Education Bill

My Lords, I wish to speak to my Amendment 8 to Clause 2 and Amendment 13 to Clause 3. Amendment 8 addresses same-gender searches and teachers or other staff searching alone in schools. Amendment 13 refers to colleges in Clause 3. In Committee, the Minister pointed out that in primary schools with staff of all, or nearly all, one gender—usually women—it would usually be very difficult to find a member of staff to search boys. Of course, the opposite may also be true in some single-sex boys’ schools. We have taken that objection on board and come forward with a compromise which we hope will find favour with the Minister. Amendment 8 would allow opposite-sex searching of children under 12 as long as there is a witness of either gender present. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that that is vital. However, we hold to our view that searching a child without a witness opens up the teacher and the child to danger in a quite unnecessary way. We accept the extension of the items for which teachers can search, and that these will be specified in published school rules. However, we feel that children’s privacy and dignity should be protected under their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that teachers should be protected from false allegations and possible physical harm if a child does indeed have a weapon in his pocket. If such a thing is suspected, a teacher would be very foolish indeed to search alone. Like the Government, we trust professionals: 99.9 per cent of teachers will use these powers sensibly and carefully in their own interests and that of their pupils. However, we do not believe that legislation should allow something to be done lawfully which is quite wrong and dangerous. I fear that a tiny minority may not behave with the wisdom we hope for. I wish to say something about the draft guidance that has been sent to us. Guidance is vital—all Governments think that is the case. Indeed, on many occasions when I pressed the previous Government to include measures on the face of a Bill, they said that it was absolutely fine to have them in guidance, and this Government are no different. Therefore, it is important that we work on the guidance. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has just said, the JCHR has also asked that the guidance should be very clear. As we have said, as the child gets older his right to privacy increases and the guidance mentions this on page two. However, there is no explanation of what is meant by Article 8 of the ECHR, which enshrines this, and how this could affect a searching scenario. Neither does it say that this right means that, wherever possible, a person of the same gender should search a child. On page 5 the teacher is told that a child should be searched by the same gender in the presence of a witness with limited exceptions. It is explained that a search of the opposite gender can take place without a witness if the teacher believes that there is a risk that serious harm will be caused to a person if the search is not carried out immediately, but there is no warning to the teacher to consider whether, in doing so, she is putting herself or nearby pupils at risk. There is no warning to the teacher to consider whether he is opening himself up to malicious allegations of inappropriate touching. I find it difficult to understand that in a Bill in which the Government are protecting teachers from publication of allegations in Clause 13, in Clause 2 of the same Bill, they are potentially giving teachers a green light to do something that may risk their reputation even more, without such warnings in the guidance. It is not even put in a positive way, such as, ““where at all possible, you should summon another teacher””. Nowhere is good practice mentioned. On the matter of training, on pages 5 and 6, the guidance does not really encourage head teachers to ensure that staff authorised to search have adequate training. They only have to ““consider”” the matter. There is no mention of the sort of situation management training that takes place in young offender institutions, yet teachers are to be allowed to do the same things as the staff there. Teachers do not want to do these things. It has often been said that they will completely alter the basis of the teacher-pupil relationship. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, makes a very good point about the need for sensitivity, understanding and knowledge in searching children with special needs or disabilities. On page 10 of the guidance, reference is made to the power to examine and erase electronic files on such as mobile phones. While this may be perfectly okay in a case of simple bullying, there are more serious situations in which deleting a file may be deleting evidence in a criminal case. My noble friend Lady Benjamin will, I think, have more to say on this. I suggest that a single person’s decision about this is not good enough; reference should at least be made to a senior member of staff and the guidance should say so. I also think that parents should be consulted before this is done; this would involve parents in the school’s discipline arrangements, which is always a good thing. The guidance is currently totally inadequate and I hope that the Minister will tell me that the department is willing to strengthen it. I am prepared to continue to work with officials until I am satisfied that the guidance truly helps teachers to make these very serious judgments. If we get this right, the situations that we fear will be very rare indeed, because teachers will know what is good practice and what is bad practice. Will the Minister allow his officials to continue to work with us in order to achieve the very good quality guidance that this Government and the previous Government both wished for?