Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, the issue of complaints against teachers is changing considerably, particularly with the advent of social media and AI, which can be used to identify and draft lengthy complaints which schools have to respond to. I understand that up to one in five members of the teaching workforce are currently facing a complaint, rising to one in three of our head teachers. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, for signing Amendment 190 in my name and to the National Education Union for its support. I am also grateful to the Minister for Schools, the honourable Member from Camden, for our conversation last week. The original draft of my speech said that I was very hopeful that, when the Minister came to close she would accept the amendment, but I have to say I was very disappointed by the reply that I received from the Minister for Schools today, in which—and I paraphrase —she said that she accepted the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and I had raised when we met her but she stressed it was not the Government’s intention to do any of those bad things; it was to address things such as teachers who take a year’s sabbatical and then come back and all of this would be addressed through regulations. I feel like a cracked record in saying that we cannot legislate just for this Government and this Minister’s intentions. We can absolutely imagine that this is the kind of area that could become very politicised in future. Our basic argument is that our amendment would mean that complaints could not be brought in relation to a teacher’s behaviour before they began teaching and after they finished. The idea that you can bring a standard of professional conduct to someone when they are not acting in the profession is stretching things. Let us just imagine if Ministers were held to a Ministerial Code before and after their tenure; they obviously, I think we would agree, arguably wield greater power and influence, although I admit that at times it does not always feel like that. The other thing is that our expectations, both of teachers and of standards in society, change over time, and judging historic behaviour against today’s professional standards risks unfair hindsight and inconsistency, particularly where the conduct was lawful or accepted at the time. Teachers arguably have some of the highest professional standards around. They are held to them 24/7, 365 days a year when they are a teacher, let alone before they even become one and after they leave. From a safeguarding perspective, surely the DBS enhanced checks should be sufficient. They may not be perfect, but we need to have some line for where these different regimes begin and end.