Education Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have reiterated the crucial role that support staff play in the classroom and the added value that they bring to the classroom. My noble friend Lord Knight made the particular point that they can often free up teachers to carry out other roles. Of course, they can also in themselves grow into and eventually qualify as teachers, so they do have a significant role in the classroom. My noble friend Lord Knight also pointed out the crucial work that the SSSNB was doing in protecting schools from equal pay claims. As he said, rightly, it is the luck of the draw as to how well people are paid from one school to another, from one local authority to another, and that cannot be right. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and others talked about the need for flexibility. I do not think that I was denying that need. This was never going to be something that was handed down from on high as a prescription. It was always meant to be a resource that schools could access. The Minister has said that there would have been a lot of time taken working through and implementing it. My answer to that is that that time is going to be taken anyway, and may even be duplicated over and over again if schools do not have this core resource. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, quite rightly picked up the point that the Minister seemed to quote whichever of the employers are in favour at the moment. I quoted the ASCL. The Government found another employer which is said to have a different view to quote back at us. I found that interesting. Without getting into a competition as to who is on top among the employers, there is nevertheless a need to complete this work. The Minister seems to me to be saying, ““OK, the copyright has been handed over to another group of people. If they want to, they can carry on that work””. My question is, why stop and start again? We are already half way on a journey, in a particular way of doing it. It seems unnecessary to stop and start again with a different group of people. Nevertheless, I realise that I am not going to persuade a number of Members on this matter, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 55 withdrawn. Moved by