Education Bill

My Lords, Clause 44 removes the power of the Local Government Ombudsman to hear complaints against schools, a power recently conferred on him by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. Parents will instead have to complain directly to the Secretary of State, a remedy that is widely perceived to be slow and ineffective. Indeed, when we were discussing the question of complaints to the Secretary of State when dealing with the Academies Bill last year, it was clear that the system was creaking, with the standard time taken to deal with complaints averaging as much as 18 months. The Local Government Ombudsman has always considered complaints about a wide range of education matters as they relate to local authorities, including concerns about special educational needs. However, until recently the ombudsman was unable to consider complaints about internal school matters. This meant that the complaints process was fragmented, with parents taking their complaint about the local authority to the Local Government Ombudsman but having to take their complaint about the school to the Secretary of State. Parents understandably felt surprised and frustrated when the Local Government Ombudsman was unable to pursue a complaint further once it became a school matter, and would be disappointed when they discovered that their only recourse was to complain to the Secretary of State. In order to deal with this unsatisfactory state of affairs the last Government, in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, extended the Local Government Ombudsman’s powers to cover complaints from parents and children about a range of non-teaching matters concerning the internal management of schools by governors and head teachers. In April 2010, the Local Government Ombudsman launched a pilot phase of the new school complaints service. These pilots are taking place in 14 local authority areas, and are being used to shape the design and delivery of the new service. The Local Government Ombudsman has also been providing training and information sessions on the new processes, which were due to be in place nationally by this month, September 2011. I understand that the feedback from these pilots has been extremely positive, and indicates a strong level of satisfaction from schools and parents with the conduct and outcomes of the investigations. There have been no challenges by schools to the remedies proposed by the Local Government Ombudsman. In these circumstances, I am at a loss to understand why the Government want to put the clock back, revert to the previous, fragmentary and unsatisfactory system, and remove the Local Government Ombudsman’s power to investigate complaints about schools as well as local authorities. I am grateful to the Minister for his letter of 8 September, in which he set out the department’s thinking very fully, but I am bound to say that I did not think it altered the case very greatly. Indeed, to my mind, it only underlined the need for a more concerted route for complaints. I focus my remarks on the impact on children with SEN and disabilities. I recognise that complaints about a school’s failure to deliver the content of a statement of SEN will still be covered by the Local Government Ombudsman. However, I also understand that the most common single school-level issue investigated by the Local Government Ombudsman in the pilots has been bullying, something which will be removed from his purview if this clause goes through. A literature review carried out by the University of Cambridge recently stated that: "““There is a great weight of evidence that confirms that children with SEN and/or disabilities are significantly more likely to be bullied or victimised than their non-disabled peers””." The Local Government Ombudsman is able to consider policies and practices of schools, and ensure that they are correctly following their own procedures on things like bullying. The Secretary of State has a much weaker set of investigatory powers, which focus only on breaches of the law, which means that he will be unable to go into matters which involve school policy rather than law, such as bullying. I had understood that the Government wanted to ensure that parents of children with SEN and disabilities are not hampered by bureaucracy, and bureaucratic and complex processes, when all they want to do is make sure that their child gets the help they need. This is one of the guiding principles underpinning the SEN and disability Green Paper, with a view to making a system which is more user-friendly and works better for parents. I therefore believe the Government should think again about whether the handling of complaints against schools should be taken back into the Department for Education, and particularly whether this is the quickest and most accessible way of ensuring parents get the right support for their child. As the Lamb inquiry stated: "““The Local Government Ombudsman represents the potential for a unified route for individual complaints about SEN at both a school and local authority level, with more appropriate forms of redress available to parents””." I realise that the department has published standards it will seek to comply with for dealing with complaints, but it is highly questionable whether the DfE has the capacity for this. No additional resources have been allocated to deal with this additional work and there are a number of further responsibilities that the Secretary of State is taking on as a result of the Bill for which provision will need to be made. I am sure that Minister will agree that cases where children do not get the help they need often arise because a school and local authority have not been working effectively together. I do not therefore understand why the Government are proposing to go back to a system where parents have to complain to the ombudsman about the failure of the local authority and to the Secretary of State about the failure of the school—even when the failures relate to the same child. Parents want a single unified complaints process and they want their complaints to be dealt with quickly and effectively by a single body. The National Deaf Children’s Society has sent me details of a case in Leeds, where a deaf child with additional disabilities was badly let down by the council and the school. The ombudsman found that, for example, staff caring for and educating the child did not know sign language and could not communicate with the child. Communication was further hampered by the poor acoustics in the school, and expert advice from an audiologist on this was not acted upon. There were not enough staff to help the child to use the toilet. The child sometimes returned home in wet trousers, developed blisters and suffered urinary tract infections. The ombudsman identified several other serious failings, but Leeds was not one of the pilot areas in which the ombudsman was able to investigate the school He regretted that he did not have the power to investigate the actions of the school and that he could not give a complete and comprehensive account of how the situation arose or was allowed to continue. The parent could complain to the Secretary of State, of course, but I am sure that the Minister will appreciate that having fought one battle she did not wish to have to start all over again. The parent wants and needs a single unified complaints procedure in order to ensure that swift and comprehensive action is taken to help her child. I should be grateful if the Minister could say something to dispel my perplexity as to why the Government are pushing ahead with a proposal that will inevitably make the complaints process more complex and bureaucratic for parents. I should also be grateful if he clarified some points on Clause 44 made in the impact assessment. According to the assessment, the rationale for the Secretary of State taking this part back from the Local Government Ombudsman is that take-up has been low in the pilot areas. However, in those areas, the ombudsman has taken 200 complaints about schools. The assessment also states that the Secretary of State would expect to receive 200 additional complaints when the pilot ends and the Secretary of State again takes on responsibility for complaints about schools. It would therefore seem that take-up is absolutely in line with what the Government were expecting. Does the Minister agree? Of course, take-up is a crude way of assessing the success of the pilots. Can the Minister tell us what steps the department has taken to assess the response from parents to the unified complaints procedure in the pilot areas? How have the pilots been evaluated? Have the views of parents in the areas where the new service has been piloted been taken into account when deciding to scrap it? We need to hear more about this before we agree to Clause 44. There is something else that undermines confidence. Previous assurances regarding parents’ ability to complain about academies would appear still not to have been met. During the passage of the Academies Bill commitments were made that a robust complaints procedure for academies would be developed by the Young People’s Learning Agency. I do not believe that this has happened. Parents have called the YPLA, only to be advised that complaints against academies were not within its remit. This is still happening a year after the YPLA was given this responsibility. It is in the interests of parents that the Local Government Ombudsman be able to investigate complaints against schools as well as against local authorities. Taking away this accountability mechanism before it has been fully evaluated, and at a time when the DfE is already facing a significantly increased workload, is something the Government should reconsider very carefully. Accordingly, I strongly urge the Minister to reconsider Clause 44.