

I am quite convinced that the balance of interests on the governing bodies of self-governing schools as set out in the Bill is correct. It is right that schools should be able to decide if they wish to have one or two elected teachers on their governing body. We should remember also that the head teacher is already on the governing body by virtue of his office.

I shall deal now with Amendments Nos. 161C, 161D and 162 spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, which deal with first governors. Clause 60 substantially replicates the provisions of the Education Reform Act 1988, in providing that first governors shall constitute a majority on the governing body. The amendments seek fundamentally to alter the balance on the governing bodies of all those grant-maintained schools that were formerly LEA county schools.

Since the introduction of grant-maintained schools we have not received reports that the constitution of the governing body has created problems in terms of the position of first governors. I do not believe therefore that it would be justified to seek to disturb the existing arrangements. Not only would all grant-maintained schools in the future have to subscribe to those new arrangements, but for consistency hundreds of existing schools would also have to have their governing bodies significantly altered, as existing first governors were reduced in number, so as not to outnumber the other governors.

I turn lastly to Amendments Nos. 160E and 163A. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, did not mention the latter amendment, but I presume that he was speaking to it. The amendments will create a further category of governor at self-governing schools. Those governors would be known as "support staff governors" and would be elected by the non-teaching staff. I am sure that all Members of the Committee will agree with me when I say, and echo the words of my noble friend Lord Elton, that support staff do an admirable and indispensable job. Without their hard work many schools would not function efficiently. I am pleased that the amendment has given the Government the opportunity publicly to extend their thanks to them for their service.

I do not, however, believe that a separate category of governor should be created to give support staff a representative on the governing bodies of self-governing schools. As I said, the governing body of a self-governing school exists to run the school effectively. It is not, and should not be, merely a representative body.

There are a number of other points that I should like to make on this subject. First, the amendment relates only to self-governing schools. In schools maintained by local education authorities, there is no category of support staff governors. The amendment would therefore be placing a duty on self-governing schools which is not replicated in other schools.

Secondly, in the vast majority of cases, the number of support staff at a school will be relatively small. That might include those support staff provided by private contractors; for example, in the cleaning, caretaking and maintenance fields. It would not be appropriate for that group of people to have its own representative on the governing body. That would clearly give such people a say on the governing body which is disproportionate to their relative numbers.

The Committee will be aware that, if this amendment were introduced, the overall size of the governing body would yet again be increased. I have outlined a number of reasons why this amendment should not be accepted. I should like to stress that I am not saying that the views of support staff or, for that matter, others with whom we have dealt in earlier amendments, are not important. Indeed, they are, as my noble friend Lord Elton stressed. Governing bodies may consult their support staff about any matter and may include their representatives on committees as co-optees. But the Government would certainly wish to see active dialogue and exchanges of ideas between all members of staff and their employers, the governing body.

I hope that for the reasons given the noble Lord will not wish to press his amendments and that in due course other members of the Committee will not feel it necessary to press theirs.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

I am happy to beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 7 agreed to.

Clause 57 [Parent governors]:

Baroness Darcy (de Knayth) moved Amendment No. 161: Page 31, line 25, at end insert: ("( ) The instrument shall provide that if specialist provision is included at the school for a designated group of pupils with special educational needs, one parent governor shall be elected from amongst the parents of pupils in that group, where it is reasonably practicable to do so.").

The noble Baroness said: I had not intended to move the amendment but I shall do so in order to reply to what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said. I am less than happy with his reply. I had indicated that I would be extremely happy and would not move the amendments if I had an assurance that the guidance would contain what the amendments sought to achieve, or even an indication that the Government might consider putting those requirements in guidance. I hesitate to launch forth in in the presence of my noble friend Lady Warnock because she knows so much more about the subject. However, I shall do so because the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said that he did not want to have mentioned any extra specialist input. He said that the important thing is that the school runs effectively and that children with special needs are treated in a similar way to other pupils wherever possible.

Yes, I absolutely agree, but how does one integrate the children with special needs? They have a special need; there is no doubt about that. The way to integrate them into the mainstream is with understanding. How does one obtain that understanding? All that our amendment sought to do was to obtain that particular perspective, which my noble friend Lady Warnock described. I see that she is nodding and so I feel on slightly firmer ground. One obtains a perspective and an understanding from the parents where practicable, which was provided in Amendment No. 161. Amendments Nos. 162 and 163 do not specify parents; any governor will do who might have other knowledge and, incidentally, a knowledge of special educational needs. I beg to move.

Lord Elton

If courteously and perhaps wisely my noble friend is about to say that he will consider guidance on the matter I hope that it will be related to some extent to the number of SEN pupils in a school. I repeat that my noble friend Lord Renton made a strong point in that respect. If a school has a significant or large proportion of such pupils that changes its character. As catering for them will become a major part of the school's job, it will then be sensible to put something in guidance but not in statute. However, my noble friend should not do that unless there is a significant number of pupils.

Lord Henley

Perhaps I may respond briefly and I should like to respond as sympathetically as possible. I see one major practical problem. We are talking about parents electing governors and I do not see how we can issue guidance to parents as to who they should or should not elect. That is not what the election of governors is about. However, I accept what the noble Baroness said about understanding being important. It is most important that all those electing their fellow parents to serve as governors should consider the number of children with special educational needs and whether they needed representation on the governing body. However, those matters must proceed by means of the general education of the population and the attitudes which we all bear. I hope that a debate such as this goes a little way towards furthering those attitudes.

I return to my first point: I honestly do not see how we can issue guidance to parents as to who they should or should not elect.

Having said that, I am prepared to look again at this matter with officials, but I must repeat that caveat as strongly as I possibly can.

Baroness Darcy (de Knayth)

I thank the Minister for his reply. I believe that I detected a tiny chink of sympathy which was not present in his original stony reply. I accept that I was probably on the wrong track as regards guidance. I, too, shall consult others on this matter and may return to it at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 57 agreed to.

Clause 58 [Teacher governors]:

[Amendments Nos. 161A and 161B not moved.]

Clause 58 agreed to.

Clause 59 agreed to.

Clause 60 [First governors]:

[Amendments Nos. 161C to 162A not moved.]

Clause 60 agreed to.

Clause 61 [Power of the Secretary of State to replace first governors]:

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 162B: Page 34, line 39, leave out from ("where") to end of line 40 and insert ("the Secretary of State is satisfied, either upon complaint by any person interested or otherwise, that the affairs of the school have been or are being mismanaged.").

The noble Lord said: In summary, the Secretary of State has two major powers to intervene in the running of a grant-maintained school under Clauses 61 and 64 respectively. Clause 64 serves to repeat the existing provisions of Section 63 of the 1988 Act. The power in Clause 61 is new.

The amendment seeks to query whether Clause 61 is sufficiently comprehensive to cover all eventualities. The Government's drafting of Clause 61 in respect of those measures seeks to limit the possibility of intervention much more tightly than did the 1944 Act. Even where behaviour is unreasonable or where complaints have been made or where a duty has not been discharged, no action is possible unless failure is substantial and persistent, or action or inaction is prejudicial to the provision of education. Whereas the 1944 Act's powers permit effective action to be taken in response to any kind of complaint, a problem in a grant-maintained school must satisfy the tests of Clause 61 before a remedy will be possible. The provisions of Clause 64 by themselves have already been shown to be ineffective and two additional governors are generally unlikely to command a majority to solve a problem quickly.

Amendment No. 162B therefore proposes to substitute the broader condition of "mismanagement" as the trigger for intervention, and it also makes specific reference to action in response to complaints.

That approach should commend itself to the Government since it is similar to the provisions of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. Section 57 of that Act made two important provisions in respect of further and higher education institutions: first, subsection (3) gives the Secretary of State power of direction similar to Section 99 of the 1944 Act—that is, upon complaint or otherwise, where the governing body has failed to discharge any duty; and, secondly, subsection (1) gives him power to remove all or any of the members of the governing body where he is satisfied that its affairs have been or are being mismanaged.

Without this amendment being accepted, the prospects of redress for complainants against GM school governing bodies are significantly worse than they are in respect of the governing bodies of county and voluntary schools or further education colleges. I beg to move.

11 p.m.

Baroness Blatch

Clause 61 gives the Secretary of State power to replace first governors in grant-maintained schools: it is a new provision for which there was no equivalent in the Education Reform Act. It provides tough measures for replacing all or any of the first governors of a GM school, but only in the particular circumstances specified; as, indeed, the noble Lord said.

The power can be used: first, when the governing body is guilty of substantial or persistent failure to comply with any statutory duties imposed upon it; secondly, when a report of an inspection of a grant-maintained school identifies that the school is at risk of failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education; and, thirdly, where the Secretary of State is of the opinion that an action taken or proposed by the governing body is prejudicial to the provision of education which, of course, is an all-important aspect of that power.

The amendment concentrates on mismanagement rather than action prejudicial to the education of pupils. It introduces slightly different concepts to the condition in Clause 61 subsection (4). It brings in the idea of responding to a complaint in addition to action taken entirely at the Secretary of State's initiative. It also concentrates on "mismanagement" by the governing body rather than action prejudicial to the provision of education in the school". I do not consider the amendment to be necessary; nor do I consider it necessary to amend the clause to provide for the Secretary of State to respond to complaints. There is nothing in it to prevent him from using his power in response to complaints; and, indeed, one likely source of information about a school with problems of this nature will be complaints from parents, governors or other interested parties because that is his method of obtaining his information.

Finally, will the Secretary of State have the necessary power to take action if a school is being mismanaged? I am confident that he has. Under Clause 64 he has the power to appoint additional governors, if it appears to him that the governing body are not adequately carrying out their responsibilities in respect of the conduct or management of the school". Where a governing body lacks particular skills or expertise, the Secretary of State will be able to appoint additional governors who can provide it with help and support.

That action will be sufficient to cope with most cases where there are problems with the conduct and management of a school. It is inconceivable that more serious mismanagement, which would cause the Secretary of State to consider the use of his powers under Clause 61, would not involve action by the governing body which fell within one or more of the conditions for the use of the powers. I must ask the Committee to reject the amendment.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

I do not propose to press the amendment. I shall study the Minister's response very carefully. However, I must just say that I find it difficult at this stage to understand why there should be different standards of ability to complain for county and voluntary schools or FE colleges. Nevertheless, as I said, I shall read the Minister's answer with interest. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 61 agreed to.

Clause 62 [Foundation governors]:

[Amendment No. 163 not moved.]

Clause 62 agreed to.

Clause 63 agreed to.

[Amendment No. 163A not moved.]

Clause 64 agreed to.

Clause 65 [Powers of governing body]:

[Amendments Nos. 164 and 165 not moved.]

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 166: Page 38, line 11, leave out from beginning to ("or") in line 12 and insert: ("it is part-time education suitable to the requirements of persons of any age over compulsory school age, or full-time education suitable to the requirements of persons who have attained the age of nineteen years, ( ) it is part-time education suitable to the requirements of junior pupils who have not attained the age of five years and the school provides full-time education for junior pupils of the same age").

The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I shall, with the leave of the Committee, speak also to Amendments Nos. 181 and 244. All three are technical amendments. The amendment to Clause 99 enables a grant-maintained school which provides full-time nursery education to provide part-time nursery education without that constituting a change in the character of the school. I beg to move.

Clause 65, as amended, agreed to.

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 166A: After Clause 65, insert the following new clause:

Joint schemes

(".—(1) Two or more grant-maintained schools may enter into a scheme under this section (referred to in this section and section (Making and varying joint schemes) of this Act as a "joint scheme").

(2) A joint scheme may—

1. (a) authorise or require the governing bodies of the schools to which the scheme applies to establish joint committees constituted in accordance with the scheme,
2. (b) provide for the meetings and proceedings of any joint committee so constituted, and
3. (c) authorise or require the governing bodies of the schools to which the scheme applies to delegate, in such circumstances as may be determined in accordance with the scheme, such of their functions as may be so determined to any joint committee so constituted.

(3) A scheme providing for any joint committee must provide for the committee—

1. (a) to consist only of persons who are governors of the schools to which the scheme applies, and
2. (b) to include a head teacher of one of those schools, a parent governor of one of those schools and a first or foundation governor of one of those schools.

(4) A joint scheme may authorise or require the governing bodies of the schools to which the scheme applies to exercise jointly, in such circumstances as may be determined in accordance with the scheme, such of their functions as may be so determined; but such a scheme may not provide for the joint exercise of any function relating to the employment of teachers unless it also provides for the establishment of a joint committee to exercise that function. (5) In relation to any teacher employed in pursuance of a joint scheme, the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1991 shall have effect as if he were employed by the joint committee required by subsection (4) above to be established and that joint committee were the governing body of a grant-maintained school. (6) A joint scheme shall provide for any expenses of exercising any functions in pursuance of the scheme. (7) A joint scheme shall have effect notwithstanding anything contained (whether in pursuance of a requirement under this Act or otherwise) in the instrument or articles of government for any of the schools to which the scheme applies. (8) A joint scheme shall not have effect in relation to any matter dealt with in any co-ordinated arrangements for admissions (within the meaning of section 240 of this Act) contained in an agreement approved by the Secretary of State under that section or made in pursuance of a scheme under that section.").

The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment I speak also to Amendments Nos. 166B, 168C, 171ZA, 187J and T453. These amendments provide for two or more grant-maintained schools to form an association under a scheme and for the approval of the scheme by the Secretary of State. The subsequent amendments are technical supporting amendments. I beg to move.

Lord Judd

I hope that the Minister can just say a few words about the accountability of such arrangements and indeed representation because some anxieties have been expressed to me—I wonder how well founded they are—that the proposal could become a device for blurring the accountability which we are painfully establishing in terms of individual schools. It would be helpful if the Minister could say something about that. The other point which has been put to me—it may just be a romantic dream, but I wonder whether the Minister can comment—is whether in some of these functions there is to be an absolute Berlin Wall between the grant-maintained schools and schools which come under the auspices of the local education authority, or whether there will be any room for association between schools in both categories.

Baroness Blatch

I hope that the Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will forgive me. I have been told that I read out the number of an amendment grouped with the one we are discussing as T453 and it should be 303A. I was being informed of that while the noble Lord was making his first point and therefore I missed it. I hope that he will not mind repeating his first point.

Lord Judd

The Minister is doing extraordinarily well with this detailed Bill. It would be churlish of me not to say so. The way in which she keeps on top of things is exemplary. The point I was making is that some anxieties have been expressed—I am not sure how well founded they are—that arrangements of this kind could lead to a blurring of accountability. We have talked a great deal about how individual schools will be accountable. Some anxieties have also been expressed about representation in these arrangements. We have been saying that there should be a teacher here or a teacher there. But what happens about representation in these kinds of arrangements?

The other point which has been raised—the one I suggested might be a bit romantic, which is a nice thought at this hour—is whether there might be a Berlin Wall in some of these functions between grant-maintained schools and schools in the local education authority sector. Does the Minister envisage any possibilities for schools in both sectors coming together in some of these arrangements?

Baroness Blatch

I am grateful for the noble Lord's indulgence towards me and also for his generous comments. There is nothing in these arrangements that precludes individual schools, or indeed a group of schools collectively, working with other schools in the area. The idea of the Berlin Wall must not be allowed to arise. I understand the anxiety the noble Lord referred to.

Further, each school will be signed up to this loose, federal—I hope I may dare use that word—arrangement. Each school will have its own governing body and the joint committee will be formed from these. It will undertake various functions delegated to it by the schools under the scheme. There is no question but that any one school could disagree to that scheme going ahead in the name of all the schools.

The scheme will also determine how schools will fund co-operative activities. There may well be joint funding and purchasing arrangements, the purchasing of in-service training and so forth. We envisage that the schools will give to the joint committee those functions in relation to which there is an opportunity to benefit from economies of scale. Thus the schools may, for example, appoint a joint bursar. But those will always be decisions which are totally consistent with each of the schools in the group.

The scheme will specify the constitution of a joint committee which will consist of governors of schools in the scheme. Amendment No. 166A requires that a joint committee must consist of at least one head teacher, one parent governor and one first or foundation governor so that there is proper representation across the schools. That will ensure that each constituency of the governing body will be represented on the joint committee. The composition of the joint committee will be set out in the scheme. We envisage that all schools will be represented on that joint committee.

Lord Judd

In respect of the relationship between grant-maintained schools and local education authority schools, in any of those arrangements could there be a joining of schools in the two sectors?

Baroness Blatch

I am not sure that I understand the noble Lord's question.

Lord Judd

As I understand it, the purpose of the scheme is that schools can come together in free association or in co-operation for activities which they could undertake more effectively together than on their own. Will there be an opportunity for schools in the local education authority sector to come together with schools in the grant-maintained sector for such purposes or will it be an exclusive club of schools in the grant-maintained sector?

Baroness Blatch

I now understand what the noble Lord is saying. If he is asking whether there can be a federal arrangement of a mix of grant-maintained and LEA schools the answer is, no, there cannot be. Schools participating in such a co-operative arrangement of self-governing schools must be self-governing schools.

Baroness Faithfull

Supposing a grant-maintained school has a very good playing field and a local authority school has no playing field, is it possible for those two schools to unite and use the same playing field?

Baroness Blatch

Absolutely, if they are both grant-maintained schools.

Baroness Faithfull

One would be a grant-maintained school and the other a local authority school.

Baroness Blatch

There is still no reason why there should not be co-operative arrangements between any schools, whether grant-maintained or LEA schools. In relation to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, we are speaking of a formal federal arrangement between self-governing schools, which is one thing. In relation to sensible co-operation between either an LEA school and a grant-maintained school or vice versa, we hope that that is how matters will develop.

Lord Judd

I believe that that is very sad.

Earl Russell

I am fascinated by the amendment. I should like to try to understand it a little better before we leave it.

Although I know that she has listened to a great deal, the noble Baroness may possibly recall my speech on Amendment No. 57 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I expressed a fear then of what I called balkanisation, a breaking down of arrangements for co-operation. Therefore I am naturally extremely interested in seeing put before us arrangements for what the noble Baroness described as a federal relationship between schools. That goes some way to ease those anxieties.

However, when I look at the effect of the amendment I find that there are to be joint committees, powers are to be delegated, there are to be meetings and proceeding. This is beginning to look remarkably like the local education authority under another name. I am tempted to think of this as the Voltaire amendment. As my noble friend Lord Tordoff reminds me, and as I was just about to say, there is only one difference: this is not elected; a local education authority is.

The noble Baroness has read us a great many lectures on the subject of democracy today, but what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and e converso.

Baroness Blatch

The noble Earl has really misinterpreted the purpose of the amendments. This is an arrangement between consenting adults. These are schools which have voluntarily, by parental preference, entered into the grant-maintained sector. They have chosen to make decisions for themselves. They have chosen not to be part of an arrangement in which the local education authority makes decisions for them. But, having come out, they. believe that there may well be a strength in partnership with schools around. They therefore enter into a loose federation to which they voluntarily sign up. They voluntarily submit members of their own governing bodies to come together for the purposes of in-service training, purchasing and undertaking tasks which directly benefit their own schools rather than that a judgment should be made by an LEA. Very often the views of the LEA are superimposed on their schools; those schools are acting in their own vested interest.

I believe that the noble Earl has totally missed the voluntary nature of the federation. We are saying that there are two kinds of strength-in-numbers arrangements. One is the voluntary cluster arrangement where there is one joint governing body serving all the interests of all the schools. Each of the schools is represented but the one governing body acts for all the schools. The other joint arrangement is where the schools are independent and for certain specific items or interests they form a loose federation. I believe that that is the proper way to go. If there are LEA-controlled schools outside which are jealous of the arrangement there is a good option for them: become grant maintained and join them.

Earl Russell

I heard that with interest. But does the noble Baroness agree that the people of the area have chosen the local education authority for themselves?

Baroness Blatch

I have spent a lot of time in local authorities. There is an arrogance about local authority members making decisions which ought better to be made by the schools themselves.

Earl Russell

Are we being told that people governing grant-maintained schools will never be arrogant?

Baroness Blatch

No, the governors of those specific grant-maintained schools benefit and dis-benefit from their own actions. But their own actions are in their own interest, whereas a local authority can be making decisions about other people. We have here direct operational control as a unit of management which is very close to the consumer interest—the parents.

11.15 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I support the amendments with considerable enthusiasm. The amendments provide the opportunity for adjoining schools to come together in order to pool their resources and co-operate as seems most effective for them. I envisage that provision being of considerable assistance in country areas where small schools might find it difficult to be viable on their own. One needs flexibility, in particular in country areas, and the clauses provide this. Adjoining villages seem always to have been on opposite sides in the Civil War or the Wars of the Roses. Alternatively, there were always more Angles than Saxons, or more Saxons than Angles. One must have some factor which enables them to come together in as loose or as tight an arrangement as seems to them appropriate. I warmly welcome the proposals.

Baroness Hamwee

I am a little unclear why it is necessary to provide a scheme for their coming together in the legislation. As the Minister explained, there can be different types of co-operation and joint working.

Perhaps I may ask the Minister three questions, First, with regard to "consenting adults", as she puts it, am I right that, under subsection (2) of Amendment No. 166B, the scheme will, cease to. have effect where the governing bodies of all the schools to which the scheme applies agree"? If it requires all the adults—the schools—to agree to end the scheme, that seems a strange example of the way in which consenting adults might operate. In other words, is one of the schools which has already agreed then bound until the others all fail to agree?

Secondly, with regard to quality, the 1992 Act provides for thorough four-yearly inspections. There are new powers of intervention in the Bill if a GM school is mismanaged or the education is "at risk". I should be grateful if the Minister could explain how functions performed by the new joint committee will be inspected, and what powers of intervention will exist or be relevant.

Thirdly, there is the question of teachers' employment. It seems to me that under Amendment No. 166A, subsection (5), the joint committee may employ teachers separately from their employment by the governing bodies of member schools, as though the joint committee were itself the governing body, the employer. Is there not a danger of worse pay, worse conditions, worse job security than if the teachers were employed directly by the member schools?

Finally, the amendments were, I believe, tabled only yesterday. I appreciate that they reflect points that have been made by the Government at earlier stages of the Bill in another place. Given that there has not been the opportunity to consult teacher bodies or any other bodies which will be affected by the provision, would these be appropriate amendments, as the Minister would say, for her to consider and come back to at the next stage? There would then be an opportunity for interested parties to consider them rather than our agreeing to them within 48 hours of their being tabled.

Lord Judd

I strongly support the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and I hope that the Minister will feel able to agree to it. If such a new idea is to be introduced, it would be better if those who will be affected are consulted beforehand so that there can be a broad basis of consent and understanding.

I wish to stress one other point. My anxiety—and I cannot speak for others on this—is that at a time when the community is coming under a great deal of stress and we want to build up a real sense of community engagement and community responsibility, unintentionally—and I have no reason to suppose that it is intentional—the effect of the provision could be a community which is socially divided. If one looks at it objectively, one could begin to see a first division and a second division coming into all kinds of educational activity.

The amendment has too much evidence of haste, as has occurred too often in the Bill. There have not been enough serious analysis of and thought about all the implications in the proposals. I hope that the Minister will, just for once, at this late hour, establish a consensus in the Committee by saying, "Yes, all right, you have some points here, I am prepared to look at them and come back at a later stage".

Baroness Blatch

If my memory serves me well, during the course of today I did just that in relation to a number of amendments. I said that I would take them away and consider them because I believed that the points deserved more debate. I am at a loss on this amendment. Throughout the Bill we have been criticised for being too rigid. The amendments result from trying to find all forms that would make it possible for schools to stand alone and also to co-operate. This is one way of allowing for that flexibility, as was said more eloquently by the right reverend Prelate.

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, there is no question of the schools escaping inspection; they are schools in their own right. They lose nothing of the status of individual schools. They simply come together in a federation which allows them to co-operate for the benefit of all the schools. Nor can they directly, as a collective body, employ people. However, if they believe that it would be appropriate to employ one groundsman to serve all the schools, or to employ a bursar to serve all the schools, and if the schools agree, they would make a contribution to ensure that they do it jointly between them to the benefit of each school. The question was posed—

Baroness Hamwee

I am sorry to intervene but perhaps I may pursue this matter for one moment longer. I hope that the Minister will accept that I do not ask these questions in a spirit of aggression, but to establish what the proposals mean.

In subsection (5) of the new clause proposed in Amendment No. 166A there is a reference to: any teacher employed in pursuance of a joint scheme". The subsection then says that the: Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act … shall have effect as if he were employed by the joint committee … and that joint committee were the governing body of a grant-maintained school". I am not clear who will be the employer in that situation. Will the employer be one school that takes a contribution to salary from the other schools that are in the federation; or is the federation the employer?

Baroness Blatch

I was saying that the joint committee cannot employ independently of the governing bodies. It is the governing bodies who jointly become the employer, not this joint committee. The joint committee in itself is only the governing bodies. They become the employer.

Baroness Hamwee

So, in other words, all the governing bodies, as a group, become the employer?

Baroness Blatch

That is all that this federation is.

Baroness Hamwee

Does a teacher who has a complaint against his or her employer have to deal, then, with the federation of bodies?

Baroness Blatch

First of all, if we are talking about a joint appointment, whether it be a joint gardener or a joint bursar, that gardener or bursar would be serving all schools within the federation. If there were a grievance about conditions of service, then clearly there would have to be a mechanism for dealing with that. It would either be because all the schools were behaving badly, or it would be a complaint about one of the schools. But the mechanisms for doing that —whether a committee should be formed for dealing with grievances—will clearly form part of the regulations controlling the way the federation would work. But it is inconceivable that the interests of an employee would be sacrificed; they would be looked after.

I appreciate the particular question that the noble Baroness asks, but I can assure her absolutely firmly that there will be no forfeiting of the protection of employees under these arrangements. They are designed simply to make more sense for, say, a group of small schools or a group of schools that are isolated in the countryside. It is just another mechanism to allow schools to seek strength in numbers.

I have been asked if I will. withdraw the amendments. I have to say that I will not. It is always possible between now and Report stage for Members to take issue with them, wish to amend them or do as they choose. But, if the Committee accepts them, they will form part of the shape of the Bill that proceeds to the next stage. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 166B: After Clause 65, insert the following new clause: Making and varying joint schemes (".—(1) A joint scheme shall not come into force until it has been approved by the Secretary of State. (2) A joint scheme shall provide for the scheme to cease to have effect where the governing bodies of all the schools to which the scheme applies agree. (3) A joint scheme—

1. (a) may be varied by the governing bodies of all the schools to which the scheme applies if the variations are minor variations or the Secretary of State has approved the variations,
2. (b) if the Secretary of State so directs, shall be varied by the governing bodies in accordance with the direction, and
3. (c) if the Secretary of State so directs, shall cease to have effect.

(4) The Secretary of State may—

1. (a) approve a scheme, or variations, with such modifications as he thinks fit, or
2. (b) give a direction under subsection (3) (b) or (c) above, only after proper consultations.

(5) In subsection (4) above, "proper consultations" means consultations with the governing bodies of every school—

1. (a) in the case of a proposed scheme, to which the scheme will apply,
2. (b) in the case of a variation, to which the scheme applies, or will apply after the variation, and
3. (c) in the case of a direction for a scheme to cease to have effect, to which the scheme applies.

(6) The Secretary of State may by order specify what descriptions of variation are to be regarded as minor for the purposes of this section.").

[Amendment No. 167 not moved.]

Clauses 66 to 69 agreed to.

Clause 70 [Replacement of proposed initial first or foundation governors before incorporation]:

11.30 p.m.

Lord Northbourne moved Amendment No. 167A: Page 42, line 42, leave out from ("nominated") to end of line 44 and insert ("as a foundation governor by the person or persons who nominate foundation governors in the school.").

The noble Lord said: There is still a long way to go on this Bill. I believe that we can deal with this amendment very briefly as I have had an indication that the Government may be prepared to look favourably on it.

The object of the amendment is to iron out an anomaly under which the clause as it is worded suggests that if a governor retires or dies during the period when a school is being formed, he should be replaced by his fellow foundation governors. The suggestion in the amendment is that he should be replaced by the promoters who are in a position to nominate foundation governors. I beg to move.

Lord Henley

I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this issue and for speaking so briefly. I am aware of the concern that has been expressed about the current arrangements whereby the foundation governors on the existing governing body appoint any replacement foundation governors on the initial grant-maintained governing body that are required while the proposals are under consideration.

We have been considering in particular representations made to the department by the Catholic Education Service to give the responsibility for nominating any replacement foundation governors during the interim period to those normally responsible for appointing foundation governors -that is, the trustees.

As they are responsible for the initial appointments and any subsequent appointments once the school has been incorporated, I accept that it seems somewhat anomalous that the trustees are not entitled to appoint any replacement governors required during the interim period and that the governors appointed by them in the first instance are replaced without consultation with them.

I am therefore content to support in principle the idea that the trustees should be responsible for nominating replacement foundation governors to the initial governing body of the proposed grant-maintained school during the period while the proposals are under consideration. If the noble Lord is willing to withdraw his amendment at this stage, I can give the noble Lord an assurance that I shall ask parliamentary counsel to advise on an appropriate wording and bring back a suitable amendment along those lines at Report stage.

Lord Northbourne

I am grateful for that assurance and on that basis I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 167E to 167D not moved.]

Clause 70 agreed to.

Clauses 71 to 75 agreed to.

Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 167E: Before Clause 76, insert the following new clause: ("Minimum standards of provision It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to determine and publish the minimum standards of provision needed to deliver the requirements of the National Curriculum and to exercise his powers to ensure sufficient books and equipment, the maintenance of school buildings and sufficient resources to limit class sizes for each school to fulfil those requirements.").

The noble Lord said: The Government require schools to deliver the national curriculum and use national tests to monitor the standard of delivery. But those who will the ends must also will the means. Consistent with that approach is the inescapable need for a national common funding formula to ensure equitable provision of resources for schools. There should surely be national limits on class sizes and agreed minimal levels of resourcing for books and capitation. This would provide for level playing fields, with county schools benefiting from additional resources, if the democratically elected local education authority chooses to spend more on education.

More and more schools rely on fund-raising to pay for books, computers, practical equipment, raw materials and, in some places, teachers. All children, no matter how rich or poor their patents, must have the books and equipment for their education. Yet in 1991 four out of five schools had fewer than 10 books per pupil, which is well below the recommended minimum.

The White Paper's proposal for a common funding formula based on standard spending assessments with the more detailed consultation that followed avoids any commitment whatever to a national formula. The discredited standard spending assessment system is the basis for the common funding formula. There are wide variations between the standard spending assessment per head in neighbouring authorities. For example, Manchester's 1991–92 secondary education SSA was £2,985 per pupil compared with £2,549 in next door Salford. The respective figures for Newham and its neighbour Redbridge were £3,436 and £2,722.

The introduction of pupil-led funding has exposed the disparities in levels of finance available to schools. The money available varies significantly between schools even of the same size. Figures showing current variations in school budgets reveal tremendous disparity. How can all children have a fair chance when wide variations exist? Although the Bill adds a national funding agency to the already existing national curriculum and national testing, it does not at present allow for nationally agreed minimum levels of funding for all schools.

The amendment seeks a limit to class size. The bigger the class, the less attention a teacher can give a child, yet class sizes are rising. More than a quarter of all primary-age children are in classes of over 30. Even in secondary schools, where pupil numbers are falling, 10 per cent. of pupils are in classes of more than 30. Limits on the size of classes are needed to give all children a fair chance under the national curriculum and testing.

Furthermore, we should not expect our children to work in schools which are dangerous, which are not weatherproof and which are inadequate for the needs of the national curriculum. Standards for the maintenance, repair and replacement of school buildings must be enforced. Outside toilets, no running hot water, practical rooms without power points, leaking roofs and water running down walls are the conditions facing thousands of children at school every day. Any allocation of funds to schools, with regard to grant-maintained schools under Amendment No. 167E, must provide for decent standards of school buildings to end the decay and inadequacy of school buildings identified by Her Majesty's inspectors.

Regulations governing school buildings were laid down 11 years ago for the protection of pupils and teachers. Unfortunately, the Government deferred until 1996 their enforcement in schools built prior to 1981. Guaranteed standards must be laid down and resourced for all schools to give every child a fair chance. The minimum standards of provision must apply to all schools.

In response to Gerry Steinberg, a Member of the other place, during Committee stage, the Education Minister, Eric Forth, said, It would be wonderful if we could devise a simple, elegant, universal, all-embracing, national common funding formula".

To take one organisation as an example, I understand that the National Union of Teachers is developing just such a system of guaranteed levels of resourcing for all schools and that it is to meet Eric Forth to discuss it. That is positive and cheering news.

We are spending many hours discussing the administration and structure of education; we are not perhaps spending as much time as we should be in talking about the substance of education, either in terms of the teachers, who we remember from time to time but who do not seem to be central to our considerations, or indeed the materials and resources which are absolutely essential if any success is to be achieved in the classroom.

Baroness Perry of Southwark

Like the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I should love to see a minimum standard for all children in all our schools. Unfortunately, I find the concept of a minimum standard a philosophical will o' the wisp. It is extraordinarily difficult to lay down, in terms of money, pupil-teacher ratios, or indeed any other measurable index, exactly what we are talking about when we speak of the kind of entitlement we would want every child to have.

Every year, as HMI in former days, we used to collect evidence about the quality of education that we observed in schools. Time and again we came back frustrated in any attempt to find a bottom line in terms of resources. We saw excellent education, excellent teaching and children receiving their maximum entitlement of a good education in schools which were poorly resourced; we saw schools that were well resourced but where the education was badly delivered; we saw the misuse of generous resources given by a local education authority at school level, and so forth.

Much as we would all wish to find that kind of formula and devise it simply so that it could be used nationally, it would be an impossible will o' the wisp to pursue. I ask the noble Lord not to pursue a formula of that kind.

Earl Russell

I sympathise with the noble Baroness over finding precise definitions. However, I cannot help thinking that being below minimum standards is a bit like love or flu. When you have got one of them, you know it!

My noble friend Lord Ritchie of Dundee, at Second Reading of the Bill, said that one of the things he regretted most was that the Bill did not deal with the things which, in our opinion, are most needed to raise standards in schools—funding, class sizes and the provision of books.

It so happens that last Friday I was listening to one of the postgraduates in my college who had a five-and-a-half-year old son in school. She told me that, because he was in a class of 35 and did not have a habit of complying with what he was told, for most of the time he was able to avoid paying any attention to learning to read. She believed that that was beginning to have very serious effects on his educational future. I cannot help thinking that that story is being repeated many times around the country at the moment. I also cannot help thinking that putting that right will do a great deal more to improve standards of education than any of the tinkering with the system of school government that we have in the Bill.

I am well aware of the pressure that the national curriculum is putting on the supply of books. Perhaps I may speak about history, which is what I know best. The national curriculum involves teaching a lot of different subjects from what has been taught before. In particular there is concern for the British dimension of British history. In some cases the books for that are still being written. A school which cannot get the books simply cannot teach what is needed. In asking people who come to university from school what was in their school library, I discover a great many more times than I find it pleasant to say that they simply have not learnt the techniques that are needed because they have never had the tools in the library to do so. They have never been able to acquire the idea that learning is something that is achieved by reading contradictory and critical accounts by different people of the same subject.

On the subject of buildings, I recall one occasion that I believe makes the point in reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. When a building is below the minimum standard one feels it. I refer to a school that I saw during the last election. It is in prefabricated buildings. It rests above the ground simply on breeze blocks and is not fastened down in any way. It is wide open to the west. Whenever there are forecasts of strong winds the school has to be closed because it simply is not safe for the children to be there. If that is not below the minimum standard, I do not know what is. That school is in Newbury, and I am going there next Monday.

Lord Elton

The largest class that I was called on to teach was 43, and at that time I would certainly have liked to have a lower limit on class size. But I do not believe that this amendment will achieve that result. Unfortunately, it is an equation with about three unknowns in it, which makes it worse than quadratic. It seems to invite the Secretary of State or funding authority to provide sufficient money for certain purposes to be achieved but not to lay down how they should be achieved.

Here we are setting up a system where a number of schools will be in competition for pupils. Is the noble Lord suggesting that the money shall be directed so that that competition is nullified, that there will be exactly the right number of places in an area distributed among schools, and that those places must be filled? If that is the case, parental choice will be nullified. Is he suggesting that parents shall be able to choose schools to the extent that some schools will expand and others will diminish? Does he suggest that the Secretary of State shall withdraw the money from the diminishing school? If he were to talk about the cash going with the kids I think it would have some attraction. I advance that proposition in a later amendment in relation to children with special educational needs. But in this very general term there is nothing but a recipe for chaos.

11.45 p.m.

Baroness Blatch

This amendment is drafted in broad, not to say vague, terms and it roams across wide areas of policy. The funding of schools is also, inevitably, a rather technical matter. I shall try to deal with the issues as fully as time permits, though I say now that the amendment should be rejected as it is based on the false premise that it is possible to specify the input required to guarantee a particular educational output. Educating children is not as simple as that.

Perhaps I may give one or two facts. Whatever the view of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and his colleagues of the situation now, it is better than it was when his party was in power in 1979 and before. The record shows that at the national level increasing resources are being provided for education, with spending per pupil in nursery, primary and secondary schools up more than 45 per cent. in real terms between 1979–80 and 1990–91. Within that total per pupil, spending on books and on equipment went up by 31 per cent. in real terms while per pupil expenditure on repairs and maintenance—

Earl Russell

I beg the noble Baroness's pardon. Perhaps I may ask for one point of clarification. Are those figures on books quoted in relation to the RPI or in relation to the increase in book prices?

Baroness Blatch

The figures I gave were in real terms, discounting inflation. If the noble Earl looks at the price of books in schools he will find that I am not very far out with the RPI over the period 1979 to 1991. Spending on books and equipment went up by 31 per cent. in real terms while per pupil expenditure on repairs and maintenance went up by 29 per cent. As my noble friend Lady Perry said, if one is talking about a finite sum of money, one is saying that the best has been done within the sums available to education.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Perry and with the sentiment behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, but if the National Union of Teachers is coming up with this wonderful funding formula which makes sure that the variations to which the noble Lord so disparagingly referred will be ironed out and that all will get an equal allocation, perhaps I may say that that itself is not a simple matter.

One of the reasons for there being a variation of funding across the country is that there are varying needs across the country. It is infinitely more expensive to fund public services in one part of the country from another. Whichever party is in power one will have to address the needs element, and the needs will change even between one child and another. We have talked a great deal today about special needs. The needs of one child will be greater than another. The number of special needs children in one school will require more funding than another school. One will therefore very quickly get into variations.

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, said that what is missing from the Bill are the three most important elements to effect the raising of standards in schools. He referred to funding, books and money. I suggest an alternative list: the quality of staff and the effectiveness of the teaching; family support for the children; and children receptive to learning. I would suggest that those would do very much more to raise the standards of teaching and learning in our schools.

The national curriculum, for the first time, gives to all pupils the entitlement to study a broad and balanced curriculum, including the 10 core and foundation subjects with the associated assessment and testing. I have to add, as an aside—that is, unless the teachers' unions think otherwise. But, while the national curriculum lays down the frameword of what must be taught, as a matter of common sense it leaves individual schools and teachers a sensible discretion as to how it is to be taught, according to local circumstances and the needs of individual pupils.

This includes taking decisions on how the children at each school are organised into classes, taking account of their different ages, aptitude and ability and any special educational needs that they may have. It also includes taking decisions on the proportion of each school's budget to be spent on books and equipment.

The amendment which the noble Lord has proposed would severely restrict the discretion given to governors and headteachers under local management of schools and require them to follow spending rules set down by central government. If this clause were adopted, it would drive a coach and horses through local management of schools, and take us back to the days when those involved in the day-to-day education of our children (governors and teachers) had no say in how it was done. I believe, and most schools also believe, that that is wrong in principle.

The present arrangements for distributing funds for maintained schools allow for local discretion within a national framework. The arrangements sensibly combine the objective allocation of resources between local authorities, again according to need—which means that some authorities receive more than others—with a broad measure of local discretion to tailor spending to suit local circumstances.

Central government grant for education to local authorities is based on pupil numbers, adjusted to take account of local factors, which affect the cost of providing education: notably the additional educational needs of certain pupils, and higher labour costs in London and the south east. There is no breakdown of funds specifically for books, equipment, teaching costs or whatever. That is for local authorities and schools to determine according to their own priorities. This amendment would undermine that discretion and that accountability.

It is worth noting at this point that the record of grant-maintained schools for spending in this area is very good indeed. I find it extraordinary that noble Lords opposite, who in the past have protested that discretion is being limited at the level of local authorities and schools, now seek to hobble it in this way. The amendment assumes that it is a simple matter to quantify the level of resources sufficient to ensure the delivery of the national curriculum. On the contrary, it is remarkably difficult. We are dealing with 24,000 schools and 6 million children. How do you decide on the number of books to be allocated to each child; how do you decide whether a class should have 19 but not 20 pupils?

There is no agreed basis for even beginning to quantify these matters. Indeed, the amendment begs the key question of whether it is possible to specify any minimum standards of provision to guarantee the delivery of the national curriculum. I am not aware of any evidence showing a correlation between the level of resources and educational performance. As far as exam results are concerned, the statistical evidence tends to show that there is actually a negative correlation between high spending and academic performance. I acknowledge that some of this may be due to socio-economic factors, but if you look at similarly-resourced schools serving similar areas, you will find enormous variations in how effectively those schools deliver the national curriculum.

In this Chamber we have the best evidence of all of the poor correlation between high spending and achievement, and that is the record of the Inner London Education Authority. If ever there was an indictment of that particular policy, that high spending equates to better education, then over many years ILEA disproved that theory.

In practice it is thoroughly impractical to lay down these kinds of rules and in this case, such rules would stifle local initiative and discretion under a stultifying, bureaucratic uniformity. The amendment is misguided, impractical and a recipe for confusion. I urge the Committee to reject it.

Lord Judd

What a weary response from the Minister! It would be good if occasionally we saw a flicker of imagination and a willingness to examine the possibilities which have been put forward. I know that it is a late hour, but the negativism becomes rather depressing as it churns on unyieldingly, hour after hour. I believe that the Minister has not even read this amendment because it does not say that there are particular imputs which will produce particular results. It talks about "minimum standards" and the latter word is plural. If there are differences in different parts of the country—

Baroness Blatch

The noble Lord is intending to put on the face of the Bill the words "minimum standards". He would also like to put on it the word "sufficient". It is not good enough to put words and say that they are not definitive. Somebody somewhere would have to define "minimum standards"—

Lord Peston

The Secretary of State.

Baroness Blatch

The noble Lord is saying that they are not that specific. Why should we consider that they are that specific? If it is going on the face of the Bill it would have to be very specific.

Lord Judd

I find that an extraordinary comment by the Minister. Over recent years we have been introduced to the whole concept of minimum standards in education. We have had tables, leagues, and all the rest of it. We are to be able to measure the learning process itself. We are to have tables and minimum standards. But when it comes to whether loos work, whether there are drains, whether the buildings are watertight, or matters of that kind, we are to fall back on rhetoric about parents' commitment and teachers' inexhaustible good will, but not provide the physical context in which the effectiveness of those important attributes can be maximised.

I am sorry to sound a little irritated, but I find the Minister's response sad, and all too characteristic of what we hear day after day from the other side. I had hoped that the Minister would have shown a willingness and generosity of spirit and would have said, for example, on a matter which is so central to the well-being of education, that if someone was able to come up with some practical ideas on how the proposition might be brought forward and implemented—I have suggested that some professional work is being done on it—she was prepared to look at it. I am not going to pursue the matter tonight. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 168 to 168B not moved.]

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 168C: Page 45, line 40, at end insert: ("( ) any provision made by virtue of section (Joint schemes) (6) of this Act").

The noble Baroness said: The amendment was spoken to as part of the group of amendments tabled after Clause 65. I beg to move.

Clause 76, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 77 [Special purpose grants]:

Lord Elton moved Amendment No. 169: Page 46, line 22, at end insert: ("( ) Grant regulations shall provide—

1. (a) for the payment by the funding authority to the governing bodies of grant-maintained schools of grants (to be known as special educational needs grants) in respect of expenditure, of any class or description specified in the regulations, incurred or to be incurred by governing bodies in meeting special educational needs assessed under subsection (3) of section 158 of this Act; and
2. (b) for the deduction from any such grant in any year of an amount equal to the proportion of the equivalent grant in the previous year paid in respect of a particular pupil, divided by the number of sessions for which it was payable and multiplied by the number of sessions during which that pupil was excluded from that school.").

The noble Lord said: With the amendment I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 215 to 217, 219, 224 and 225. The amendments are designed to demonstrate an improvement that I should like carried out in the Bill, but they do not pretend to achieve that improvement. If my noble friend were well-disposed towards the principle, she would find it necessary to improve the practice.

Amendment No. 169 strikes at Clause 77 which provides for the payment of special purpose grants. The amendment provides for those special grants to include grants for SEN purposes.

Clause 158(3) requires assessments to be made of special educational needs. Amendment No. 215, which addresses that clause, requires an assessment of the cost of meeting those needs. Clause 158 brings into effect Schedule 8 which is about the making of assessments of educational needs, and Amendments Nos. 216 and 217 import into that schedule the making of assessments of cost. Clause 159 provides for statements of SEN and Amendment No. 219 adds the need for a statement of costs.

The purpose of the amendments is to ensure that when a pupil is assessed as having a special educational need he shall also have an assessment of the cost of that need. The second part of Amendment No. 169 in sub-paragraph (b) provides that, where a pupil with such an assessment is excluded from a school, the proportion of that grant equal to the period during which he is excluded shall be deducted from the similar grant in the following year.

The original cause of my anxiety was the fact that the Government ran a national exclusions recording scheme. Under that scheme schools were required to record both temporary and permanent exclusions of children but not indefinite exclusions. The anecdotal evidence was so great as to be irresistible. Large numbers of children were being excluded indefinitely and not being recorded as excluded. A high proportion of them were excluded at the beginning of their final year or at the end of the year before that. It is believed that many escaped out of the system at that point and never returned.

It seemed to me that if there were to be a system where children could be excluded without any bar by a higher authority, and if they were thereby to lose a considerable slice of their education, some disincentive should be placed upon that exclusion. It also seemed to me that those most likely to be excluded would be those who were most difficult to teach and who were typically those with special educational needs, whether registered, statemented or otherwise I know not. Therefore, if there were to be a statement which gave money to a school for teaching a pupil it is right that when that school elected to stop teaching that pupil it should cease to benefit from the money.

I should like to see that principle extended. Perhaps my noble friend has such plans or perhaps I have misread the provisions. It appears that in the Bill we are trying to apply to the public sector many of the economic pressures which at present apply to the private sector in education, which is funded almost exclusively by money which comes with the child. If one takes one's child away from school one ceases to pay the school fees. Therefore, I see logic in that proposal. However, my principle concern in this and other legislation is with people at the bottom of the heap. The pupils with SEN are usually at the bottom of the heap and I wish to apply that disincentive to the excessive exclusion of those pupils.

The final amendments in the group strike on Clause 160, which provides parents with an appeal against a refusal to make a statement. Amendments Nos. 224 and 225 are intended to enable parents also to appeal against insufficiency of assessment of cost. I do not ask the Minister to look too closely at that provision because I do not believe that as drafted it will work. I also believe that it is giving a right of appeal probably to the wrong person. The appeal ought to be made by the school. If the school has a difficult pupil and has to be compensated for teaching that pupil adequately, it should be the school which says, "Look, this isn't enough; he needs a particular piece of equipment which cannot be bought"; or,"He needs more teaching hours with specialist attention Which cannot be paid for by this".

I repeat that the group of amendments is intended to demonstrate a system rather than to make it work. I hope that my noble friend will give it half of a friendly hearing. I beg to move.

12 midnight

Baroness Warnock

Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord for clarification. Is he thinking of pupils with statements or of pupils who have been assessed as having special educational needs but not having a statement? There is a danger that children in grant-maintained schools will, if the amendment is carried, be in receipt of money especially allocated to their education, and that would be marvellous. However, children in local authority schools would not receive that special money and would have no earmarked money except where they were issued with a statement. I merely seek clarification as to which children are being referred to.

Lord Elton

I thought I should aim at what was most easily achievable; namely, that, where there was a statement, it should include a statement not only of the need but also of the cost of meeting the need. That would be applicable to any school where there was a statemented child. Where there is an assessment but a refusal to make a statement, at present the Bill provides an appeal against a refusal, but I have attempted to provide a parallel appeal against an under-statement of the cost of meeting the stated need. I believe that that is the point which the noble Baroness is addressing but I have perhaps not got it quite right.

Baroness Warnock

The vast majority of children with special educational needs do not and should not have statements. Nevertheless, the education which they need is expensive and must be paid for. However, the majority of children with special needs do not have statements. I wondered whether the noble Lord was referring to those children as well as to children with statements.

Lord Elton

That is a laudable objective but I do not see how it can be achieved within the existing framework. I was trying to achieve the minimum; that is, dealing with statemented children.

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness that there is a range of children above that level—if one can use that term correctly—who also need more money spent on them. That must be averaged out in deciding what it costs to run a school. I repeat that the best way forward is to introduce a capitation grant which goes with the pupil from school to school. We should not spend more time on the detail at this hour but I should be happy to discuss this matter with the noble Baroness between now and Report stage, although that may not have much effect on legislation.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

On these Benches we agree with the general principles outlined in the amendments: first, that the cost of statemented pupils should be included in the statement itself; and secondly, I was intrigued by the idea that there should be an active disincentive to excessive pupil exclusions. That is a far more attractive proposition than the obverse which is sometimes put forward; namely, that there should be an active incentive for schools to take excluded pupils. My anxiety about the obverse proposition as it is sometimes expressed is that it encourages the school which is going through the exclusion process to proceed right to the end of that process to make sure that the extra funds go with the child once it is excluded.

Therefore, I am attracted by the noble Lord's proposition. A disincentive to excessive pupil exclusions seems more likely to succeed.

Lord Elton

Perhaps I may encourage the noble Lord's support still further. If a child is permanently excluded, he goes to another school and takes the money with him. It works both ways.

Lord Addington

This is an extremely good and sensible amendment which seems to have strong and practical principles, even if the legislation needs some amendment. I encourage the Government to consider this matter very seriously.

As the noble Baroness said, it is unfortunate that this is tied in with the statementing process. I can quite understand why that is so. If the Minister has the information available to her, when she replies she might suggest how we could provide a similar type of arrangement for that much larger percentage of children with special educational needs who will never have a statement.

Baroness Blatch

Perhaps I may, first, deal with that final point. That must be an arrangement for the Local Management of Schools schemes that take into account children with special needs when allocating funds to schools. As regards those children who do fall short of a statement, short of introducing statementing for all those children, it would be impossible to bring them into the scope of what I think my noble friend seeks to do with the amendments.

Local authorities are responsible for the statementing of children with special educational needs, and for arranging the necessary provision specified in the statement. Part III of the Bill, which we shall debate later, strengthens those duties on local authorities. Those duties apply whether the child is educated at a local authority-maintained or a grant-maintained school.

Clause 77 as it stands would already allow us to make special purpose grants to cover additional provision for statemented pupils at grant-maintained schools. We do not intend to do so: our policy is that this is best handled directly between the local authority and the school. There would otherwise be an unhelpful confusion and overlap between the body responsible for specifying in the statement the resources required by the child, and. providing those resources—that is, the LEA and the body responsible for funding the GM school specified in the statement; namely, the funding authority.

I recognise that, in making any calculation, we shall have to consider whether it should reflect either each local authority's own historic spending record on these matters or, alternatively, the elements for them that are assumed to be in the standard spending assessment totals. That is one of the matters that we propose to begin discussing in due course with the local authorities and their associations.

On 23rd April, the Government tabled amendments designed to give effect to the commitment contained in the White Paper, Choice and Diversity, to place local authorities under a specific duty (replacing their existing power) to provide education otherwise than at school where necessary to meet an individual pupil's needs. We have also announced our intention to abolish indefinite exclusion, to place time limits on the operation of exclusion procedures, and to institute arrangements whereby money follows the child. Amendments to that effect will shortly be tabled. I have also written to my noble friend explaining those amendments to him.

It would be impractical to provide that authorities should specify precise details of resource costs in statements. A statemented child may be placed by his authority in any one of several different types of school, including independent and non-maintained ones. Resource costs for any given element of provision are bound to vary somewhat between schools and types of school, depending on how they are geared up to meet the provision.

A child's needs may well change or be subject to variation during the course of a year. There needs to be some flexibility in the system to take account of that. The key point is that local authorities must secure provision of what is set out in statements for children in their own schools. For statemented pupils in grant-maintained schools, they must make any specified provision over and above that for which the school is funded through its AMG.

A grant-maintained school will be under a duty to admit children whose statements name it. I think it reasonable to assume that the consultations which led to the decision will have also led necessarily to discussion about resources. I therefore consider that detailed prescription of resource costs on the statement is unnecessary.

I shall give the Committee just one example. In the case of two pupils with identical special needs, it is possible for the particular placements to incur different costs. Where one child joins three order four other children, it may have exactly the same problem as another for whom there is no existing provision. It must be a matter, first, of flexibility and, secondly, a matter for the local authority.

The whole of this chapter of the Bill is designed ultimately to secure speedy action to meet the child's needs. To facilitate and, indeed, encourage dispute in the way which might be brought about by the amendments could result in delay in that process. I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Elton

I am grateful to my noble friend for her response and also for the letter she wrote to me. I thought that it was better for her, rather than me, to refer to the correspondence and its contents. In the latter, she referred to the end of indefinite exclusion, with which I agreed with three or four loud cheers.

But my noble friend has now referred to introducing the principle of money following the child in an amendment that we have not as yet seen. It is possible that those two provisions will actually meet my major concern. However, the rest of what she said put that rather in doubt. I shall withdraw this amendment now but I shall read her correspondence and Hansard with great care to see what the net result will be before I decide what to do on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 77 agreed to.

Clause 78 [Capital grants]:

[Amendments Nos. 169A, 170 and 171 not moved.]

Clause 78 agreed to.

Clauses 79 and 80 agreed to.

Clause 81 [Application of sections 82 to 86]:

On Question, Whether Clause 81 shall stand part of the Bill?

12.15 a.m.

Lord Prys-Davies

I have been waiting patiently for this opportunity to place on record our objection in Wales to this part of the Bill in particular. In Committee last Tuesday when we were discussing Clause 3 of the Bill, the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, made a notable admission which I value. He said: I know that there is a very different relationship between LEAs, parents and schools within Wales and that the educational culture within the Principality is different from that in England".—[Official Report, 20/4/93; col. 1457.] I thank the noble Viscount for that helpful concession. Yet what puzzles many people in Wales is that this Bill fails to give proper recognition to that relationship and partnership between the local education authorities, the parents and the schools. Instead of building on the principle of that well established partnership, the precise relationship is being profoundly damaged by this Bill. We should like to know why it is that the Bill does not build on the basis of that distinctive educational culture which was acknowledged by the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids. Why does it seek to replace the traditional system with a system tied to and no different from that of England? We really have not received an explanation from the Government as to why this should be necessary.

For over 100 years since the days of the great Education Commission chaired by the first Baron Aberdare, the essence of the Welsh educational culture has lain in co-operation between LEAs, parents and schools. We have not been told what is wrong with our system or why, assuming that there are alleged failings, they cannot be corrected without doing profound damage to the system itself. This Bill will cause damage to the system itself.

The Welsh Joint Education Committee will lose many of its functions and will be weakened. The Welsh Language Education Development Committee will be totally dismantled. The noble Viscount was unable last Tuesday to give me two simple assurances about the setting up of a funding council in Wales under Section 38 agreements. I asked questions on that matter and I was not given a satisfactory answer. Under this Bill, as each school removes itself from local authority control, the relationship with the local education authority will be disturbed and weakened. When 10 per cent. of the school population is removed from local authority control, the position of Welsh LEAs will be profoundly weakened. Of course eventually the Welsh education authorities may well disappear from the scene. In that event the special relationship of which the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, spoke last Tuesday will have been destroyed. That will be a profound change.

We have not been given any reason why that has been thrust upon us in Wales. Therefore, we say that this part of the Bill does not fit the conditions of the education services in Wales. It offers the wrong model. That is why we believe that Clause 81 should be left out of the Bill. Clause 81 is the first step towards the implementation of the new system.

There is already a strong belief in Wales that the Secretary of State will use the powers available to him under Clauses 82 to 86 to favour the needs of grant-maintained schools at the expense of the local authority schools, whose policy is governed by the principle of achieving equity and fairness between all schools in the light of their needs.

The evidence suggests that some school governors have been persuaded in recent weeks to believe that their school would do better for itself if it were a grant-maintained school. That is happening. I thought that the Minister of State at the Welsh Office was insulting to the Welsh local education authorities when he dealt with that concern in the other place.

Having said that, I should be grateful if the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, if he is to answer, would give an unconditional guarantee to the Committee that the enabling powers in Clauses 81 to 86 will not be used in support of a campaign of encouragement to parents and governors in schools to opt out of local government control or, on the other hand, to favour grant-maintained schools or to the disadvantage of LEA schools. I am very conscious that that point was made this afternoon by the noble Earl, Lord Baldwin, when we discussed Amendment No. 157BB. That point was not rebutted from the Government Benches.

The noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, gave me a very helpful concession last week when we discussed Clause 3, so I end where I began, hoping that he will give me a helpful concession on this particular clause. Nevertheless, in Wales our anxiety about this part of the Bill is running deep.

Viscount St. Davids

An examination of Clauses 81 to 86 does not show that they are a tool for persuading schools to leave LEAs and become grant maintained. I can find nothing in those clauses which would lead me to that belief.

The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, has moved a little from his position during the earlier discussion of Clause 3 by admitting that there may be growth in the number of grant-maintained schools coming into being in Wales. A few already exist. Clauses 81 to 86 endeavour to establish a method of funding them until such time as the SFCW comes into being.

Clause 81 is a technical clause which provides for Clauses 82 to 86 to have an effect in place of parts of Clauses 76 to 80, which the Committee has already debated, until such time as the Schools Funding Council for Wales is established. Clauses 76 to 80 set out the arrangements for payment of a range of grants to GM schools by the proposed funding authorities—the FAS in England and the SFCW in Wales. I have already made it clear that the SFCW will only be established when the GM sector in Wales is sufficiently large to justify the creation of a separate body. We must therefore provide for the ongoing funding of the GM sector before the SFCW is established.

The effect of Clause 81 is to provide for the existing arrangements for the funding of GM schools to continue to operate until the Schools Funding Council for Wales is set up. At that point the task of making grants to GM schools will transfer from the Welsh Office to the schools funding council. Without Clause 81 there would be an immediate ambiguity in the Bill. Clauses 76 and 82 would be in conflict with each other. Whatever the noble Lord's attitude to the Schools Funding Council for Wales, I am sure that he would not wish to jeopardise the future of those children attending GM schools in Wales by creating uncertainty about who has responsibility for the task of paying grants to the schools.

Clause 81 is essential to the continued funding of the GM sector in Wales prior to the establishment of the SFCW. It must stand part of the Bill.

Lord Prys-Davies

The noble Viscount has given a factual summary of Clauses 81 to 86. I give him full marks for that summary. However, he has not addressed the underlying concern that I sought to voice. That anxiety remains. I remain unconvinced that we should be tempted to take the first step along the road that dismantles the Welsh educational system which we know and which would tie it in future to the English pattern. That is our message for the Government. We believe that we should be developing our own system in Wales, as the Scots are developing it in Scotland, and the Northern Irish in Northern Ireland, independent of the system in England.

I appreciate that it is 25 minutes past midnight. I am sure that I should lose the trust and support of the Committee if I were to press the matter to a Division at this time of night. We shall consider carefully what has been said although it appears to be no more than a factual summary. We shall consider whether it is another of the very few Welsh issues to which we shall have to return at a later stage.

Clause 81 agreed to.

Clause 82 [Maintenance grants]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 171ZA: Page 49, line 19, at end insert: ("( ) any provision made by virtue of section (Joint schemes) (6) of this Act").

Clause 82, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 83 to 90 agreed to.

Clause 91 [Proposals for change of character etc. by governing body]:

Lord Judd moved Amendment 171ZB: Page 54, line 6, leave out ("subsection (2)") and insert ("subsections (2), (2A) and (2B)").

The noble Lord said: Clause 99(1) of the Bill covers changes in character by virtue of subsection (1) (a) in respect of the age ranges or sex of the pupils for whom the school provides education, and by subsection (1) (b) the making … of arrangements for the admission of pupils by reference to ability or aptitude".

Both specified types of change may have a considerable impact on other schools in the area. The main purpose of the amendments is to create in limited circumstances, and for a limited period of time, an LEA power of veto over controversial changes in character by a grant-maintained school, in particular because such changes were not part of the prospectus endorsed by parents in voting for grant-maintained status.

The White Paper Choice and Diversity was clear in stating at paragraphs 7.8 and 7.9 that very limited circumstances should apply to change of size or character at the time of proposals to opt out. The principle was identified that parental ballots should concentrate on the single issue of grant-maintained status. Clause 248 of the Bill identifies the limited circumstances where a school, in applying for grant-maintained status, may also propose a change in character. The aim (expressed in subsection (1)(c)) is: for the purpose of ensuring consistency in the provision made in the area of the local education authority". It covers the case of local education authority proposals for re-organisation being current at the time of the school's proposals for grant-maintained status. It was not generally intended that grant-maintained schools, after becoming grant-maintained, should rapidly disrupt the consistency of provision made locally.

The Bill offers no safeguards against the locally disruptive change of character which is initiated shortly after a school becomes grant-maintained. The amendments would provide a precisely limited transitional safeguard for local interests. After the point where the funding authority, at the 10 per cent. threshold, has acquired local planning powers, it would be open to the funding authority, if it were persuaded of the case for a change, to propose the change in character itself under Clause 92, as an alternative.

The amendments would therefore have their greatest effect in an area where parental support up to the 10 per cent. level had not been demonstrated. In those circumstances, we believe that the interests of other parents and other schools expressed on their behalf by the LEA should have power to inhibit changes initiated by a single grant-maintained school. While changes in the size of a school may depend rather more on parental wishes and pupil enrolment figures than on the school's own plans, it is clear that selection of pupils is an area where a single school exercises unequal power over parents. We consider that special arrangements to protect parents' interests are therefore needed. The amendments will not block the prospect of a grant-maintained school making essential changes to its admission arrangements in response to changing circumstances.

This leads appropriately to the other amendment, Amendment No. 187A. There is widespread anxiety, nay cynicism, lest the Bill is intended to re-introduce selection by stealth. When asked to give assurances that the Bill's provisions would not lead to selection by ability, the Minister, Eric Forth, said in the other place: Nothing is ruled in and nothing is ruled out

As we have heard, grant-maintained schools can apply to change their character, including their admissions policies. Schools are allowed to select up to 10 per cent. of pupils from among those who are particularly talented in art, music or sport. Last month, the Secretary of State announced that three grant-maintained schools were to introduce testing to select pupils. Though the Government give a high profile to extending parental choice, they never fully confront the most difficult issue, that ultimately parents will find their children being turned away from schools—specialist or selective—which are full. That situation occurred in Bromley in the summer of 1992.

The Minister has referred to the following several times today, and she is absolutely right to have done so: on this side of the Committee we vigorously oppose the selection practised by some grant-maintained schools and CTCs, and the labelling again of 11 year-old children as passes or failures. We also deplore any fragmentation of the comprehensive system, accelerated by this devious Bill, which results in an elitist system, accompanied by a reduction in choice and resources for the majority.

Whatever the prejudice of Ministers opposite and their ideological masters, comprehensive schools simply cannot be dismissed as a mistake. In the 1960s 44 per cent. of young people left school with no academic qualifications, whereas by the late 1980s only 12 per cent. did so. We on this side of the Committee support wide parental choice of schools. The entitlement of young people to education at a neighbourhood school, offering equal opportunities to all pupils with a range of abilities and aptitudes is an important priority. The community school is central to our vision. Selection, in our judgment, divides the school from the local community.

Furthermore, specialisation will lead to a hierarchy of schools. The policies for specialisation and selection will lead not to parents choosing schools but to schools choosing pupils. Our commitment is to high quality comprehensive education for all children free of charge. I beg to move.

Baroness Blatch

Perhaps I may start by responding to a comment that the noble Lord just made. He said that he supported the wide selection and choice of schools for parents. Let me remind the noble Lord: he does not like independent schools; selective schools; grammar schools; city technology colleges; grant-maintained schools; or schools which specialise. That does not sound like a policy of approving of choice of schools for parents. He likes the neighbourhood comprehensive school, and that gives no choice whatever to parents.

As for the first two amendments, Amendments Nos. 171ZB and 171ZD, any school that becomes a self-governing school and wishes to apply for a change of character should not be subject to a veto by the local education authority during the three-year period following incorporation. That would be the effect of this amendment. The local education authority would retain that power of veto right through the 10 per cent. barrier and up to the end of the 75 per cent. barrier. That is not a power that I would wish to give to the local education authority over grant-maintained schools which, by a democratic process and parental preference, have opted away from the local education authority.

The other amendment which the noble Lord talked about, Amendment No. 187A, again echoes an obsession with uniformity, which has long been the enemy of a flourishing education service. Our commitment is to increase opportunities for schools, pupils and parents, not to oppose it for reasons of dogma. Specialisation will increase the real choice available to parents and pupils. It will allow parents to choose the school best suited to the needs of their children. It will enrich the experience of pupils, all of whom will retain their guarantee of the full national curriculum.

The implication of the amendment is that no school, nor any pupil, should have any benefit of any sort lest all should not have the same—this is the dreary philosophy that all should be held down together just in case there is a chance of one child gaining an advantage over others, perhaps through his own efforts and natural talents. We do not accept that argument in principle. Our aim of achieving diversity and choice means that there will be some differences between schools but that in itself will not mean that any pupil need suffer a disadvantage.

I repeat: the Government are committed to ensuring that every child receives the entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. That is indeed guaranteed under the national curriculum. There are young people who are talented in music, drama, languages and in other subjects. If a school, over and above the national curriculum, is able to offer enrichment and enhancement of a young person's talent, then I believe that we should not stand in its way. That is the politics of envy, and I ask for the amendment to be rejected.

Baroness Hamwee

Before the noble Lord responds, perhaps I may ask the Minister a question. It arises from Clause 99 but relates to this clause. Clause 91 is about a change in character of the school and that is defined in Clause 99, which refers to changes in character, including in particular changes, resulting from … education beginning or ceasing to be provided … for boys as well as girls or for girls as well as boys". I was interested to know whether the Government distinguished that as a change in character from a co-educational school becoming single-sex, or a single-sex school becoming co-educational.

Baroness Blatch

The point does not have a great deal of relevance to this particular issue. We are saying here that any application for a change of character shall be subject to the veto by a local education authority for three years after incorporation. That is the point dealt with in the amendment.

As for the merits of an application, it would be a matter for the Secretary of State not only to consider the application and all aspects of it—in other words, the needs of an area and the particular details of the application—but for my right honourable friend to take into account the law as it stands, both national and international, as it relates to equal opportunities. Those are the things that constrain my right honourable friend. The amendment is a pure veto, enabling local education authorities to exercise power over grant-maintained schools which have decided to opt away from local authority control.

Baroness Hamwee

I appreciate the point of the amendment. I thought that it might help the House—and certainly me—to understand the distinction that I have just made. I apologise to the Minister if I raised the point at the wrong place, but I feel that it is relevant. It goes to the heart of this part of the Bill.

Baroness Blatch

If a school believed that there was a case—boys had perhaps ceased to attend the school and it wished to become a single sex school, or maybe, as has happened, there was a desire that a school should become co-educational—it would be perfectly free to make an application. In considering that application my right honourable friend would have to be bound by all the Acts of Parliament nationally and internationally that apply to this country.

Lord Judd

The position is quite dismaying. I ask Members opposite to believe that the motivating principle on this side of the Chamber is a commitment to community. We may be right or wrong. That is what democracy is about and choices have to be made about these matters. The issue the Minister failed to deal with in her response is that the whole educational system of a community is central to its interdependence and strength. One wants to make absolutely certain that the community, as a community, is thinking about its future and its children and about what provision is best.

With great respect, I should like to develop the argument for a moment. What we are afraid of, as we have said on several occasions, is that far from building up that community we shall move into a stage of school against school. We shall move into a divisive element. We were talking about divisiveness a moment ago in another context. We find that sad. It is related to many concerns on social issues which preoccupy Members of this Chamber and which are very disturbing at the present time. I could continue at great length. This is potentially a major debate. I find it quite unacceptable that these issues of immense principle about the whole future of our education system should be discussed at a quarter to one in the morning when discussion was guillotined in the other place. We are discovering that this Government are determined to drive the Bill through. Much more time is required to go into these matters, but I shall not press the issue tonight.

Baroness Blatch

Perhaps I may say one or two words on that point before the noble Lord sits down. The other place spent the equivalent of 10 whole days in Committee on the Bill. We shall probably spend six days: we have already spent three. Any idea that the debate was curtailed is absurd. I sat in on a great deal of that debate and the time-wasting throughout was legion. If honourable Members on the Opposition Benches in another place were serious about debating some of the important issues, they should not have wasted so much time during the course of those 10 days.

Let me put a question to the noble Lord, Lord Judd. There is a school not very far from here, called Pimlico Comprehensive. It offers the national curriculum to all its children. It does a splendid job, including offering music in the national curriculum. Over and above that, it specialises in offering enhancement to children with a musical talent. Indeed, a small proportion of its intake of children are those with an aptitude for music. Would the noble Lord, Lord Judd, disallow that or ban it?

Lord Judd

Obviously, we could get into a very long debate. The Minister has made that absolutely clear. I do not believe that it would be appropriate at a quarter to one in the morning. It is sad that we find ourselves in this situation. I say again to the Minister that I shall not pursue this matter tonight. But there is a point that she has not yet answered, a point that was made in the Second Reading debate and that has been made since. When that great cornerstone of the education system, the 1944 Education Act—a fine moment of consensus politics in Britain at the end of the Second World War—was being introduced, two years were spent in building up consensus and understanding.

12.45 a.m.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

Perhaps I can come in on the same point. I went to the Centre for Young Musicians at Pimlico on Saturday mornings and the noble Baroness will know that that excellent centre was the pride and joy of the former ILEA. I have read many speeches from the opposite side of the Chamber saying what high standards were achieved, both by the Centre for Young Musicians and by the specialist music centre at Pimlico.

So the standards that were achieved and are being maintained were through the local education authority system. Those standards are being maintained, but they are being threatened because some local authorities are finding that they are not able to maintain their students in the provision offered by the CYM, which is most regrettable.

Baroness Blatch

Perhaps I may respond, and then I will give way to my noble friend. The question I ask members opposite and it would be helpful to have the answer—is whether, if one cannot afford to give that degree of enhancement to all children, irrespective of talent, they would refuse to give it to those children who were there with an aptitude for music, provided by that school, over and above the national curriculum?

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

I should like to answer that specific question. The answer is no, because that is not what happened under the previous LEA system. No, of course we would not ban it.

Baroness Blatch

I am sorry, but we are considering an amendment that positively insists on absolutely equal treatment for all children. It actually implies that if one child is given a provision over another child, then that is deemed to be considered a disadvantage. I am saying that if it cannot be done for all children, should it not be provided for some?

Lord Judd

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 171ZC: Page 54, line 8, after ("school") insert ("or to transfer the school to a new site").

The noble Baroness said: I beg to move.

Lord Peston

I am sorry, I may have misunderstood. Is the noble Baroness not going to speak to the amendment?

Baroness Blatch

I am sorry. I misread an amendment that I was moving formally. The noble Lord is absolutely right. In moving Amendment 171ZC, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 173A, 174A, 175A, 175B, 179A, 180A, 180B, 180C, 180D, 180E, 180F, 181A, 187H, 191B, 228A, 228B, 246A, 248B, 249A, 254A, 254B, 288A, 288B, 289A, 295A, 303B, 304B, 323A, 324B, 324C, 328ZB, 335B, 337A and I shall oppose Clause 98 stand part.

These are a complicated and rather technical group of amendments which are all to do with the transfer of site. I shall stand ready to answer any questions on them. The amendments together introduce new statutory procedures to be followed where it is intended that a local authority maintained school or a grant-maintained school should transfer to a new site. I stand ready to answer questions. I beg to move.

Lord Peston

I was under the impression that your Lordships' Chamber was a serious deliberative Chamber. I must say that to produce 30-odd amendments for over a dozen clauses at quarter to one in the morning is not my idea of being a serious deliberative Chamber. Equally, the noble Baroness simply putting the amendments forward without a long speech also is not my idea of a serious deliberative Chamber. I believe that the noble Baroness should be making a detailed speech to explain why the amendments are necessary. Or, better still, we should not be doing this at this time at all but we should pack up business and start again when we can deal with serious matters, of which I take it this is one, when we are able to deal with them with a clear mind.

Apart from protesting at how we are carrying on, which I find quite deplorable—I do not want to be told about the other House because I am concerned with what we do in this House and that we do things properly—I should like an explanation as to what there is about the existing arrangements in terms of the siting of schools that requires 30 amendments of a very thick Bill to be put forward at this stage in a cavalier fashion. In particular, can the noble Baroness give us a series of examples of schools that have had problems with siting so that we may know why this complex structure needs to be suddenly imposed on a Bill which is itself quite thick?

I had the greatest difficulty in trying remotely to understand the amendments. I looked at them and tried to put them together. When one has 30-odd it is not very easy to understand the jigsaw, but I take it that the intention is to facilitate resiting. What is wrong with the existing legislation which necessitates this? Can we have a series of examples of where the Government, local authorities or schools have not been able to resite rationally and therefore this is needed?

Baroness Blatch

When the House knew that the Bill was coming—and certainly it was known that it would be a large one—those of us who would be involved in it appreciated that we would have to do a concentrated piece of work during its passage. Therefore, I am prepared to sit it through, and I rather expected that I would have to. When I finished I said that I stood ready to give more detail.

In the case of grant-maintained schools, Clause 98—which is a re-enactment of Section 91 of the Education Reform Act—provides. that a school may transfer to a new site only with the authority of an order made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. The situation is rather more complex in the LEA sector. Local authorities may currently transfer a county or special school to a new site without the need for further statutory action. Voluntary schools, on the other hand, may be transferred to a new site only with the authority of an order made by the Secretary of State under Section 16 of the 1944 Act. My right honourable friend may only make such an order where he is satisfied that at least one of the conditions set out in that section applies: that is, that the school cannot be brought up to the standards of the school premises regulations on its existing site; or that there has been a movement of the population served by the school; or that the move is required as a result of action under housing or town and country planning legislation. Voluntary schools may not be transferred to a new site in any other circumstances. That particular process does not allow for public consultation, whereas my amendments do.

These amendments put in place new procedures for transfers of schools. First, Clause 91 of the Bill is amended to bring school transfers within its scope, thus requiring the governors of grant-maintained schools to publish proposals where they intend to move the school to a new site. Clause 92 is also amended to require the funding agency to publish proposals where it intends to move a grant-maintained school to a new site. The funding agency may not, however, make such proposals where it has no remit; in other words, the agency may not make a proposal for the transfer of a grant-maintained school unless an order has been made under Clause 10 both in respect of the local authority area in which the school is currently located and the area to which it will move if that is different.

These new provisions for grant-maintained schools supersede the measure in Clause 98 of the Bill, and I have therefore given notice of opposition to the Question that Clause 98 stand part of the Bill.

Amendment No. 171ZC has the effect of extending the scope of Clause 91 to require the governors of grant-maintained schools to publish proposals where they intend to transfer their schools to new sites.

Amendment 173A is a technical one which limits the local government electors who may object to any proposal published by grant-maintained school governors under Clause 91 to those for the area, bringing the provision into line with that in the 1980 Education Act.

Referring to Clause 92, Amendments Nos. 175A and 175B have the effect of extending the scope of Clause 92 to require the FAS to publish proposals where it intends to transfer a school to a new site in the same area or a different area. Amendments Nos. 179A and 180A have the same effect in Clause 92 as Amendments Nos. 173A and 174A have in Clause 91.

In Clause 95, Amendments Nos. 180B and 180C have the effect of extending the scope of subsection (5) of Clause 95 by prohibiting grant-maintained school governors or the funding agency from transferring a school to a new site without, first, having complied with the procedures in Clauses 91 or 92. Amendments Nos. 180D and 180E, however, enable grant-maintained school governors or the FAS to transfer a school to a new site without the need to publish proposals where it is intended that the school returns to its existing site within three years.

In Clause 97, Amendment No. 180F has the effect of extending the scope of Clause 97 by providing that, where proposals have been approved under Sections 12 or 13 of the Education Act 1980 for the transfer of site of a county or voluntary school which becomes grant-maintained before the proposals are implemented, they shall be treated as if they had been published by the funding agency under Clause 92 and approved under Clause 93.

We have given notice of opposition to the Question that Clause 98—which currently provides that a grant-maintained school may not transfer to a new site without the authority of an order by the Secretary of State—stand part of the Bill.

Amendment No. 181A is a technical one which extends the scope of Clause 99 to include proposals for a grant-maintained site transfer. In Clause 126, Amendment No. 187H is consequential on the removal of Clause 98 from the Bill, by deleting a reference to it in Clause 126. Amendment No. 191B is consequential to Clause 142, which sets minimum admission numbers for grant-maintained schools, to incorporate a reference to admission numbers published in proposals to transfer grant-maintained schools to new sites.

In Clause 173, Amendments Nos. 228A and 228B have the effect of extending the scope of Clause 173 to require the funding agency in respect of grant-maintained special schools, and the LEA, in respect of an LEA-maintained special school, to serve notice in accordance with the provisions of Clause 173 where they intend to transfer the school to a new site. In Clause 217, Amendment No. 246B has the effect of extending the scope of Section 12 of the Education Act 1980 to require an LEA to publish proposals in accordance with the section where it intends to transfer a county school to a new site in its area. There will be no power for an LEA to transfer a county school to the area of another LEA.

In Clause 218, Amendment No. 248B has the effect of extending the scope of Section 13 of the Education Act 1980 to require the governors of a voluntary school to publish proposals in accordance with the section where they intend to transfer the school to a new site (either in the same area or to the area of a different LEA). Amendment No. 249A provides that where the governors of a voluntary school propose that the school transfers to a site in a different area, the local government electors for that area also may submit objections to the Secretary of State; that the LEA is under a duty to implement proposals for the transfer of a voluntary controlled school to a new site (and any associated change of character proposals) so far as the provision of premises or the removal or provision of equipment is concerned; and that if a voluntary school transfers to a different LEA, the responsibility to maintain the school will transfer to that LEA and, in the case of controlled schools, the first schedule to the Education Act 1946 (provision of premises by maintaining authority) will also apply to that LEA.

Amendment No. 254A is a technical one which has the same effect in Clause 221 as Amendment No. 173A has in Clause 91. Amendment No. 254B is a technical one which provides that the proposals made by the governing body of any voluntary school in the area, which the Secretary of State is required by Clause 222 to refer to a local inquiry, are those for the alteration of their school.

In Clause 248, Amendments Nos. 288A and 288B are technical. The first applies the provisions of Clause 248 (power of governing bodies of county schools to propose to change the character, etc., of their school) where the governing body has published proposals for grant-maintained status which have not been determined or withdrawn. The second revises the description of Section 12(1) (d) of the Education Act 1980 in the clause to reflect the extension of the subsection to the publication of proposals for the transfer of site of a county school.

Amendment No. 289A is technical and consequential; it has the same effect in respect of a reference in Clause 249 to Section 12(1) (d) of the 1980 Act as Amendment No. 288B has in Clause 248.

Amendment No. 295A is a further consequential amendment. It amends the description of Section 13(5) of the 1980 Act in Clause 258 (power of LEA to assist voluntary aided and special agreement schools) to reflect the extension of the section to the publication of proposals by the governors of voluntary schools to transfer their school to a new site.

Amendments Nos. 303B and 304B are consequential on the removal of Clause 98 from the Bill. Schedule 16 and Amendments Nos. 323A to 328ZC have the effect of amending Sections 16(1) and 105 of the Education Act 1944 and Sections 14 and 16 of the Education Act 1980 to (a) remove from Section 16(1) of the 1944 Act the reference to the transfer of county schools; (b) bring the expenses incurred by governors of aided and special agreement schools in transferring their school to a new site within the scope of initial expenditure in respect of which the Secretary of State may make a loan under Section 105 of the 1944 Act; (d) extend the scope of Section 14 of the 1980 Act (approval of school premises) to the transfer of LEA-maintained schools to new sites; (e) amend Section 16 of the 1980 Act to provide that an LEA or the governors of a voluntary school may transfer a school to a new site without the need to publish proposals where: (i) it is intended to return the school to its existing site within three years; or (ii) in the case of a county school, the LEA is satisfied that conditions of the kind set out in Section 16(1) of the 1944 Act apply; or (iii) in the case of a voluntary school, the transfer is authorised by an order under Section 16(1) of the 1944 Act.

Amendments Nos. 335B and 337A add consequential repeals to Schedule 18. These amendments give effect to ministerial policy to introduce new statutory provisions for the transfer of GM and LEA-maintained schools to new sites. They enable the publication of proposals: (a) by the governors of grant-maintained schools for a transfer to a new site in the same area or a different area; (b) by the FAS for a transfer of a GM school in a stage 2/3 area or from a stage 2/3 area to a different stage 2/3 area; (c) by an LEA for a transfer of a county school to a new site in the same area; (d) by the governors of a voluntary school for a transfer to a new site in the same area or a different area.

Where a voluntary school transfers to a different area as a result of such proposals, the responsibility to maintain the school transfers to the LEA for that area. The maintaining LEA will be responsible for the provision of the new site and buildings for a transferred voluntary controlled school. The governors of a transferred aided or special agreement school (subject to the agreement) will be responsible for the provision of the new site and school buildings with the LEA providing the playing fields and the excepted buildings.

The publication of proposals for the transfer of such schools is not required where: (a) in the case of all schools, it is intended that the school return to its existing site within three years (it is a temporary transfer required because of a fire or serious structural problem, for example); (b) in the case of county schools, the LEA is satisfied that the transfer is needed because it cannot be brought up to standard on its existing site, or there has been a population movement, or it is in the way of housing or town and country planning projects (the force majeure conditions in Section 16(1) of the 1944 Act); (c) in the case of voluntary schools, an order under Section 16(1) of the 1944 Act has been made authorising the transfer.

Where an LEA or the funding agency intends to transfer a special school to a new site, notice will need to be served in accordance with the provisions of Clause 173. Such notice will not be required where it is intended that the school shall return to its existing site within three years. This relief will not be on the face of the Bill but will be achieved by excluding such temporary transfers from the definition of "prescribed alterations" to special schools in respect of which notice must be served.

That explanation, although long, convoluted and rather complicated, is the technical way in which the Bill will have to cope with the simplistic notion of a site transfer.

Lord Peston

I am certain that all Members of the Committee but one; namely, me, have learnt an enormous amount from the Minister's statement. I have not the faintest idea what she has been talking about. I repeat my point that I find it deplorable that we are asked to try to understand these matters at this time, in these conditions and under such pressure.

I remind the noble Baroness that she has still not answered my central question: will she give me some examples of problems which have arisen in the past with resiting that require this incredible rigmarole of amendments? Can we be told what problems they solve? We started with the 1944 Act and it has lasted for about 50 years. Have there been serious problems where we have been unable to resite rationally so that we now need these amendments?

Baroness Blatch

Yes. This raft of technical amendments allows that process to be facilitated. It grew out of a recent case between two London boroughs. I shall give the noble Lord chapter and verse so that he can study it. It makes sense that we should not be constrained from moving sites in an emergency, such as a school falling down and being unable to be repaired, or a whole population moving away. They are serious constraints, and in the Bill we are merely making it possible for a site transfer to take place when the school buildings are perfectly good and where there is a will on the part of consenting parties that that should take place.

Lord Peston

I thank the Minister. She now confirms what I sort of believed: that there are no examples, apart from the one of which I have some little knowledge that occurred in a London borough. We have all these amendments to deal with a case relating to one school. The Minister has been unable to give us any other examples. For many years the 1944 Act was regarded by most people as a sensible basis for resiting schools. As I understand it, it has worked. There were the criteria which she described and about which of course we know.

I am loath to pursue the point because I am extremely tired, but I want to know why all of this is required to amend the 1944 Act which, as I understood it, was pretty satisfactory

Baroness Blatch

If another site transfer is required somewhere else in the country, this provision will allow it at least to be considered, and will give it a fair wind. If the noble Lord believes that just one case is not good enough to justify the presence of the amendments in the Bill, then he must oppose them. We believe that the provision adds greater flexibility should such a case crop up again.

Lord Peston

I shall say just a word or two more and then I shall stop because I am quite fed up. I have no desire to hold back progress. However, I am not convinced that there is any need for all this. I am trying to make the point, both in terms of the procedure of this place, about which I am unhappy, and the Government's procedures. This is a massive Bill, and suddenly we have 30 additional amendments, as if that were a reasonable thing to do. It is unreasonable to produce such a complex solution to a problem that it turns out does not exist, and then to do it at one o'clock in the morning. I shall not oppose it any longer. I have on the record my disquiet that this is how we are dealing with matters.

Lord Elton

It is unfair to accuse my noble friend of solving a problem that does not exist when she has said that a case has occurred where there was great difficulty. It would be a great pity in a year or two to find, three, four or five other cases occurring and, because this place did not wish to sit late, to find that there was no provision to meet them, and the difficulty was repeated.

We are accustomed to taking technical amendments late in a Bill. The amendments will be before the other place in the Lords' Messages. They will not be, as it were, rubber-stamped by this place and nodded through by the other. We are accustomed to sitting late because we like to go home in August. If enough Members of the Committee wish to stay here through August, then no doubt we need not sit so late.

Lord Peston

I did say that I would not speak again, but that is preposterous. We do not have to sit into August to use the time available to us a good deal more efficiently than we have been using it. Our Chief Whip is here although the Government Chief Whip is not. I have spent the last three months wondering what has been going on in this place in terms of the use of time.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, may understand what the Minister is saying, and can confirm that the amendments do the job required and all that type of thing. I cannot. I do not understand them. I listened, but I did not understand a word the Minister was saying. Our job, supposedly, is to listen to amendments and to say that we believe that they work. We cannot do that, because the matter is too complicated and it is too late. I have already spoken enough, and I hope that I shall not say another word.

Baroness Blatch

We might well be here until August if we go on like this tonight. The noble Lord is prolonging matters, because I have given good justification for the amendments. I shall give him one more. At the present time we have inconsistency. As I explained in my initial response, county schools could be transferred at the whim of an LEA; voluntary schools could transfer only under the restricted conditions contained in Section 16(1), of the 1944 Act; and grant-maintained schools could transfer by order of the Secretary of State; but these provisions rationalise that disparate set of procedures so that all routes, except for Section 16(1), will now be by way of published proposals to be determined by the Secretary of State. I believe that that makes sense.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

[Amendment No. 171ZD not moved.]

Lord Northbourne moved Amendment No. 171A: Page 54, line 23, at end insert: ("( ) In particular, the governing body shall in respect of subsection (3) above consult—

1. (a) the relevant Diocesan Board of Education (in the case of Church of England endowed grant maintained schools);
2. (b) the relevant Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishop and Trustees (in the case of Roman Catholic endowed grant maintained schools);
3. (c) the person or persons named in the school's Instrument of Government as being entitled to appoint foundation governors (in the case of other endowed grant maintained schools).").

The noble Lord said: The amendment relates to proposals for the change in a character of a school proposed by the governing body. If a significant change in character is proposed by the governing body, it is in our view essential that the relevant church partner is consulted by its partner, the Secretary of State. If not, there could be a complete disruption of any kind of coherent all-age provision of, for example, Roman Catholic education in a locality. Governors of a particular school might wish to become selective or to go down the grammar school route, and that might leave less able children without provision. Again, it is an issue of ensuring that the church partner is guaranteed consideration and respect by the state partner. If it is not, I cannot help feeling that it will be less attractive to the church partner to go the grant-maintained route. I beg to move.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I support the amendment. As regards the Church of England, the provision may not be so necessary because it is covered by the Diocesan Board of Education Measure, which provides for such consultation. However, that Measure will have to be brought up to date, hence my Amendment No. 334. Amendment No. 171A seeks to ensure that what is secured by the Diocesan Board of Education Measure for the Church of England will be available to our colleagues in other churches.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

I rise to address Amendments Nos. 173, 174, 179 and 180. Amendment No. 173 seeks to ensure that any proposals made by the governing body for a significant change in the character of a school make an assessment for the effect of such changes in the provisions for children with special needs in an area wider than normally served by the school where children with special educational needs are drawn from that wider area.

The purpose of Amendment No. 179 is to ensure that any proposals made by the funding authority for a significant change of character at a school shall involve an assessment of the effect of such changes in the provisions for children with special needs in an area wider than that normally served by the school where children with special educational needs are drawn from that wider area.

Where schools draw pupils from an area wider than their normal catchment, because they have developed their provisions for pupils with special educational needs, the impact of a change of character needs to be assessed not just at the school but over the whole area from which the school may draw those particular pupils. That area may stretch into neighbouring local education authorities. The duty must be on the school or the funding authority to alert all the authorities likely to be affected to the impact of any proposed change of character.

Amendments Nos. 174 and 180 make similar points in respect of voluntary organisations whose provision may be affected by such changes.

Lord Addington

I wish to speak briefly to Amendments Nos. 173, 174, 179 and 180. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby explained the case. Will the Government kindly tell the Committee why they should not take into account the problems which will be caused by the withdrawal of the provision of special educational needs in the area in which they have been provided? We are talking about a fundamental change in the provision of a specialist service.

1.15 a.m.

Baroness Faithfull

I support the amendment. I should like to give an example. I know of a normal school that has developed help for blind children. It takes blind children from its own areas and three adjoining areas. Next year there will be no children from the local authority which has the school in its area. Nevertheless, unless that unit continues, the children from the outside areas will have nowhere to go where there is skilled help to be given. Therefore, I support the amendment.

Lord Henley

I have every sympathy for the anxieties which lie behind these amendments. The guidance which we give to grant-maintained schools which are considering publishing proposals for a change of character or significant enlargement of their school makes clear our expectation that diocesan boards should be consulted. Governing bodies are advised to consult at an early stage in the formulation of change of character proposals diocesan authorities, where appropriate, and, in the case of non-diocesan schools, any charitable or other body. That is the right approach.

In determining proposals the Secretary of State takes into account the views of bodies which have commented on the proposals. We shall want to ensure that, in exercising their power under this Bill to publish proposals, grant-maintained schools have first consulted: parents and pupils at the school; prospective parents of pupils at the school; teaching and other staff at the school; the former maintaining authority; any others with a significant interest and likely to be affected; diocesan authorities and those bodies which appoint foundation governors to the schools.

We therefore have no difference of principle here. We all agree that we should follow well established patterns of consultation. However, I am afraid I cannot accept the amendment. I remain convinced that guidance rather than statute offers the proper and more flexible way to ensure all interested parties have the fullest possible opportunity to be involved. To list on the face of the Bill all the bodies that may have an interest means that, if the list is not exhaustive, further primary legislation would be required to put matters right.

I hope that Members of the Committee will accept my reassurance that the statutory guidance to be given to grant-maintained schools will put beyond doubt the duty of governing bodies to consult all those likely to be affected by any proposal and also, where appropriate, to consult the relevant diocesan authorities and the bodies entitled to appoint foundation governors to any of those schools.

In relation to Amendments Nos. 173 and 179 concerning special educational needs, the Bill already requires schools applying for grant-maintained status to include in their published proposals a description of the proposed provision for pupils with SEN. Subsequent proposals to change the character of the school must make clear how that provision would be affected. The Bill places grant-maintained schools and the funding authority under a duty to carry out appropriate consultation before publishing any change of character proposals, and also gives LEAs, schools and local government electors the opportunity to submit statutory objections to published proposals. This will provide ample opportunity for those most affected by the proposals to make their views known and to register any objections. The additional words suggested by this amendment are superfluous. The requirement to explain the effect of the proposals on pupils with SEN already embraces the idea of pupils who are not resident in the LEA in which the school is sited. The requirement placed on the governing body is neutral as to the origin of the pupil. Furthermore, the list of potential statutory objectors specifically includes any LEA concerned.

Amendments Nos. 174 and 180 would give any voluntary organisation whose provision might be affected, the right to make statutory objections to change of character proposals published by grant-maintained schools and the funding authority. However, it is not at all clear from the amendments what type of voluntary organisations it is intended to cover. I assume that the intention is to include as statutory objectors all those voluntary bodies who make provision for pupils with disabilities.

It is clearly essential that the effects of a change of character proposal on SEN provision are fully assessed before proposals are determined. However, the Bill already contains sufficient safeguards to ensure that there is full and thorough consultation before any proposals are published. It also enables those most likely to be affected by the proposals to submit statutory objections—most importantly, the LEA, the local community and local schools.

The governing bodies of grant-maintained schools and the funding authority will both have a statutory duty to carry out appropriate consultation, having regard to any guidance issued by my right honourable friend. It will be for them to ensure that they have consulted all those likely to be affected by their proposals. There will be nothing to prevent them from consulting voluntary organisations if they consider that appropriate.

It would be inconsistent to give voluntary organisations the right to make statutory objections to change of character proposals published by grant-maintained schools and the funding authority when they would not have a similar status in respect of proposals published by LEAs or the governing bodies of voluntary-aided schools.

If a voluntary organisation felt strongly that change of character proposals published by the funding authority would have serious implications for its provision, it would be able to bring this to the attention of my right honourable friend, who obviously could then exercise his power to call the proposals in if he considered it appropriate in the circumstances.

With those assurances, and the explanation as to why we consider those measures not to be necessary on the face of the Bill, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, will not feel it necessary to press his amendments. I also hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, will be satisfied with the assurances that I have given him on Amendments Nos. 173, 174, 179 and 18O.

Lord Northbourne

I hear what the noble Lord says. However, my understanding is that as major, long-term partners in education, the Roman Catholic Church is very anxious to have its name on the face of the Bill in this context. If the Church partners in education are being asked willingly to come to the altar of grant-maintained status, it seems to me that perhaps they are entitled to expect a little wooing. With that thought, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 91 [Proposals for change of character etc. by governing body]:

Baroness Warnock moved Amendment No. 172: Page 54, line 29, leave out subsection (5).

The noble Baroness said: Subsection (5) of Clause 91 excludes nursery education from the category where the grant-maintained school has to announce a change of use, or seek permission for a change of use, if it wishes to change the numbers, presumably, of nursery children who come to the school. That would allow the grant-maintained schools to increase the nursery provision in their primary schools if they so wished without the Secretary of State being involved.

The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that any increase in nursery provision requires the consideration of the Secretary of State. The reason behind that is that the more nursery-age children are taken by grant-maintained schools, the less money the local authority will have indirectly for making nursery provision. That means that nursery provision may not be given where it is most needed.

It seems to me to be quite important that the Secretary of State should have to have regard to the needs of nursery education which may be needs in a particular area where there may not be a grant-maintained school. Therefore, the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that nursery education change comes into that class of changes for which permission has to be sought. I beg to move.

Lady Kinloss

I should like to express my support for my noble friend Lady Warnock in her Amendments Nos. 172 and 178. As it stands, the Bill would allow grant-maintained primary schools with nursery provision to expand such provision without needing to apply for a change of character. It would seem desirable to require grant-maintained primary schools to apply for a change of character if they were to increase or decrease their nursery provision.

The special educational consortium feels that any increase in nursery provision in the grant-maintained sector will reduce the funding of the LEA and cripple its ability to locate provision where it is most needed and most likely to make an early identification of young children with special educational needs. Obviously the earlier a child with special educational needs is identified, the better. I hope that the Minister when she replies will give us some hope with these amendments.

Baroness Faithfull

I only rise to say that I support Amendments Nos. 172 and 178.

Lord Peston

The name of my noble friend Lady David is added to these amendments. I am afraid that she is unable to be with us this evening because of personal reasons, but I know that she would wish me warmly to support these amendments. The substantial points have been made. Nothing that we are saying militates against an expansion of nursery education. On the contrary, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, will return us to this theme on Report. It appears to be the case—I am interested in the answer of the noble Baroness —that the way LEAs are financed means that any expansion of nursery education in grant-maintained schools would simply be offset by a similar contraction in LEAs. I cannot imagine that any of us would want that to happen. We want to see some expansion of nursery education. If the noble Baroness returns us subsequently to that matter—I hope that she will—which I have mentioned before, I have some thoughts on how to finance it. However, I shall not mention that now. I am largely interested in the technical point that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, has made about the fact that any expansion of the grant-maintained system under the existing state of affairs would mean a net decrease in the LEA provision.

Lord Addington

I support these amendments and hope that the Government will look favourably on them or on something like them.

Baroness Blatch

First, I wish to correct a misunderstanding that I believe the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, is under. She said that an increase in nursery provision by a grant-maintained school could be carried out without the involvement of the Secretary of State. I am afraid that is not so. Where there is any increase of nursery provision which constitutes a significant change of character, it would require the approval of the Secretary of State.

The subsections which the amendments seek to remove from Clauses 91 and 92 serve simply to clarify the type of information which must be included in change of character proposals published by grant-maintained schools and the funding authority. I think there has been some misunderstanding about that. The subsections reflect similar provisions in the Education Act 1980 relating to the publication of change of character proposals by LEAs and the governing bodies of voluntary aided schools.

As drafted, Clauses 91 and 92 require change of character proposals published by GM schools and the funding authority to include details of the number of pupils proposed to be admitted to the school in each relevant age group from the date on which the proposals would be fully implemented. A relevant age group is defined in Clause 147(4) as an age group in which pupils are or will normally be admitted to a particular school.

There are sensible reasons for disregarding those admitted to nursery education from the category of pupils to be covered in the relevant age group admissions details. Nursery education, which normally consists of classes for two to four year olds, is not compulsory education. It is quite usually provided in a separate, purpose built unit. Schools may admit more pupils to a nursery—perhaps on a separate morning and afternoon basis—than can be admitted to the "first" year of entry to the school. The number to be admitted during this first year will have relevance to the capacity of the school for those pupils over compulsory school age. Nursery admissions have no such impact.

Reception classes on the other hand are basically the beginning of primary education and commonly cover pupils of between four and five on a full day basis. It is right they should be treated on the same basis as those admitted at, for example, age five. I understand the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, made about the importance of making clear what changes are proposed in the provision of nursery education. I would be more than prepared to consider adding a new requirement to Clause 91(4) to the effect that schools should be required to describe the provision they currently make with regard to pre-school nursery education. On the basis of that promise that I shall take the matter away and consider it, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

1.30 a.m.

Baroness Warnock

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for what she has said. She has promised to provide some reassurance on the matter. I should like a reassurance that no change in the nursery provision of a grant-maintained school should have the effect of making it more difficult for the local authority to provide nursery education where it is most needed.

We shall no doubt return to the question of targeted nursery education at a later stage, and on the basis of that partial reassurance I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Blatch

Before the noble Baroness sits down, there has been a misunderstanding throughout the consideration of the amendments. The amendments refer to the return of information and whether, for the purpose of that information, nursery school places are regarded or disregarded. I shall certainly look at that question.

The noble Baroness is concerned that change in nursery provision in the GM sector will somehow inhibit or invalidate the resources for LEA maintained schools. The important point is that when any application comes before my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, whether from an LEA or grant-maintained school, he takes into account social need for provision for under-fives to make sure that the provision, wherever it resides, is entirely consistent with the needs of an area. That is important when considering an application, because it is true that grant-maintained schools also serve deprived areas and their needs may be just as great as or greater than that of an LEA maintained school.

Baroness Warnock

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 173 not moved.]

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 173A: Page 54, line 47, at end insert ("for the area").

[Amendment No. 174 not moved.]

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 174A: Page 55, line 4, at end insert: ("( ) Where the proposals are to transfer a school to a site in a different area, objections under subsection (7) above to the proposals may also be made by any ten or more local government electors for that area.").

Clause 91, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 92 [Proposals for change of character etc. by funding authority]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 175 to 175B: Page 55, line 13, leave out ("which provides relevant education"). Page 55, line 13, leave out ("or"). Page 55, line 15, at end insert ("or ( ) such a school should be transferred to a new site in the area or in another area to which an order under that section applies").

[Amendments Nos. 176 to 179 not moved.]

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 179A: Page 56, line 4, at end insert ("for the area").

On Question, amendment agreed to. [Amendment No. 180 not moved.]

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 180A: Page 56, line 8, at end insert: ("( ) Where the proposals are to transfer a school to a site in a different area, objections under subsection (8) above to the proposals may also be made by any ten or more local government electors for that area.").

Clause 92, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 93 and 94 agreed to.

Clause 95 [Implementation of proposals, etc.]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 180B to 180E: Page 57, line 28, after ("school") insert ("or transfer the school to a new site"). Page 57, line 29, leave out ("so") and insert ("any of those things"). Page 57, line 31, leave out from beginning to ("such") in line 32 and insert ("Subsection (5) above does not— (a) prevent the Secretary of State allowing"). Page 57, line 35, at end insert ("or (b) apply to the transfer of a school to a new site if at the time of transfer the school is intended to return to the existing site within three years.").

Clause 95, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 96 agreed to.

Clause 97 [Proposals for change of character or enlargement approved before school becomes grant-maintained]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 180F: Page 58, line 44, after ("school") insert ("or for the transfer of a county or voluntary school to a new site").

Clause 97, as amended, agreed to.

On Question, Whether Clause 98 shall stand part of the Bill?

Baroness Blatch

I beg to move that this clause do not stand part of the Bill.

Clause 98 negatived.

Clause 99 [Chapter VII: interpretation]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 181: Page 59, line 21, after second ("age") insert: ( ) part-time education suitable to the requirements of junior pupils who have not attained the age of five years where the school provides full-time education for junior pupils of the same age").

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 181A: Page 59, line 26, after ("school") insert ("or for the transfer of a school to a new site").

Clause 99, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 100 agreed to.

Clause 101 [Proposals by funding authority for discontinuance]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 182: Page 60, line 30, leave out ("which provides relevant education").

[Amendments Nos. 183 and 184 not moved.]

[Amendment No. 185 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]

Clause 101, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 102 to 112 agreed to.

Clause 113 [Nature of group]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 185A to 185D: Page 70, line 25, leave out ("primary"). Page 70, line 44, leave out ("primary"). Page 71, line 2, leave out ("primary"). Page 71, line 6, leave out ("primary").

Clause 113, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 114 [Instruments and articles of government for group]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 185E: Page 71, line 14, leave out ("for acquisition of grant-maintained status") and insert ("in pursuance of which the school became a member of the group").

Clause 114, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 115 and 116 agreed to.

Clause 117 [Head teacher governors]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 185F: Page 72, line 1 1, leave out from ("for") to end of line 23 and insert ("the head teacher of each school in the group to be an ex officio governor, unless he chooses not to be.").

Clause 117, as amended, agreed to.

1.45 a.m.

Clause 118 [Core governors]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 185G: Page 73, line 7, at end insert: ("( ) A person appointed under a provision of the instrument made in pursuance of subsection (4) above in the case of any such school shall be appointed—

1. (a) where any statement annexed to the proposals in pursuance of which the school became a grant-maintained school described the religious character of the school, for the purpose of securing that (subject to any change in the character of the school which may be authorised by or under this Part of this Act) the religious character of the school is such as was indicated in the statement, and
314
2. (b) where there is a trust deed relating to the school, for the purpose of securing that the school is conducted in accordance with the deed.").

Clause 118, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 119 to 122 agreed to.

Clause 123 [School acquiring grant-maintained status as a member of a group, etc.]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 185H, 185J, 185K and 185L: Page 74, line 39, leave out ("primary"). Page 74, line 42, at end insert: ("(aa) for two or more grant-maintained schools, each of which is not a member of a group and satisfies the prescribed requirements, to become a new group conducted by a single governing body"). Page 74, line 43, leave out ("primary"). Page 75, line 21, at end insert: ("(2A) Regulations shall require in the case of each grant-maintained school which is not a member of a group but is to become a member of a new group—

1. (a) a resolution for the purpose of the existing governing body,
2. (b) the publication by the existing governing body (together with the governing bodies of any other schools which are to become members of the group) of proposals for the schools to become a new group conducted by a single governing body, and
3. (c) the approval of such proposals, as originally published or as modified by the Secretary of State (whether before or after they are approved).

( ) Regulations made by virtue of subsection (2) or (2A) above shall not enable the Secretary of State to modify any proposals after approving them so as to exclude any school to which they relate; and where under such regulations the Secretary of State modifies any proposals so as to exclude any school to which they relate—

1. (a) he may not approve them without the consent of the existing governing bodies of the schools to which the proposals as modified relate, and
2. (b) if he approves them, the regulations shall have effect as if the proposals as published had related only to those schools.").

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 185M: Page 75, line 21, at end insert: ("(2A) Regulations shall require that if the Secretary of State is minded to approve proposals submitted to him under subsection 2(c) above only after modification to the effect that one or more schools shall be excluded from acquiring grant maintained status as a member or as members of the same group, he shall give notice of that intention to each governing body of the schools to whom the proposals apply and each such governing body shall be entitled as it thinks fit to withdraw its school from those proposals.").

The noble Lord said: The purpose of the amendment is that Clause 123:allows for a school to withdraw from any modified proposals by the Secretary of State on a cluster opt-out. I beg to move.

Baroness Blatch

I should like to draw the attention of the Committee to Amendment 185L which is in my name and which was dealt with in Committee on Thursday 22nd April. That amendment has the same effect as the amendment we are currently discussing. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and any supporters of this amendment are satisfied that we have addressed their concerns and that they will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 185MA: Page 75, line 22, after ("(1) (a)") insert ("or (aa)").

Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 185N, 185P and 185Q: Page 75, line 46, at end insert: ("( ) Where proposals for the purposes of subsection (1) (aa) above are approved, regulations shall provide for the functions, during the period beginning with the approval of the proposals and ending with their implementation, of the governing body incorporated under the regulations."). Page 75, line 49, at end insert ("or grant-maintained schools seeking to become a new group"). Page 76, line 9, leave out ("grant-maintained status") and insert ("any maintained schools, or grant-maintained schools, to become a new group")

[Amendments Nos. 186 and 187 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]

Clause 123, as amended, agreed to.

Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 187A: Before Clause 124, insert the following new clause: ("Broad and balanced curriculum It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State, the funding authority and governing bodies of grant maintained schools in their exercise of the functions conferred upon them by this or any other enactment to ensure that no pupil shall be disadvantaged by reason of any policy of specialisation in any school and every pupil shall be afforded access to a broad and balanced curriculum offering equal opportunities to all pupils with a range of abilities and aptitudes.").

The noble Lord said: I beg to move. The purpose of the amendment is to allow training and enterprise councils to act as sponsoring bodies for institutions outside the further education sector which wish to apply to the FEFC for funding for Schedule 2 courses under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.

Under Section 65 of that Act a local education authority that wishes to provide courses funded in its institutions under Schedule 2 to that Act by the further education funding council, must apply for funds through an incorporated FEFC institution. The FEFC college thus becomes a sponsoring college for applications for FEFC funding from LEA institutions.

Traditionally, adult education institutions have considered that they had equal status with further education colleges, especially in the case of free-standing institutions such as the Richmond Adult and Community College and—

Baroness Blatch

This is a point of order. Amendment No. 187A was grouped with Amendment No. 17IZB. We had a very full discussion. In fact the noble Lord spoke to it and I responded to it. So, indeed did my noble friend Lord Elton. The amendment was grouped with Amendments Nos. 171ZB, 171ZD and 187A. We had rather a long discussion about it.

Lord Judd

I am not aware that I spoke to the amendment. I take very seriously the note at the top of the groupings list; namely, that it is quite in order for Members to speak on any item as it is called. That is what I am doing.

Traditionally, adult education institutions have considered that they have equal status with further education colleges, especially in the case of free-standing institutions such as the Richmond Adult and Community College and the Sutton College of Liberal Arts. The requirement of the Further and Higher Education Act that such institutions must apply for FEFC funding through sponsoring colleges has therefore created considerable tensions since adult education institutions feel that they now have second-class status. That is likely to produce a competitive rather than a co-operative approach, which is clearly not helpful.

Lord Henley

Perhaps the noble Lord will give way a second time. He is possibly under a misapprehension. Without realising it he may be speaking to Amendment No. 187C and not to Amendment No. 187A, which is the amendment that was called. I may be wrong. I think, however, I am right.

Lord Judd

I am speaking to Amendment No. 187C. I am sorry.

Lord Henley

We are on Amendment No. 187A. The point we are trying to make is that this amendment was spoken to earlier. Perhaps we can move on from Amendment No. 187A and possibly deal with Amendment No. 187B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. We would then come to the noble Lord's amendment and know where we are.

Lord Judd

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 124 [Provision of further education in grant-maintained schools]:

Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 187B: Page 76, line 23, after ("provided") insert ("to more than three such persons").

The noble Lord said: I thought that I must have blinked and missed my chance. This amendment seeks to establish on the face of the Bill the principle that a measure of adult participation in mainstream classes is to be encouraged. At this hour I shall not refer to the arguments in detail. I believe that there is much common ground between myself and my noble friend Lady Blatch in this matter and that following on from the relevant provisions in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 we are soon to see a government consultation paper on the subject.

I feel that the Bill as it stands reads too negatively and leaves open the possibility that adult participation will be discouraged. I note, though, in moving the amendment, that it is defective as printed on the Marshalled List. The last word should be "persons" rather than "pupils" if the amendment is to make sense. I beg to move.

Lord Henley

I am sympathetic to the concerns expressed by my noble friend and to the concerns about circumstances in which adult and part-timers may be educated together with registered pupils at school. It is for that reason that the clause is currently framed as it is. It allows us to make regulations setting out the relevant circumstances in which adults and pupils may be taught together.

I have to say that the regulations have not been made yet. I can give my noble friend the assurance that we shall be consulting on them in draft shortly. That consultation will give us the opportunity to consider in detail any points that my noble friend, or for that matter any other noble Lord, may want to put forward.

Given that these matters will be better addressed during the making of the regulations, I hope that my noble friend will be able to withdraw his amendment. Certainly, we shall be prepared to take account of his views and for that matter any others in drawing up the regulations.

Lord Lucas

At this time of night I have no intention of doing anything other than ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 124 agreed to.

Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 187C: After Clause 124, insert the following new clause: ("Sponsoring body for institution outside education sector Under section 5 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, the sponsoring body for an institution outside the further education sector shall be such organisation as is specified in an order, or for the time being falls within a description specified in an order made by the Secretary of State.").

The noble Lord said: I apologise to the Committee. It says something about the hour of the night. I was anxious to get on and also I wished to see whether I could read my notes as fast as the Minister does. I was not quite up to her standard. I thank her for taking the matter so well. If it is in order, perhaps I might suggest that the Committee takes as read what I have said and that we proceed with the debate.

The requirement of the Further and Higher Education Act that such institutions must apply for FEFC funding through sponsoring colleges, has therefore created considerable tensions in many cases as adult education institutions feel that they now have second-class status. That is likely to produce a competitive rather than a co-operative approach, which is clearly not helpful in developing good local relations.

Adult education institutions generally cater for different types of students from further education colleges. Their focus is by definition on older students with different educational backgrounds from those at further education colleges. There are also some adult education institutions which fear that their sponsoring college may wish to take over provision of courses currently provided by the adult education institution. That is seen as inappropriate by the adult education institutions because of the difference in ethos between the two types of institution.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that many adult education institutions find their new relationship with FEFC sector colleges unsatisfactory and demeaning. One adult education institution—Richmond Adult and Community College—has decided to apply to the FEFC for corporate status in the new sector. One of the reasons it gave for that decision is that it considered the funding mechanism to be unacceptable and inappropriate.

Amendment No. 187C would enable LEA institutions to seek sponsorship through training and enterprise councils as an alternative to FEFC corporations and therefore offer LEA institutions a real choice in deciding on their sponsoring institutions. The reason that that is not explicit in the amendment is that TECs have no statutory status and therefore cannot be given statutory duties in primary legislation. However, it would be possible for the Secretary of State to designate TECs as sponsoring bodies in an order.

The advantage of enabling TECs to act as sponsoring bodies would be that LEAs would then have the opportunity to choose an alternative sponsor. TECs would be able to provide adult education with a valuable local network from their point of view. The new role would provide better insight into the spread of provision locally which would enhance their understanding.

There should be no danger of duplication of provision, since the FEFC have responsibility under Section 3 of the FHE Act 1992 for ensuring adequate provision of part-time education for those over 16 and full-time education for those over 19 in relation to courses funded by the FEFC under Schedule 2 to the Act. The involvement of TECs would not only avoid duplication, but also ensure adequate provision in the long term for adult learners. I beg to move.

Lord Henley

These amendments together seek to extend the bodies which can act as sponsors under Section 6(5) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to include organisations specified by the Secretary of State or, for the time being, a type of organisation so specified.

As I understand them, the amendments do not work. If they were to have any effect, the further education funding councils must have powers to fund such organisations. Under Section 5 of the Act, funding councils are able to fund only institutions within the further and higher education sectors for their provision of further education.

Having said that, and having noted the possibly disjointed nature of the noble Lord's speech—for which I am afraid we are partly to blame—and also the speedy nature with which the noble Lord gave his speech, I will read with great care what the noble Lord said. If it is necessary that any of the points made need taking up, I shall come back to the noble Lord.

Lord Judd

In view of that charitable remark, and particularly the charitable reaction to my having jumped the gun, I accept that and do not pursue the point. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 125 [Provision of benefits and services for pupils by local education authority]:

Lord Lucas moved Amendments Nos. 187D to 187G: Page 76, line 27, after ("authority") insert ("or local authority"). Page 76, line 33, after ("grant-maintained") insert ("and any other type or class of educational institution designated by the Secretary of State"). Page 76, line 38, after ("authority") insert ("or local authority"). Page 77, line 6, after ("grant-maintained") insert ("and any other type or class of educational institution designated by the Secretary of State").

The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 187D and the three which follow seek to broaden the scope of Clause 125 to outlaw actions taken by some local authorities to deny facilities to pupils of grant-maintained schools and city technology colleges. A most striking example of that was given by my noble friend Lord Rennell in last Thursday's consideration of the Bill, and others were given by my noble friend Lady Cox tonight. To my mind, such actions should not be permitted. I beg to move.

Baroness Blatch

For the duty imposed by Clause 125 to apply, two conditions must be met. The duty or power concerned must be one that is to be performed in relation to both LEA schools and grant-maintained schools, and the benefits or services to be provided must be services for pupils or others receiving education at the school.

I am sure that we would all deplore any local authority practice that discriminated against pupils attending schools of whatever variety. We have today heard examples of such behaviour. I therefore understand and applaud the intention behind the proposed amendments, but given the scope of Clause 125 as defined it is unclear what benefits would follow were they incorporated in the Bill. Some consequences might have undesirable repercussions. The amendments seek to extend the duty imposed by Clause 125 to encompass not just local education authorities but also local authorities. However, it is doubtful that local authorities have any significant functions other than those they have as local education authorities which will be caught by the provisions of Clause 125.

The amendment also seeks to widen the scope of Clause 125 to apply the duty to act no less favourably to pupils attending other educational institutions to be designated by the Secretary of State. It is not clear what other educational institutions my noble friend has in mind. However, were Clause 125 for example to be extended to include pupils at independent schools it would be likely to place significant new burdens on local authority funds. Without further amendments to primary legislation, it would have the effect of requiring local authorities to provide home-to-school transport to a new group of pupils.

For those reasons, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendments, while understanding the fairness principle that underlies them.

2 a.m.

Lord Lucas

I thank my noble friend for her answer. I am happy to ask for leave to withdraw the amendments.

Amendments, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 125 agreed to.

Clause 126 [Disposal of premises on transfer of school to new site]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No.187H: Page 77, line 14, leave out ("section 98 of this Act") and insert ("Chapter VII").

Clause 126, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 127 and 128 agreed to.

Clause 129 [Variation of trust deeds etc. by order]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No.187J: Page 78, line 47, after ("V") insert ("or any scheme under section (Joint schemes) of this Act").

Clause 129, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 130 to 134 agreed to.

Clause 135 [Meaning of "the appropriate agreed syllabus" in sections 131 and 132]:

The Lord Bishop of Guildford moved Amendment No.188: Page 83, line 24, leave out paragraph (c).

The right reverend Prelate said: At this hour of the night it is difficult to make things sound thrilling and exciting, but I will do my best. This amendment deals with the relationship between grant-maintained schools and agreed syllabuses. Clause 14 establishes a new committee for grant-maintained schools which becomes a constituent part of a SACRE (standing advisory council on religious education) alongside the Church of England group, the Christian and other religious denominations group, the teachers' group and the local authority group. Each of those groups has one corporate vote and makes up the SACRE. Clause 13 provides for a grant-maintained committee on an agreed syllabus conference.

The Bill as drafted provides for an additional grant-maintained school group on a SACRE and an additional grant-maintained committee on an agreed syllabus conference once the 75 per cent. trigger point is reached. As a result of that the grant-maintained schools have a direct responsibility for preparing an agreed syllabus for the locality and advising on the religious education to be given in accordance with the agreed syllabus. Yet the Bill as drafted allows those grant-maintained schools to choose any agreed syllabus from any other part of the country. So grant-maintained schools in an area, though themselves at liberty to choose another agreed syllabus, can advise and comment on how other schools in the area ought to deliver their local agreed syllabus. That seems to me to be inconsistent. Indeed, I think it is unjust and a likely cause of irritation. That is my first anxiety.

My second anxiety is more important. The freedom to choose any agreed syllabus produces an element of choice in curriculum matters just to one group of schools. We have just moved to a national curriculum because we want to have an acknowledged curriculum and common standards. There is no choice within the national curriculum. Religious education is not part of the national curriculum but is part of the basic curriculum. To give choice in RE but in no other part of the curriculum is to drive a further wedge between religious education and the rest of the national curriculum. I am worried about that because there is plenty of evidence that religious education is being squeezed because of the pressure to reach required standards on the national curriculum. I know that should not happen but there is plenty of evidence that it is happening. To drive this further wedge between religious education and the rest of the national curriculum seems to be unwise.

My third and most serious reason is the longer term effect. An area reaches the 75 per cent. trigger point. Grant-maintained schools now have their own constituent committee on the agreed syllabus conference for the area as well as on the SACRE. But if the grant-maintained schools have freedom to choose any other agreed syllabus, what interest will they have in revising the agreed syllabus for their own area? It seems to me, therefore, that as more and more schools become grant-maintained, the risk is that agreed syllabuses will begin to stagnate and that will be damaging for religious education in the longer term.

There is a widely supported desire to improve the quality of religious education and to ensure its delivery by qualified teachers but the clause as drafted seems to risk making that somewhat more difficult. On the grounds therefore both of consistency and in the interests of religious education, I move the amendment to delete paragraph (c). I beg to move.

Lord Judd

I should like to say from this Bench that I believe that the right reverend Prelate's case is unanswerable and logical. We should like to associate ourselves with it completely.

Baroness Cox

With great regret I must add a dissenting voice. I agree that there is an anomaly here and that there seem to be two aspects. That is unjust. But I should be very loath to see the grant-maintained schools lose the flexibility that is provided for in the Bill at the moment. It is more than likely that grant-maintained schools would follow their locally agreed syllabus, but some grant-maintained schools, committed perhaps to an academically rigorous approach to RE, might find the one offered by their local education authority not sufficiently academically demanding. Surely they should have a right to be able to choose an appropriate syllabus.

Perhaps I may give two examples. The current and updated Hounslow 1992 agreed syllabus has explicit provision for the study of secular humanism. Should a grant-maintained school necessarily have to spend time in its RE lessons studying that? Perhaps a little more tellingly, Birmingham's agreed syllabus had provision for the study of non-theistic lifestyles such as Marxism and Communism. If a Birmingham grant-maintained school does not want to study Marxism and Communism in its RE lessons, should it be forced to do so? Indeed, I would question whether anyone should be forced to do so. There is nothing wrong perhaps in studying those subjects per se, but the great thing about the grant-maintained schools, especially those with a strong religious identity, might be that they would not deem those as appropriate subjects to spend precious time on in their RE curricula.

I know that the Government are intending to bring all agreed syllabuses into line with the requirements of the 1988 Act. Judging from a recent National Curriculum Council report, that is necessary and welcome. Even if all agreed syllabuses come into line with the law, that does not rule out the fact that there will be differences of approach, of academic content and rigour. The great merit of our grant-maintained schools is their freedom. That flexibility is important. They should be allowed to choose their own agreed syllabuses from the repertoire available. I should be very sad if they were to lose that flexibility. Therefore, sadly, I cannot support the amendment.

Baroness Blatch

There is an interesting inconsistency between this amendment and what actually happens on SACREs, given that I sat on a SACRE for a very long time. It was probably the most frustrating experience that I had doing anything in my life. There were a number of people sitting around the table who were party to agreeing a syllabus and whose schools had no intention whatever of implementing it. They were neither bound to accept it, nor did they necessarily do so. They included Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish and other denominational schools.

The right reverend Prelate has drawn our attention to the important principle of local control of religious education. Let me reiterate our support for the principle. It is not at odds with our proposal for grant-maintained school governors who will have the opportunity to adopt an agreed syllabus which, in their view, best meets the needs of pupils at their school. But whatever syllabus for RE a grant-maintained school chooses—whether urban borough or shire county—that syllabus must still be an agreed syllabus.

That means it will conform to two important safeguards. All agreed syllabuses must, by definition, be prepared and agreed by a syllabus conference which includes on it representatives of the Church of England and other denominations and faiths. The syllabus cannot be adopted without their agreement. All agreed syllabuses must include the study of the other principal religions represented in this country as well as Christianity. Grant-maintained schools are not being given a soft option. They are, however, being given autonomy. It is what they fought for and what they preferred. At a grant-maintained school, responsibility for the curriculum is wholly a matter for the governors of the school. It is no longer shared with the LEA, as is the case in county schools. County schools have positively chosen to be a collective. They have chosen that the LEA should make that decision for them. It is in recognition of this responsibility that we believe that the governors of a grant-maintained school should be able to choose the religious education syallabus which best suits their circumstances.

As my noble friend said, in most cases this will be the syllabus drawn up by the local authority's agreed syllabus conference. We expect the number of occasions on which an individual grant-maintained school would choose an agreed syllabus other than that of the LEA to be very small indeed. Where a school has been fully involved in the preparation of the area syllabus, it will be unlikely to want to choose a different syllabus.

The Bill requires that agreed syllabus conferences involve grant-maintained schools. Before the 75 per cent. trigger point is reached, a conference must consult the grant-maintained schools in its area. If the consultation is carried out properly, I would expect the majority of schools to stick with the local syllabus.

However, if the governors of a grant-maintained school are unhappy with the agreed syllabus of their area, it is right that, as an autonomous body, they should be able to choose another one, better suited to their needs. This is a decision we trust governors to take, knowing that they will consider the question with the utmost seriousness. It is a freedom which, I regret to say, the right reverend Prelate seeks to stifle with this amendment. But, interestingly, that freedom will remain with many of the other people who sit around the very same table agreeing to the agreed syllabus.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

My capacity for logic is somewhat limited at this hour of the morning, but I have to say that I am rather disappointed by the Minister's response. In view of the sense of frustration that she said she had experienced on a SACRE because there were people there agreeing to something that they were not going to implement, I am surprised to hear her arguing for an extension of that sense of frustration in the new arrangements.

Baroness Blatch

Perhaps the right reverend Prelate will forgive me; I shall explain my frustration. My frustration was because I fought hard for Christianity to be within the agreed syllabus. I found that I could not look to my Church of England colleagues for support for that, and, indeed, had to take audience of my local bishop to discover what I had to do to persuade my colleagues that Christianity should be dominant in the agreed syllabus. It is that kind of experience that I find deeply frustrating.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

With due respect, I believe that that is a slightly different point. I am not sure that I would want to use it as a basis for legislation. I have heard the Minister express her views on SACREs. A number of us would wish to say that, although they are not as good as they might be, our job is to try to improve them and to give them much stronger backing so that they can secure their role. I do not believe that what is proposed in this part of the Bill will help to achieve that. However, this is no time at which to press cases beyond their limit, and at this time in the morning I have no alternative but to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 135 agreed to.

Clauses 136 to 139 agreed to.

Baroness Cox moved Amendment No. 189: After Clause 139, insert the following new clause: ("Parental notice for worship not of a broadly Christian character After subsection (3) of section 7 of the Education Reform Act 1988 there is inserted— (3A) In the case of worship which does not comply with subsection (1) above it shall be the duty of the governing body and headteacher to give not less than 7 days written notice to the parents of any pupil who it is proposed should attend such worship.".").

The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 191. I know that it is late but these are amendments which reflect a great deal of concern that is felt up and down the country.

Amendment No. 189 seeks to address a problem which has arisen in a number of areas in the country with regard to acts of worship in schools, and the right in conscience of parents to withdraw their children from acts of worship with which they are not happy. The amendment would place a duty on each school's governing body and the head teacher to give not less than seven days' notice of any acts of worship which do not comply with the broadly Christian requirements of the Education Reform Act 1988 to parents of any pupil who it is intended should attend such worship. Amendment No. 191 seeks to tighten up determination procedures which allow groups of parents to opt out of broadly Christian acts of worship.

The Education Reform Act 1988 required that acts of worship should take place on a daily basis and that on most days they should be wholly or broadly Christian. The Act also provides for parents of non-Christian faiths (as has been the case since 1944) to withdraw their children from some or all acts of school worship, and provides the opportunity for a whole school to withdraw from those broadly Christian requirements by seeking a determination from the local SACRE. All those provisions were included so that no children of non-Christian faiths would be forced into partaking of acts of worship contrary to their own beliefs. So one is trying to respect the fact that Christianity is the main spiritual tradition of this land and to respect and enhance the rights of children of other faith communities.

The amendment seeks to redress a problem which has arisen because of a loophole caused by Section 7(2) of the Education Reform Act 1988. Acts of broadly Christian worship do not have to take place every day, and so some LEAs have introduced non-Christian rites and rituals. There may be nothing wrong with a school having an act of worship which is of another faith, but it may be a cause for concern if children of one faith turn up for an act of worship which reflects that of another faith without prior notice.

Some local authorities seem to be introducing, as a deliberate policy, themes which do not merely mix and match different religions but also rather bizarre secular themes. The London Borough of Redbridge has that approach, recommending different themes for different days of the year. For example, on 5th July there is a theme of worship for the first bikini that went on show in Paris; on 14th July, the death of Billy. the Kid; on 13th June, the founding of the Marylebone Cricket Club; and on 23rd July the birthday of Emperor Haile Selassi.

Those are indications of themes for acts of worship. Some parents are rather worried about them, and I believe that I can understand why. As well as the great danger of trivialising all faiths with that approach, there is the important issue of conscience. Surely it would be reasonable to presume that a Moslem parent might not want his or her child to take part in a form of worship which represented part of a Hindu festival.

The same might be said of a Christian parent whose children are taking part in an act of worship which is not of the Christian faith. For example, on 29th September 1991 members of the Hare Krishna movement were invited into Boldon Comprehensive School in South Tyneside to lead school worship for a particular year group. Mantras were chanted and year nine pupils—that is 13 year-olds—were given sweets and offered books promoting the Hare Krishnas. Invitations to a meeting outside the school where free food would be available were distributed to pupils.

The point of mentioning those examples—because examples have been requested during the course of tonight's debate in order to elicit the purpose behind an amendment—is to indicate that parents should have the right to be advised of acts of worship which might not be in accordance with the expectations which they wish for their children. That would apply to parents of any faith.

I turn briefly to Amendment No. 191. Section 12 of the Education Reform Act permits schools to apply for blanket exemptions from Christian worship for a group of pupils or for the whole school. There appears to be evidence that that provision is not being used effectively. The amendment would enable, for example, Moslem, Hindu or Sikh parents to receive an explanation from the head teacher as to why he has not been enabling them, or may have been denying them, the right to hold worship according to their own faith through failing to seek a determination from the local SACRE. The Moslem Education Co-ordinating Council—the MECC—has expressed particular anxiety about that issue. According to Mr. Nasar Mustafa of the MECC, Bradford, Manchester, Blackburn, Bolton, Sheffield, Leeds, Walthamstow and Redbridge are all areas with more than 90 per cent. of Moslem pupils in some schools, yet no provision has been made for Moslem worship. Perhaps it is reasonable that questions are asked of head teachers about why such provisions have not been made for those pupils.

The two amendments seek to tighten up already existing law. I hope that my noble friend will respond sympathetically to the anxieties which they represent even if the amendments are not in a usable form. I beg to move.

Lord Elton

Do my noble friend's amendments provide for parents to withdraw their children from that kind of assembly?

Baroness Cox

I thank my noble friend for allowing me clarification. The right of withdrawal has existed for a long time. The problem which the amendments seek to redress occurs when parents are not given notice of acts of worship from which they might have wished to withdraw their children had they known that those acts of worship were taking place. It is a question of giving notice so that they can exercise that right of conscience if they so wish.

Viscount Brentford

I support the amendment. I wish to emphasise that it is a question of worship and not of religious education. It is important that parents should have the right to withdraw their children from a form of worship in which they do not want their children to be involved. The amendment is important in order to give the parents adequate notice so that they can take advantage of the withdrawal terms. If the noble Lord, Lord Peston, were still in the Chamber I should point out to him that we have been told that more than one instance has caused the amendments to be required. Therefore, I support the amendments.

Lord Addington

I had not intended to speak to this amendment, but I wish to know the difference between an act of worship and something involving another religious ceremony. There appears to be a fine line and the examples have not clarified the position. Does a ceremony representing another religion amount to an act of worship? Are we talking about a ceremony or just a representation in an assembly?

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I have some sympathy with the amendments. The second amendment is helpful, although it is debatable whether the head teacher or the chairman of governors should explain why he has not asked for a determination. However, a reason should be given if parents ask for that.

I wish to express a certain hesitation about the first of the two amendments. I recognise fully that, where there is to be an act of worship which is patently not Christian, it is proper that parents should be told of that in advance.

However, I should not wish us to be moving in the direction that, where there is anything which is not according to our particular preferences, we should encourage people to withdraw from it. There is a sense in which we are moving, in the religious affairs of this country, towards a situation in which too many people are saying, "I will only have that kind of worship which particularly suits me." We are having a "pick-and-mix" attitude towards our religious understanding.

There is an element about which I am rather hesitant. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was right to say that it is not a clear-cut issue where one can say, "That is specifically Christian and that is specifically something else". There is a proper broadness. I do not wish us to lose that understanding gained from coming together as a school and worshipping on common ground in so far as that is humanly and religiously acceptable and possible.

Baroness Blatch

Worship of God, as we all know, can be both an intensely personal and a powerful corporate activity. It is an area of life which raises great feeling among worshippers of every denomination and faith. Parliament quite rightly insisted, in both the 1944 and the 1988 Acts that, as a profound component of the human experience, daily collective worship should take place at county schools for all pupils. And, in recognition of the sensitivities which worship can arouse, Parliament also insisted that parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective worship, either completely or from particular acts of worship. The Government fully support that basic settlement, which has stood the test of time.

My noble friend seeks first to require a governing body and head teacher to notify parents in writing, seven days in advance, whenever the school intends to provide collective worship which is not broadly Christian. A school is allowed to provide such non-Christian worship, under the terms of the Education Reform Act, because it is recognised that in some cases children of other faiths will be taking part in the school's collective worship. Opportunities for the worship of other faiths in a context of mutual understanding and respect may be provided having regard to the family backgrounds of the pupils involved and to their ages and aptitudes.

I acknowledge, however, that offence can be, and has been in a number of cases, caused where the children of parents with strong religious convictions of one kind or another have been exposed to worship which is at odds with their beliefs. Such cases are very regrettable. Schools must be sensitive to the occasions where certain acts of collective worship may offend those with strongly-held convictions, and must warn parents accordingly. That may well be best achieved by means of a letter setting out the school's programme of collective worship for the coming term.

I am also concerned that schools may be seeking—unconsciously or not—to dissuade parents from withdrawing their children from worship. I make it quite clear that the right of withdrawal is not for debate: if a parent asks for his or her child to be withdrawn, the school must comply, whether or not it agrees with the parent's reasons.

I therefore fully share the aims of my noble friend in bringing forward Amendment No. 189 and am concerned that schools should address this issue. I fear, however, that the inclusion of a duty on schools in legislation, as proposed, will be seen by many as unduly bureaucratic. Members of the Committee will be aware that my department plans to issue a new and revised circular of guidance on religious education and collective worship. I propose, therefore, to include advice in the circular which will remind governing bodies and head teachers—which covers the point made by the right reverend Prelate—of their responsibilities in this respect. A draft of this guidance will be issued shortly after the Bill receives Royal Assent.

My noble friend's other amendment on collective worship concerns the discretionary power of a head teacher at a county school to apply to the local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) for a "determination".

Since 1988, it would appear that that discretionary power has been exercised modestly by head teachers. The National Curriculum Council informs us that there have been 253 determinations granted to county schools in England. As a rather crude calculation, this represents 1.7 per cent. of county schools granted determinations. There is no more precise information on which schools have been granted determinations held centrally. This is an acceptable national figure.

My noble friend proposes that, if a head teacher has not applied for a determination, it shall be his or her duty to explain why not when requested to do so in writing by 20 parents of pupils at the school. I do not understand why the figure of 20 parents has been proposed. In my view, if someone asks for that information, he or she should receive it.

I am aware of the anxieties of a number of Moslem groups that some head teachers are failing to apply for determinations in respect of the legitimate worship needs of Moslem pupils. Without necessarily disputing their experience, the evidence from the NCC does show that determinations are both being applied for and being granted in many parts of the country. One factor which should inform a head teacher's decision to make an application to SACRE is the extent of withdrawals from Christian collective worship.

I doubt, however, that placing a duty on the head teacher to explain the exercise of a discretionary power would do anything to remedy such abuses, or satisfy those who feel aggrieved. So, again, while I am in sympathy with the aims of my noble friend in tabling this amendment, I do not consider primary legislation an appropriate solution. I should be very happy to give a commitment to the Committee that we shall address this point in the forthcoming guidance.

2.30 a.m.

Baroness Cox

I thank those Members of the Committee who participated in the discussion. I shall resist the temptation to enter into a fascinating debate about the nature of worship and how one achieves a balance between remaining as a collective body and respecting the integrity of different faiths. I thank my noble friend the Minister very warmly for her sympathetic response and her most helpful and hopeful suggestions on ways to take these matters forward. I agree that they should not appear in primary legislation but I am delighted that they will appear in terms of some kind of guidance. I cannot thank my noble friend warmly enough for that great encouragement not only to me but to many other people. At this late hour that is especially welcome. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 140 [Standing advisory councils on religious education]:

Baroness Cox moved Amendment No. 190: Page 85, line 46, at end insert: ("(3) At the end of section 13 the Education Reform Act 1988 there is inserted— (8) Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972 shall apply to the council as though meetings of the council and those of any of its committees and subcommittees were meetings of a principal council as defined in that Act".").

The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 190, I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 284 and the amendment that is called on the groupings list Amendment No. 324A—it is actually a second version of Amendment No. 324A, so perhaps it might more appropriately be called Amendment No. 324E—and Amendment No. 330.

These amendments deal with two issues surrounding the workings of the standing advisory councils on religious education (SACREs), which monitor local RE syllabuses and the local syllabus conferences convened to design and prepare RE syllabuses. Amendments Nos. 190 and 284 deal with public access to SACREs and syllabus conferences and Amendments Nos. 324A and 330 with the religious representation of those two bodies.

I shall first deal with Amendments Nos. 190 and 284, which would require that SACREs and syllabus conferences conduct their meetings in public. By bringing these two bodies under Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972, through Section 13 of the Education Reform Act, they would be brought into line with all other local government committees, including education committees, which have to conduct their meetings in public except for certain specific areas which are clearly defined. As it is, SACREs and syllabus conferences are in an anomalous position, with only about half of them choosing to open their meetings. Newcastle-upon-Tyne is one example of a council which has an open policy towards the public. While it was preparing its new agreed syllabus last year, the open policy allowed for parents and teachers to voice their views and concerns, many of which were acknowledged. I am happy to say that the National Curriculum Council recogises the Newcastle syllabus as one of the best. But only across the river Tyne in Gateshead, a totally different policy is in place. Gateshead holds all its SACRE meetings in secret and this has even gone to the extreme of representatives having difficulty consulting with the people they represent.

I can see no reason why both these bodies should not conduct the great majority of their deliberations in public. There will of course be some special and sensitive circumstances that will have to be dealt with behind closed doors, such as perhaps complaints from individual parents, but on the whole there is no need for secrecy. Indeed, I would further argue that it would benefit the credibility of all locally agreed syllabuses if meetings were conducted in public, because that would invite participation and also because secrecy tends to breed suspicion.

I turn now to Amendments Nos. 324A and 330 in Schedule 16. Both SACREs and standing conferences have within them four committees. Those are the LEA, the teacher associations, the Church of England and what is commonly know as Committee A, which consists of, such Christian and other denominations as, in the opinion of the authority, will appropriately reflect the principal religious traditions of the area", It is that which I want to home in on.

Committee A represents all non-Church of England Christians and all other religions. As the law stands, those appointed to Committee A are chosen at the discretion of the LEA. It would seem sensible that an LEA might choose its representatives according to the size of each particular faith community in the area. For example, an area with a large Moslem population might have proportionately more representatives than Hindus or Methodists, who might have fewer adherents in that area, or vice versa. That would seem the most logical way to proceed, but there is clear evidence that it has not been happening in a significant number of LEAs.

It would appear that many Committee As do not reflect the composition of their local areas. One example is South Tyneside where the syllabus conference Committee A has two Moslems and one Catholic representative although an objective analysis shows many more Catholics than all other non-Christian faiths put together in the area. Another example is Essex where 73 independent evangelical churches have been denied any representation on the local SACRE. I know that certain Moslem colleagues are worried by what they perceive as under-representation of Moslem members on some committees.

The wording of the two amendments is designed to try to ensure that an LEA would have to appoint representatives to a Committee A so as to reflect in reasonable proportion the principal religious traditions within the area. I hope that the Minister may be sympathetic to the concerns behind the amendments, although I am sure that the wording is far from perfect. I beg to move.

Lord Northbourne

I support the amendments.

Viscount Brentford

I should like to emphasise what the right reverend Prelate said about his desire to improve SACREs. It seems to me that if they are made open to the public, that could follow. We want the very best in the systems that we have around us.

I hope that my noble friend Lady Cox will confirm that there is power under the amendment for sensitive matters to be removed from public discussion. I assume that that is what the amendment intends. It is important, but I should like to see other SACRE meetings held in public.

Baroness Cox

That is certainly the intention. I would hope that it could be woven into any formulation.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford

I express some caution about requiring all SACRE meetings and meetings of the constituent groups to be held in public. I see that in certain circumstances it would be beneficial. However, one has to recognise that in some areas groups of people of different religious allegiances are coming together, perhaps never previously having encountered one another with any degree of frankness and openness. If they are looking over their shoulders at their own constituents, they may be moved to say things in order to satisfy their own adherents rather than engaging with the inter-faith or ecumenical encounter in which they are involved.

I would therefore be cautious about any rigorous application of the rule that meetings should be held in public. There can be occasions when it would be beneficial, but there can also be occasions when it would be detrimental to the proper discharge of their duties. For that reason I am not altogether happy about Amendment No. 190.

As to the other amendments relating to the reasonable proportion of representation, I am fully in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. A number of SACREs do not seem to be adequately representative of their constituent groups. I would hope that a new phrase on the face of the Bill might help, but I wonder whether it might not require other action to secure proper representation of the religious traditions of an area.

Baroness Blatch

I am entirely sympathetic to the principles underlying Amendments Nos. 190 and 284. The amendments present difficulties as drafted. They would tie SACREs and agreed syllabus conferences to the detailed provisions of local government legislation. Therefore, before accepting that that is the right course, I wish to consider whether each of the detailed requirements is appropriate to bodies whose members are unelected and who are not therefore answerable to the community in quite the same way as are local councillors.

I shall also wish to consider whether the particular requirements of the local government legislation are indeed appropriate, given the cost burden which may be placed on SACREs and on agreed syllabus conferences as a result.

It may be that we can find a simpler way of addressing the principle underlying the amendments that these bodies should indeed meet in public, and I wish to reflect on that a little more before agreeing to a change in the law. I hope therefore that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment, given my assurance that I shall reflect further on the question.

I am also in sympathy with Amendments Nos. 324A and 330, which deal with the composition of the other faiths group on SACREs and agree syllabus conferences. It is quite right to expect that when group A is appointed to a SACRE, or Committee A in the case of a syllabus conference, it should properly reflect the religious balance of the local community. While, as I have pointed out in connection with the amendments grouped with these, those local bodies are not democratically elected, nevertheless their membership must not be unrepresentative of the community they are supposed to serve.

We are taking advice as to the best way to achieve this in law. Until we have that advice, I would ask my noble friend to accept my assurance that I entirely support her intentions in bringing forward Amendments Nos. 324A and 330, and that I will bring forward government amendments in due course to this effect. I hope therefore that the amendments will not be pressed.

Baroness Cox

I no longer feel tired as a result of that answer from my noble friend. I thank noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate for their support. I note the right reverend Prelate's caution. I understand that there is a need for balance between openness, closedness, sensitivity and the problems that my noble friend addressed. I am sure that in her reflections on those matters the Minister will take full note of those points. I am deeply grateful for the sympathetic response, for my noble friend's offer of further reflection, and for the offer of coming back on some of those matters with government amendments.

With great gratitude, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 140 agreed to.

Clause 141 [Cases where no requirement for Christian collective worship]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 190A and 190B: Page 86, line 12, leave out ("section 7(1)") and insert ("this Act"). Page 86, line 12, leave out ("of this Act").

The noble Baroness said: These are technical amendments correcting a drafting error in Clause 141. I beg to move.

[Amendment No. 191 not moved.]

Clause 141, as amended, agreed to.

The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 191A: After Clause 141, insert the following new clause: ("Denominational preferences In section 55 of the Education Act 1944, after subsection (3) there shall be inserted— ( ) In making the arrangements, referred to at subsection 3 above, the Local Education Authority shall also have regard to the preferences made by parents exercising the rights afforded them as under section 6 of the 1980 Act; and shall have particular regard to any such preferences which are based on denominational grounds".").

The noble Duke said: In moving the amendment I refer to the great concern that the Catholic bishops have about the present situation with regard to home to school transport. The amendment endeavours to provide the statutory authority by means of which a Secretary of State could ultimately and lawfully direct an LEA to meet legitimate home to school transport costs. But, before going into some necessary detail, I crave your Lordships' indulgence in summarising the points which I put forward at Second Reading.

In the course of the 1979 Education Bill, your Lordships' House thoroughly debated and then rejected by a majority in excess of 100, a government clause, the effect of which would have been to permit LEAs to charge the home-to-school transport costs. Since that time, a number of LEAs have achieved, by what I described on Second Reading as stealth, that which your Lordships' House rejected. One of the more prominent cases was the Hertfordshire LEA.

Notwithstanding publicly deprecating such a change in the existing arrangements, the then Secretary of State felt unable to direct the LEA to revert to its previous practice of meeting the home-to-school transport costs. As I understand it, Hertfordshire's change in its provision affected all schools. However, I need to repeat the point that I made on Second Reading that since Catholic schools, particularly Catholic secondary schools, serve wider catchment areas than their neighbouring county schools and that many were so sited on the understanding that home-to-school transport costs would indeed be met, a removal of the provision invariably hits the parents of pupils at Catholic schools hardest.

I have a classic example in my own area of Yorkshire. In my village of Carlton, we have a Catholic secondary school which serves the Catholics in Goole, nine miles away, and the Catholics in Selby, six miles away. We built the one school—and we paid 15 per cent. towards its cost—to serve the Catholics in both those towns. At the moment, of course, they have free school transport for the essential reason that we were promised it. That is why we are considering this point, but some LEAs are querying it.

Other LEAs have been minded to follow suit, but after the local vigorous campaigns they have reverted to the status quo. Others, heartened, no doubt, by the unwillingness of Secretaries of State to intervene, have imitated Hertfordshire in that regard. Of those, one of the worst examples drawn to my attention concerns the case in the London Borough of Bromley. That LEA withdrew home-to-school transport provision for all its schools, save in its selective schools.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Southwark has but one secondary comprehensive school serving the needs of Catholic parents in that London borough. Of all the schools maintained by the Bromley LEA, that excellent Catholic school draws pupils from the outermost reaches of the authority. Yet it is treated markedly different in this important respect from what still applies to the LEA selective secondary schools. To the best of my knowledge, endeavours to persuade the present Secretary of State to intervene and direct accordingly have not yet merited a response.

The amendment is in part designed to assist the Secretary of State. In exchanges between the department and the Catholic Education Service, it has emerged that the department's lawyers are of the view that the present provisions of Section 55 of the 1944 Act do not grant the Secretary of State power to direct the LEAs in instances such as the Hertfordshire case. The Catholic Education Service officials do not share the view expressed by the departmental lawyers. However, be that as it may, this amendment to Section 55, in the opinion of the Church's legal advisers, would give that section the teeth that the Secretary of State's advisers imply that it does not have at present.

The substance of the amendment was shared with the departmental officials by Mr. Michael Power of the Catholic Education Service, in a letter of his dated 9th October 1992, and will therefore come as no great surprise to my noble friend the Minister. It takes on board two key points, both of which were addressed in the judgment given by Mr Justice Roch in the case of Regina v. Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council, ex parte Paul Gregory Schemet in the Queen's Bench Division on 24th July 1992.

I am sorry to have taken so long. I know the hour is late but this is a very important matter. Perhaps noble Lords will bear with me just a little longer. The case in question concerned the refusal of the Rochdale LEA to meet the transport costs of the applicant's children. The applicant and his wife were active members of the Church of England, and the nearest Church of England school was situated in the neighbouring borough of Oldham. The learned judge found in favour of the applicant, granting relief in particular on the ground that a decision of the LEA not to pay travelling expenses for the child to attend a school which was not maintained by the home authority was unlawful. A crucial element of the judgment surrounds the word "suitable" in the context of schooling.

It would be inappropriate at this stage to detain the Committee with a full account of the entire 33-page judgment in furtherance of this amendment. But I must needs stress that, in the context of that which we seek by way of this amendment, the Rochdale case is the first in which judicial attention has been drawn to the linking of the provision of Section 6 of the 1980 Act and Section 55 of the 1944 Act.

In essence, the learned judge—I hope I paraphrase accurately the judgment he delivered—found that the duty to comply with a parental preference as under Section 62 of the 1980 Act was therefore followed by the duty arising from Section 39(2)(c) of the 1944 Act. Section 39(2) (c) of the 1944 Act sets out a defence for parents against non-attendance proceedings and, inter alia, sets out the walking distances and suitable arrangements for home-to-school transport to which Section 55(1) of the same Act refers. I quote from the judgment: If a child is a registered pupil at a school which is not within walking distance of the child's home, the LEA, in order to discharge the duty which arises from S.39(2)(c) of the 1944 Act, must either make suitable arrangements for the child's transport to and from school or make suitable arrangements for boarding accommodation for the child at or near the school or make suitable arrangements enabling him to become a registered pupil at a school nearer to his home".

The learned judge declared: The proper construction of S.39(2) (c) is that arrangements will not be suitable unless the school is suitable for the particular pupil". For a Catholic parent so stating such a preference, a suitable school will be a Catholic school. In terms of this particular judgment an LEA offering a place to a Catholic pupil at a county or other non-Catholic school in order to avoid meeting home-to-school transport costs would not be discharging the duty arising from Section 39(2) (c).

In conclusion, I wish to make the point that, in his judgment, the learned judge, Mr. Justice Roch, effectively endorsed the oft expressed view of the Church's education officials as to the validity of both the demonstrable link twixt parental preference reasonably exercised and the duty of the LEA to meet home-to-school transport costs. Unreasonable refusal to carry out that duty on the part of the LEA must surely be subject to direction and correction by the Secretary of State.

I look to my noble friend the Minister to give the amendment the most careful consideration. I await her measured response; but, while signalling now that I will not press the amendment to a Division, I give notice that the matter will be pursued at Report stage if the Government find themselves unable to resolve this vexed question to our satisfaction. I beg to move.

Baroness Blatch

To paraphrase the last words of Huckleberry Finn: we have been here before.

Many Members of the Committee will recall that the issue of school transport—as indeed my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk reminded us—was considered exhaustively by this Chamber in 1980. At that time the Government proposed reforming the law on school transport. It is laid down in the 1944 Education Act. In brief, the Act requires local education authorities to arrange free transport where they consider it necessary to facilitate an individual's attendance at school or college. It also enables LEAs to help other individuals with their travelling expenses.

Free school transport is already provided on a substantial scale. The Audit Commission estimates that nearly 900,000 pupils in England and Wales receive free school transport. That is a very large number—roughly one pupil in eight. Free transport does not come cheap. It cost some £350 million last year.

Local education authorities do not discharge their school transport duties and powers in a vacuum. The same 1944 Act requires them to have regard to the general principle that pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents, provided that this would not lead to inefficient education or unreasonable public expenditure.

Local authorities' compliance with this requirement is most visible in their provision of free school transport to church schools. Under the 1944 Act, children of compulsory school age are entitled to free transport if they have a journey beyond walking distance to their nearest suitable school. Walking distance is two miles for pupils under eight and three miles for older pupils. In the case of parents who want to send their children to a church school, most authorities have chosen since 1944 to regard the nearest suitable school of their parents' denomination as their "nearest suitable school". This preferential treatment applied even where the child in question could have attended a suitable county school nearer home.

The Government gave local authorities guidance on transport and parental choice in 1981. That guidance noted that some parents might forgo an entitlement to free school transport by choosing to send their children to a school other than the nearest suitable one. However, it urged local education authorities to offer assistance in such cases equivalent to what they would have had to provide were the child attending his or her nearest suitable school.

On transport and denominational choice, the guidance noted that most local authorities give assistance with transport or travel expenses to pupils attending the nearest school of their parents' denomination if it is beyond walking distance. It expressed the hope that local authorities would think it right not to disturb well established arrangements of that kind. The Secretary of State attaches importance to the preservation of the opportunity to choose a school in accordance with religious convictions, which is provided by the presence of voluntary schools in the maintained system of education. That guidance remains current. Indeed, it was reiterated for post-16 pupils and students in guidance issued by my department as recently as last January. That guidance has also been effective. Since it was issued, most local authorities have continued to provide free transport in support of denominational choice.

It is true that in recent years a small number of local authorities have reviewed their provision of free transport to Church schools. I am encouraged that local consultations have persuaded nearly all these authorities not to change the status quo. I very much regret the decisions of the handful which have decided to change their policy.

It is true that the Secretary of State has the power to overturn those decisions. The 1944 Act enables, but does not require, my right honourable friend to direct local education authorities where he considers that they have acted unlawfully or unreasonably. It also gives him an unrestricted power to direct a local authority that free transport is necessary.

The Secretary of State has given this matter very serious consideration, and takes the same view of transport as his predecessors. It is primarily a matter for local decision. He would only use his powers of direction in exceptional circumstances.

Despite the Secretary of State's decision not to intervene against local authorities which have revised their policy on Church school transport, there is no sign of a local authority stampede to follow suit. I do not believe therefore that Church school transport is necessarily in jeopardy. Nevertheless, the Government fully appreciate the concerns of the Churches, as so eloquently, courteously and succinctly expressed by my noble friend the Duke. But it seems to us to be a matter best decided locally, in the light of local needs and circumstances.

I know that that is a disappointing answer to my noble friend, and I know that he will not press the amendment this evening. However, I believe he will certainly be pursuing it through further stages of the Bill. At this stage I am grateful to him for withdrawing the amendment.

The Duke of Norfolk

If I may say so, that is a disgraceful reply from my noble friend. In the 1944 Act the late Lord Butler, when I first came to this Chamber, emphasised how denominational schools —which provided 15 per cent. of the cost of building of the schools, the Government paying the cost of running them —were assured that there would be transport to the schools that they built. If children under seven were over three miles away and older children over five miles away, transport would be provided. The schools were built on the express agreement that transport would be provided to them. We are now told that the Government can renege on the decision and go backwards. It is a disgraceful reply from my noble friend.

I of course withdraw the amendment tonight, but I shall bring the matter back at Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 142 [Minimum number for admission]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 191B: Page 86, line 37, at end insert ("or for the transfer of such a school to a new site").

Clause 142, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 143 agreed to.

Clause 144 [Alteration of minimum number by funding authority]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 192: Page 87, line 26 leave out ("which provides relevant education").

Clause 144, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 145 agreed to.

Clause 146 [Provision of information by governing body]:

Lord Henley moved Amendment No. 192ZA: Page 88, line 41, at end insert: ("( ) The governing body shall make such reports and returns, and give such information, in relation to registered pupils at the school aged five or under as any local education authority may require for the purpose of exercising their functions under section 19(1) (a) of the Children Act 1989 (review of provision for day care).").

The noble Lord said: This amendment ensures that local education authorities can continue to collect the same range of information as they have collected hitherto in order to fulfil their duty to take part, with local authorities, in the review local authorities are required to carry out every three years of their provision of day care for young children. I beg to move.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede moved Amendment No. 192A: Page 88, line 41, at end insert: ("( ) The governing body shall give to any local education authority such reasonable assistance as the authority may request for the purpose of discharging the authority's functions under this Part of this Act and shall recover from the authority any additional expenditure they incur in giving such assistance.").

The noble Lord said: The purposes of the amendment is to enable the local education authority to obtain assistance from the governing body of a grant-maintained school as well as information that they need in order to perform their functions in relation to special educational needs. If most or all of the primary or secondary schools in a local education authority area are grant-maintained, the LEA would cease to have a connection with and experience of schools which it needs to deal with special needs knowledgeably and effectively. For example, it may need to second its staff dealing with special educational needs to a grant-maintained school to gain experience. It may have difficulty in obtaining that kind of help from grant-maintained schools unless it has the right to obtain it. The amendment ensures that the grant-maintained schools do not lose financially in giving such help. I beg to move.

Lord Henley

I am not sure that at this time of night I fully understand what lies behind the noble Lord's amendment. I am not entirely happy with its underlying philosophy. It almost appears to envisage that self-governing schools become the paid agents of local authorities in certain matters. The noble Lord particularly mentioned SEN. That is not the type of relationship that the Government wish to see. We have ensured in Clause 146 that self-governing schools are required to provide local education authorities with any information that they may require. They do not wish to see it extended so that self-governing schools are obliged to assist authorities in other ways. If we have placed a duty on a local education authority, it is its responsibility to discharge it. It should not need to—and I am sure in many cases would not even wish to—rely on the assistance of self-governing schools. I will have another look at what the noble Lord has said, but in the meantime I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

In the light of the noble Lord's reply, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 146, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 147 agreed to.

Viscount Astor

I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

House adjourned at seven minutes past three o'clock.