I imagine it will come as no surprise that I support my noble friend Lord Knight. It seems to me that high teacher quality is obviously a critical issue in making sure that we have a well-functioning and successful education system. One of the problems by which we have been beset is that there is no coherence at the moment to the way pay and conditions work across the country—that is, across England.
At Second Reading I probably mentioned that if you are a female teacher, one of the difficulties you have in seeking to move is that you will have no idea what the arrangements are for maternity leave and maternity pay from one employer to another. While I entirely accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Nash—who is not in his place at the moment—that multi-academy trusts do seek to have a career structure within themselves, there are many reasons why individual teachers might choose to move, not just within the MAT but to a completely different part of the country. Of course, that might still be part of the same MAT, but that they might choose to move out of the MAT. Being able to have a predictable set of conditions and a predictable pay arrangement is critical.
One thing that has been noticeable over the years is that pay has become much less predictable because MATs have different arrangements. It is not so possible for teachers to be on permanent contracts and to know, for example, that they are in a position to get a mortgage. I imagine most noble Lords would believe that home ownership is something to which a teacher should reasonably be able to aspire, but in many cases it absolutely is not. A national, coherent set of pay and conditions therefore seems perfectly reasonable. I would add that that should be done on the basis of sectoral collective bargaining, but that is not in the amendment. I just like saying “sectoral collective bargaining” because it is the right way for us to run the system. I note, for example, that in Iceland there is no minimum wage because all wages in all sectors are based on sectoral collective bargaining—and that is not uncommon in other countries, too.
Finally, on the question of QTS, before I came into this House one of the things that I did was to work with colleagues in the European region of Education International, the global union federation for all education unions. The European region does not just cover the EU countries; it takes in a significant geographical area beyond that. When the arrangements came in that meant people could teach in England without QTS, it was a single thing that my colleagues in many other countries—including Scotland—were absolutely astounded should be happening in this country.
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It just beggars belief that we would think it perfectly reasonable for anyone to come in and be a teacher, because it is such a critical job. Now, I have issues with the proposals for initial teacher education and training. I happen to think that we do not focus anything like enough on child development, and there are lots of other problems with how we now train and educate teachers. But the notion that there should not be something called qualified teacher status has really found absolute confusion in the minds of many teachers working in many of the European countries in which I worked. I support the QTS proposal and, specifically, national pay and conditions, and of course pensions for teachers.