Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, I come to the question of off-rolling. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Addington. We had never really heard the phrase off-rolling until we started developing academies. It cannot be right that schools choose to take pupils off their roll, not because they were permanently excluded or temporarily excluded, but because they had special needs and the school decided it could not cope. Maybe they had learning difficulties and the school decided it could not cope. Maybe it decided it could not cope because the pupils had behavioural difficulties. That is not a way to have schooling in our society. Since this matter has been raised, academies have realised that it is an issue and off-rolling has become less prevalent. I am absolutely delighted about that, but there is no harm in making sure that this practice goes once and for all.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard, this group and the next one cover a range of issues in relation to admissions. My sense is that most of the amendments in this group are not really needed in practice, but the Minister will no doubt clarify.

In relation to Amendment 449 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, as my noble friend made clear, each individual school publishes its admissions policy on its website. I accept his point that local authorities no longer publish as many comprehensive booklets as perhaps they once did. It is reasonable to expect that parents should be able to look at different websites and the admissions policies of the schools that they are interested in sending their children to.

Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, my understanding is that under the fair access protocol, children in need of a school place will be found one. While I absolutely respect the noble Baroness’s concerns about the groups of children she described, I am not sure it is helpful that we should place a priority on one group of children over another, but rather that we see the right to education as fundamental for every child.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering’s Amendment 455 relates to admissions policies for children living in rural areas. My noble friend raised some valid points about the financial pressures that rural schools, and in particular very small rural schools, face, but I am just not sure that it would be appropriate for an analysis of those policies to be done in the department.

I turn to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The noble Lord raises a valid point. There is a change in policy happening around the future ability of maintained free schools—although they will not be free schools in the sense that many of us understand—to be available, and that is different from what exists today for academies. So it is entirely fair of the noble Lord to probe the Government’s thinking on this.

As we heard, Amendment 457 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on school admissions policies, including an analysis of the proportion of places allocated based on faith-related criteria. Of course, as I said earlier, schools already publish their admissions policy, but I do not think they publish the outcomes in relation to faith-related criteria. Again, I am slightly puzzled about the value of doing this nationally as, obviously, parents typically look at schools in a pretty narrow geographic area close to where they live.

Finally, in relation to Amendment 475, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that off-rolling is not acceptable. In 2019, Ofsted defined off-rolling as

“the practice of removing a pupil from the school roll without using a permanent exclusion, when the removal is primarily in the best interests of the school, rather than the best interests of the pupil. This includes pressuring a parent to remove their child from the school roll”.

That aspect is clearly in the sights of the inspectorate, so I do not think that the noble Lord’s amendment is needed. The noble Lord also raised much wider issues around attendance, which go far beyond that definition of off-rolling, and I think that the new inspection framework from Ofsted, with its emphasis on inclusion, might serve to reassure the noble Lord that that continues to be in the sights of those who are responsible for holding our schools to account.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in this first group cover admissions and related issues in relation to these clauses. This package of measures will help to ensure that decisions on place planning and admissions support the needs of communities and families while also supporting local authorities to deliver their statutory functions.

I turn first to Amendment 449 from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and Amendment 457 from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, which seek to ensure that admissions information is available to all parents. They would require the Secretary of State to publish information about schools admissions arrangements, including any faith-based arrangements. I hope to provide some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Admissions authorities are already required by the statutory school admissions code to publish their admissions arrangements on their school’s website, including the proportion of places that will be prioritised for pupils of faith, and ensure that parents can easily understand how admissions arrangements will be satisfied.

Admissions authorities must also provide information to enable local authorities to publish an annual admissions prospectus for parents. The code requires local authorities to publish this information for all schools via a composite prospectus. We believe that the existing approach is proportionate, reflects the diversity of admission arrangements and local circumstances and is not overly burdensome on schools or local authorities, while enabling parents to access the information they need about their local schools.

Amendment 455, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, seeks to insert a new clause to require a review of rural schools’ admissions policies. The admissions system already contains mechanisms to ensure that admissions policies meet local needs, including the policies of rural schools. Admissions authorities must consult locally before making changes, and anyone who considers a school’s admissions policy to be unfair or unlawful can object to the Schools Adjudicator.

Furthermore, our school travel policy ensures that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities must arrange free travel for children attending their nearest suitable school who could not walk there because of the distance or their special educational needs, disability or mobility problems, or due to route safety. The Government have also set out a plan to deliver better bus services and drive opportunity to underserved regions.

The noble Baroness talked in particular about the issue of the rural services delivery grant. In relation to that, the Government are committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. We are allocating funding through improved needs formulae in 2025-26 to target funding where it is needed the most, investing in the priority services that people rely on the most. Places with significant rural populations will receive on average an almost 6% increase in their core spending power this financial year—a real-terms increase—and no council will see a reduction.

The rural services delivery grant does not properly account for need. In fact, many predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it. That is clearly not right. The Government consulted on proposals to repurpose this funding in the usual way, in the provisional 2025-26 settlement, but the Government are nevertheless keen to hear from councils about how best to consider the impact of rurality on the cost of services as part of the longer-term consultation on local authority funding reform, which was published in June.

Amendment 456 in the name of my noble friend Lord Watson seeks to apply the 50% faith admissions cap to new state-funded schools designated as having a faith character. We greatly value the contribution that faith schools make to our schools system and support the ability of faith schools to set faith-based oversubscription criteria. This can support parents wishing to have their child educated in line with their religious beliefs; it is for the admissions authorities of individual schools to decide whether to adopt such arrangements.

Many faith schools are oversubscribed, which suggests that parents value and want these schools. We also understand that the ability of faith schools to prioritise children of faith when they are oversubscribed—and of course it is only at the point at which a school is oversubscribed that these admissions criteria would bite—is important and, at the risk of disappointing my noble friends and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, we do not intend to change that approach at this time.

Removing the legal presumption that all new schools should be academies, which is what has brought about this issue, is intended to give local authorities the flexibility to make the best decisions to meet the needs of their communities. Decision-makers will carefully consider proposals from all groups and commission the right new schools to meet need and to ensure every child has the opportunity to achieve—

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[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments to Clause 56 and my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454. I have heard much around the Committee this afternoon that is extremely important, but I think there are some wider points to make.

There are many romantic expectations of school admissions—that there is a perfect world in which every child will go to the school that they and their parents choose, in which every mainstream school can provide well for every child no matter how extreme their needs, and in which no child will ever cause harm to any other child or adult in a school. In this perfect world, the romantics expect children to be distributed perfectly evenly between schools on any measure by which we choose to analyse the population. But this is a dream, and chasing dreams rarely improves children’s experiences in the real world. Sadly, it is entirely possible that the extended powers to direct admissions will backfire, especially with policy pressure on local authorities to keep even the worst behaved children in mainstream schools irrespective of the consequences.

Consider a child for whom an LA is trying to find a managed move. If several schools decline to accept the child, it may mean that they are all shirking their responsibilities, or it may mean that they have correctly assessed that the child’s needs are too great for that school or any mainstream school to manage the child safely. One shocking case I saw as chief inspector related to a girl who was raped by a boy who had come to her school on a managed move and, worse, the receiving school had not been informed by either the LA or the sending school of the boy’s known history of serious sexual misconduct. No school should be levered into putting other children at risk in this way.

If the LA directs the child to one of its own schools, it still has direct responsibility for the child, but if it can direct the child to an academy, it has offloaded the problem, at least in part. There is an obvious incentive for local authorities to use this power to offload the most difficult children and leave academies to shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for the most difficult and even dangerous children, and to inflict the greatest risk on the other children and staff in those academies.

Let us also consider the point that, while a decision will relate to a single child, good schools also have to consider how many children with behavioural problems they can manage and support properly without destroying the very strengths that make them able to work effectively with such children. I have seen already how difficult this is for local authorities in the context of SEND. Local authorities control EHCPs, which name a school to which that child should be admitted. In theory, it is parents who choose that school, but in practice, local authorities have significant influence over those parent choices, and some local authorities have perhaps on occasion found it convenient to encourage parents to choose academies rather than maintained schools, or at the very least to not discourage them from doing so.

As a result, some popular and successful academies have at times found themselves facing real difficulties. I know of cases where local authorities expected a school to fill more than one-third of its year 7 places with children requiring intensive individual support, many of them for behavioural problems. This would have turned those schools into de facto special schools without the wider infrastructure and support that we expect of special schools.

It is in fact extraordinarily difficult for local authorities to be impartial between mainstream schools and academies. For this reason, I strongly support my noble friend’s Amendment 452ZA, requiring local authorities to act impartially between maintained schools and academies. It will still be difficult in practice, but the principle should be explicit in the Act.

Similarly, my noble friend’s Amendment 453A to Clause 56 and Amendments 457A and 457B seek to ensure that changes to school admission numbers are made in the interests of children and parents, rather than the administrative convenience of the local authority. Again, these decisions will always be hard and will never please everyone, but it is right and important that children’s needs are explicitly put first: otherwise, it is sadly all too certain that, with the shrinking birth cohort, some excellent schools will see their admissions restricted while mediocre schools carry on. My noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454 gives some protection to this principle. I hope the Government will see how unfortunate this would be and will take steps to guard against it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 53 covers the role of schools in general and academies in particular in relation to pupil place planning. As we know, in the vast majority of cases, academies co-operate and fulfil their role in helping the local authority to meet its sufficiency duties, as the Bill says, so far as is reasonable. Clause 54 gives the local authority new powers to direct admission of individual pupils, despite the fact that those powers already exist for the Secretary of State to use within the funding agreement for all academies.

The policy notes say, slightly quaintly:

“Schools and local authorities’ interests may not always be aligned, and they are not expected to agree on all admissions and place planning matters. However, it is expected that they will behave reasonably and collaboratively, for example, considering the other party’s views, being willing to meet and discuss differences, and sharing information in a timely manner”.


All this is fine, but presumably the point of the clause is to get quicker decisions and to address a problem of academies apparently unreasonably refusing to accept these pupils. But where is the evidence that that is true? In the academic year 2023-24, there were just under 11,000 exclusions. Looking at the data on the department’s website for exclusions and suspensions, including repeat suspensions, one sees incredible differences, in the rates of permanent exclusion in particular, even in neighbouring local authorities. This is true for local authorities where almost all the secondaries are academies and for those where there are predominantly maintained schools.

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Debate on whether Clause 57 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, we have seen some of the most significant improvements in outcomes for pupils in our free schools, with schools such as Michaela and Ark Greenwich in London, Eden girls and boys, part of the Star academy trust in Birmingham, and the Mercia School in Sheffield, to name but a few, achieving remarkable results. I know that my noble friends Lord Harris, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew are very likely to add to that list of exceptional free schools that they have been part of creating.

Free schools have been a mechanism for the injection of new ideas, new energy and improving models of education into the state system. Free schools respond to parental and community demand; they provide parents with choice over their child’s education and they have driven up standards. Free schools are usually part of a strong multi-academy trust that has a track record of delivering high-quality education and the back-office capacity needed to support smooth and financially sustainable operations across HR, finance, IT, premises and more. Local authorities do not have and never have had the same capacity and ability to provide tailored support to schools.

The reason for the change in policy in the Bill to allow local authorities to open free schools in future is given in the policy summary, which says that the measure better aligns

“local authorities’ responsibility for securing sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools”.

Again, to loop back to the previous group, on which the Minister did not commit to write—I am sure that her officials noted my request for data—can she share the evidence that there really is a gap in their ability to secure sufficient school places and cite any instances where a local authority has been unable to meet its sufficiency duty as a result of a lack of applications from suitable trusts to establish a new free school? Certainly, during my time in office, there were always multiple applications for new presumption free schools, both mainstream and special schools.

My worry is that this is an example of bureaucratic tidiness being prioritised over outcomes for children. The English system is not tidy: we have voluntary-aided schools, voluntary-controlled schools, foundation schools and many other models. On paper, it might look messy, but we have still been able to rise significantly up the global league tables because we focused relentlessly on outcomes over bureaucracy. This clause feels like we are putting a bureaucrat’s diagrams first—even, I add before the Minister growls at me too much, a bureaucrat with a big heart and a lifelong commitment to children. All of this will change—and to the detriment of pupils.

It will also create higher costs for the Government. In an interview with Schools Week in April, Rachael Wardell, the new president of the ADCS, said, on the range of new responsibilities that councils will be given in the Bill, that

“part of our ongoing dialogue with government is going to be about, if you want us to do these things, then we’re going to need to be resourced accordingly”.

Can the Minister give an estimate of the additional funding needed for local authorities to fulfil their new duties, including in relation to free schools?

This proposed change creates a fundamental conflict of interest for the local authority. It will both invite proposals for a new free school when one is needed and be able to propose one itself, and it will then decide which proposal to approve. That is hardly a system designed to build confidence. We are told that, where it puts forward its own proposal, the Secretary of State, through the work of the regional directors, will be the decision-maker; however, this introduces an additional layer of work and, dare I say it, bureaucracy in a system that is currently working reasonably well. Organisations such as the New Schools Network have been critical in supporting trusts, establishing free schools and building capacity in the sector. We therefore think that the change in policy created by Clause 57 is a fundamental mistake and unnecessary, and I hope that the Minister will think again.

My Amendment 480 seeks to unblock the pipeline of free schools, which have been put on hold since the election. I think that 44 free schools are on hold, including some that bring high-quality 16-to-19 education to areas of very high deprivation, such as those with a high percentage of white, working-class boys, which the Secretary of State has recently focused on. Surely this is a way to demonstrate that focus and unlock those applications now.

The Government have, so far, spent twice as long reviewing the free schools pipeline as it took to open the first 24 free schools in 2010. The time between that election and the opening of free schools was 142 days; in contrast, the time between this Government’s announcement of the review in October 2024 and today has been about 288 days. Overall, it feels like the whole programme has been delayed, and I hope that the Minister can reassure the Committee that this is not the case and put some numbers on how many places will open in the next three years, in both special and mainstream schools.

Finally, I express my support for Amendment 481, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, which would bring greater transparency to the accounts of maintained schools. I am sure that my noble friend, like me, is tired of being told that there is not enough transparency around academies, even though there is actually no financial visibility for maintained schools. I beg to move.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I will address my Amendment 481. This group is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think that my amendment is relevant and important, as it seeks to level the playing field by ensuring that there is a high level of financial governance for local authority schools compared to academies. Yet again, the credit must go to a previous Labour Government for setting out such strong foundations to underpin the governance of academies; comparing academies and local authority schools is like light and day.

I have a reputation for being something of a martinet when it comes to the disciplined management of school finances. Various people have made fun of me over the years, which does not trouble me in the least, because every pound I have saved from wasteful and poor management in schools is then available to go to the front line in improving the education of children. The Minister might even want to call me a bureaucrat, because I have been so assiduous in that part of the system. I would love to see the overall schools budget at a much higher level, but that will not happen given the parlous state of our country’s finances. We therefore have to work with what we have.

In the meantime, the level of accountability and visibility of LAs’ oversight of their own schools is murky at best. An academy trust has to complete a full external audit of its finances within four months of the close of the academic year—that is, between 31 August and 31 December. The accounts have to be filed with Companies House on that date. At that point, the full record of the trust’s financial affairs is available for public scrutiny for the year ending only four months earlier. You can get that information on any trust in England with about four clicks of a button. There is a red list in the DfE—I hope the Minister has seen it —of any trust that misses this deadline. When I was there, any trust more than a month late was immediately placed on a risk register. If schools’ managers or trustees cannot get the money right, how can they ever get the education right? It really is that simple.

But what visibility is there for local authority schools? There is virtually nothing that is easily accessed. Even as the Minister for the school system, I found it an endless battle to get this sort of information. Although LAs would complain frequently about not having enough money, they were rarely forthcoming about how they were spending what they had. This is a very unacceptable state of affairs. If we look at some key categories of oversight and compare the levels of transparency, I hope noble Lords will see why this very unbalanced situation needs correcting.

First, there is the accountable body. For academies, it is the board of trustees and the members sitting above that. The DfE Academy Trust Handbook sets the rules. These board members and the members themselves are on every academy’s website. For local authorities, they are their own accountable body—and try talking to that person.

Secondly, there are audited annual accounts, which I have already explained. But there are no requirements for anything similar for local authority schools. It is even worse that the average frequency of an internal local authority audit of its own schools is about every three years, and it is virtually impossible to see a copy of those reports. I failed consistently when I was in the department.

Thirdly, there is internal auditing. For trusts of a certain size, this is another annual requirement. For noble Lords not familiar with the term, an internal audit is not exactly as it says on the tin. An internal audit is conducted by external specialists but looks at different areas of schools’ operation beyond straight finances, such as deep dives into cyber vulnerability, payroll, the condition of the school estate and so on. There is no such requirement for local authorities.

Fourthly, there are financial returns. Academies are required to submit annual accounts to the DfE and indeed a three-year budget forecast. They also need to demonstrate compliance with their chart of accounts. For local authorities, again there is no standard national chart of accounts, and they are not required to submit three-year forecasts.

Fifthly, there are monthly management accounts. Academies are required to ensure that the chair of the board of trustees sees these at least four times a year. My noble friend Lady Barran actually reduced it. I had it at six, but she was right; my bureaucratic obsession probably had got the better of me. But this is not required for chairs of governors in local authority schools.

Sixthly, there is related-party transaction reporting. Academies have to comply with specific rules, such as needing independent authorisation from the DfE for larger sums. It was £20,000, but my noble friend—she might correct me—lifted it to £50,000. Again, there is nothing like that for local authority schools.

Seventhly, there is the publication of salaries. Academies have to disclose all salaries above £100,000, but local authority schools do not. This is required only for LA officers at LA level. Estimates I have seen indicate that there are over 1,000 staff in local authority schools across England who exceed that threshold, so any defence that it is not a material number of people in receipt of public money does not wash.

Eighthly, there is website reporting. Academies are required to publish their audited accounts on their website. There is no requirement for local authorities to publish their school accounts.

Ninthly, there is the accounting officer. Academies have to appoint an accounting officer with—I stress—personal responsibility for accurate and timely reporting. No such thing exists in local authority schools.

Given that LAs are facing an unprecedented financial squeeze, with some virtually bankrupt, such as Birmingham, there should be no excuse for them not to up their game. The costs—which will of course be the reflexive defence for not doing anything—would be trivial against the improvement in the spending going on inside the LA schools and would be recouped many times over the cost of the audit fee.

Every time I have taken over a local authority school, we have eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of wasteful expenditure, which is then focused on teaching. In every secondary school inside my trust, because of the very tight financial management, we have been able to extend the school day by three hours a week. If a child spends the full five years of his or her education in one of those schools, it is the equivalent of receiving another year’s education. That is what is at stake here. Norfolk is not a well-funded local authority; it is about middle ranking. We are not getting any handouts. It just shows you that, if there was more rigour in the system, it would make an enormous difference to the children in our country.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I recognise the point made by the noble Baroness and the need for trusts to have certainty about their projects as soon as possible. We will provide an update on next steps to trusts and local authorities in due course, and I am sure that others in the department have heard the reasonable points made by the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am slightly surprised by the Minister’s response to this group. On the changes proposed by Clause 57, she repeated the point set out in the policy summary document about the importance of local authorities being able to meet their sufficiency duty, but she did not give us any examples or data to suggest that there had been instances where they were unable to meet their sufficiency duty because of a lack of suitable applications. Therefore, if I may, I will repeat my earlier request that the Minister write to me setting out exactly how often that has happened, maybe over the last five years, year by year, so we can get a picture of what this problem really is.

The Minister gave the House no reflection on the capacity of local authorities to deliver new free schools, no reflection on the conflicts of interest inherent in this policy and no real recognition of the contribution of free schools, which, as we heard particularly from my noble friend Lord Harris, have done really great and important work, particularly in narrowing disadvantage gaps. As my noble friend Lord Nash said in relation to the importance of the Latin Excellence programme, these schools have often been pioneers in raising the aspirations of children through the curriculum they offer. As we debated, and as I quoted in the debate last week on the curriculum, this is about opening doors for children—not moving the destination closer to them but building the bridge so they can get to that destination.

On my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 481, it is good that the Minister has the figure on the cost. I am sure my noble friend could negotiate that down given half a chance, but the real point is the one he made: that his trust has been able to unlock funding that gives three more hours a week to the children in that trust, or one year more of education. The Government’s accepting invisibility and probable financial inefficiency in local authority schools does the children in those schools a real disservice.

Clause 57 agreed.

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Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

459: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty for schools to report acts of violence against staff to the police(1) Where an act which meets the conditions set out in subsection (2) takes place which involves the use or threat of force against a member of a school’s staff, the school must report the incident to the police.(2) An act must be reported to the police where—(a) it is directed towards a member of school staff or their property, and(b) it takes place—(i) on school property, or(ii) because of the victim’s status as a member of a school’s staff.(3) The provisions of this section do not require or imply a duty on the police to take specific actions in response to such reports.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause seeks to create a duty for all schools to report acts or threats of violence against their staff to the police. It would not create a requirement for the police to charge the perpetrator.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this is a very important group of amendments as it seeks to understand the Government’s attitude to behaviour in our schools and, in particular, how to balance the rights of children who have been excluded or have committed acts of violence with the rights of other pupils in the classroom, as well as how best to address bullying in schools.

Amendment 459 aims to bring clarity about acts of violence or threats of violence towards school staff. Pupils should understand that any such act would be referred to the police. We have made it clear that this is not intended to criminalise children, but we believe it would help to reset expectations on behaviour and give the police and children’s services important information about those pupils. I recognise, of course, that schools know their pupils very well and are able to exercise their professional judgment; but even with that, we are concerned that there might be pressure on the Government to move to a position such as we have seen in Scotland to reduce the use of exclusions and suspensions.

Noble Lords will be aware of the disastrous impact of the Scottish Government’s policies in this area, which have led to violent assaults by pupils on teachers with no power remaining to exclude them. More recently, the Mayor of London has launched an inclusion charter to reduce suspensions, and at an event hosted by the Children’s Commissioner last week, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, suggested that he would like to see all pupil referral units abolished.

Head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend when necessary, and the presumption will always be that the rate of these strategies should not be considered too high unless there is good reason to think otherwise. The correct rate of exclusion is “when necessary”; it is not “as low as we can make it”. Amendment 502YYA seeks to clarify this. We are concerned about the impact of councils pursuing zero-exclusion policies, either directly or indirectly, by asking schools to sign up to reduction charters or similar. Such policies create an implicit expectation that head teachers should not exclude, which, frankly, would be disastrous for pupils and staff who have to face the impact of these decisions.

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We are also introducing a duty on all safeguarding partners to ensure that education and childcare settings are properly represented at strategic and operational levels. I hope that, following this wide-ranging and important debate, noble Lords will feel reassured that the Government have in place positive measures to address the range of serious and important issues highlighted by this group of amendments and recognise how important it is that our teachers can carry out their jobs safely and that our children can benefit from safe and calm classrooms in which to learn. For the reasons outlined, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. I felt much happier listening to that reply than to her earlier one. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said, it is important that head teachers know the Government have got their back in terms of managing very difficult situations with such dedication day in, day out. The Minister’s comments about the importance of safe, calm classrooms, her focus on the guidance that already exists in relation to suspensions and exclusions and her reassurance about the discretion that head teachers have on behaviour and permanent exclusions when they are necessary—and that the Government protect the rights of head teachers to do that—are important for them to hear, and I am grateful to her for making that very clear.

I am sure everyone in this Committee would echo her sentiment about early intervention strategies. That was picked up by my noble friend Lady Spielman. I warmed very much to the contrast she drew between the current focus on following process versus the opportunity to think about a plan for the future for each child who sadly finds himself in that position.

On Amendment 502YF in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Nash, I think I heard the Minister say that those children already qualify under Section 17 as children in need, and I agree with her. I wonder whether it would be helpful if, where that is not happening in practice, we bring those examples to the department for it to consider because clearly that is both the letter and the spirit of the law, and we all want to see that happening in practice.

I will skate over my minor fallout with my noble friend, as I hope I can call him, Lord Hampton. Things have been going so well and to fall over at 7 pm on Day 11 seems unfortunate, but there we go. I hope we can recover before Day 12 is out.

Briefly on the amendments regarding bullying in schools raised quite rightly by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Storey, I very much share their concern about the impact of bullying, but I argue that this is all about having a strong school culture where bullying and other forms of poor behaviour are not accepted. I worry that if you make an individual person responsible for it, rather than it being something that every member of staff upholds, that might not work as effectively as noble Lords would wish.

On information and data on bullying, I was relieved to hear that the behaviour survey will continue to be published. I am hoping that means it will have the same questions as in previous years, to allow for comparability. The noble Baroness might want to put that as a “PS” on one of the many letters she is going to write to me. The survey gives detailed information, and we also know from the response of the charity Parentkind that, in parental complaints, bullying peer behaviour, safety, safeguarding, behaviour and discipline —it is all very overlapping—are the top areas.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is happy with and reassured by the Minister’s comments on seclusion rooms. Of course, we are able to offer the Minister the simplest way to reduce bullying in schools, which is for the Government to accept our ban on smartphones in schools. I say this with a smile, but in all seriousness, we know that this is the source of much bullying nowadays and it continues not just in school but out of school. [Interruption.] I am not sure what the noble Baroness is muttering, but if the Government do not want to listen to me then maybe they will listen to Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna Ghey, who has recently bravely launched a campaign against smartphones in schools, highlighting the terrible bullying and impact they had on Brianna. With that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

May I just refer to my Amendment 502YF? I heard what the Minister said about the general duty under the Children Act, but I am still concerned about the black hole I spoke about. This is all part of improving the liaising between schools and local authorities on how we provide for these children. I will reflect on that, but I am still concerned. As far as my noble friend’s point about smartphones in schools and bullying goes, of course, bullying does happen outside school, when they still have those smartphones. It happens on social media, and that is why I am pleased to see the National Education Union and others pushing for increasing the age restriction in respect of social media to 16. As I say, I commend them in that endeavour.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support Amendment 502W from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. We need a much better standard and a much better quantity of data in this area. We need to start with some clear understanding and definitions of the terms we are using. There seems to have been a lot of drift and expansion in definitions, and we need to get back to something that is clear, commonly defined and commonly understood.

Then we really need to understand what works for these children. We need to track what we are doing and when and why it works. This is a really complex area, so we will not get the answer out of small studies and small amounts of data. We need to track every child who has been fingered as SEND, and then we will get enough data to start seeing some patterns. Perhaps we can add other categories, such as young carers and those who are in care, where there are known difficulties with their education that are not associated with SEND but which may well share some common characteristics. If we get better at data, we will really start to understand how to do better by the children and work the cost down at the same time, and that is important.

I am with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in the spirit of some of the other things that he is doing but I hope that, if this amendment ever came to be enacted, there would be alongside it a recognition of the interests of the other children in class.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, we have heard some thoughtful speeches on the issues facing pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in general and neurodivergence in particular. There is no doubt that this is a pressing issue for parents, pupils, staff and of course local authorities, whose budgets are being severely impacted by the costs associated with education, health and care plans, or EHCPs. As all noble Lords are aware, the Government have committed to publishing a new White Paper on SEND and have been working with an expert group ably led by Tom Rees, the CEO of Ormiston Academies Trust. That is an incredibly important task, and we on these Benches hope very much that the Government can show a positive way forward that addresses some of the problems that beset the current system. I think the plans for that report mean that Amendment 498 is not needed.

I understand the criticism of the Children and Families Act 2014, which introduced the current system. However, all who were involved with that legislation, including some noble Lords who have been in the House today, had the best interests of children with special educational needs and disabilities at the forefront of their minds. Whatever the Government propose, I hope that they will take the time to pilot it and avoid the problems of implementation and the unintended consequences that the current approach has found.

I hope also that we can move away from blanket terms such as “SEND” or “neurodivergent”, as they cover such an incredibly wide spectrum. With that in mind, I am cautious about some of the amendments in this group, including Amendment 491 in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would include mentors for all children with SEND, and the implications of Amendment 502S.

Given my earlier amendments on exclusions, it will not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that I do not agree with subsection (2) in his Amendment 502Q, which would make a presumption against permanent exclusion or fixed-term exclusion, for the reasons that I set out earlier. Similarly, I disagree with Amendment 502T in the noble Lord’s name, which would put a duty on schools to support reintegration for pupils who had been in custody without any balancing consideration about the impact on the other pupils in the classroom.

Again, I am not convinced that Amendment 502R, in the name of the noble Lord Carlile, or Amendment 502U, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, are needed. There is already extensive content in the early years and core initial teacher training curricula following updates undertaken by the previous Government in relation to these issues. When I talk to experts on inclusive teaching, they are clear that for pupils who are able to attend mainstream school, the same approaches of very high-quality teaching apply to them too. I agree absolutely with my noble friend Lady Spielman when she says that the core way that we all learn is much bigger than many of us appreciate.

The SEND review of 2022 put it very clearly that:

“High-quality teaching, differentiated for individual pupils, is the first step in responding to children who have or may have SEN”.


I think there is a big gap in our understanding of the impact of different interventions. Some commentators have called for the creation of something a bit like NICE, which we have for pharmaceuticals, for SEND interventions. I have been sent examples of the kinds of requirements that are put on schools for children with education, health and care plans. Those I saw ranged between nine and 44 separate requirements, many of them not based on any academic evidence of their effectiveness, but all of them creating a great workload for schools. That is something that I hope the Government are going to grip in this review and address.

I have a lot of sympathy for Amendment 502V, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, as I spent a lot of time trying to understand the flows of funding for EHCPs, as have many much more august organisations such as the IFS and the National Audit Office. It remains very difficult to get clarity on how the system works from a financial point of view. Given the sums of money involved, it surely would make sense to be able to do this.

Amendment 502W in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, builds on Amendment 502V and aims for cross-sector reporting. I hope that with the new single unique identifier some of that will become much more possible. It will certainly reveal some valuable data. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, this issue of well-being is so important. I found the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, inspiring. It made me think. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is right: we celebrate, or we used to celebrate, how we have climbed up the PISA tables for maths and English, or literacy and numeracy. But there is no mention of the fact that we have declined in terms of children’s well-being, which seems wrong to me. I hope that the pitch that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, gave the Minister about how this would be a brave career move for her resonated with her and we might see some movement on this.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard, this group of amendments focuses on the important issue of the mental well-being of pupils and the roles that schools could play in that. This obviously needs to be seen in the context of an adolescent mental health service which is currently struggling to keep up with demand, and where waiting lists are all too often extremely long, particularly with the rise in reports of poor mental health since Covid.

However, schools already have extensive guidance from the department on how to support both pupils and staff with mental well-being, and there is a mental health hub of resources. The previous Government introduced and began the rollout of mental health leads in our schools, and my understanding is the current Government have continued with this. So I am really not convinced that more duties and standards and guidance, as proposed in Amendments 462, 500 and 479, are the answer, although I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, regarding the range of qualifications one might want to have on a team.

We have also heard that we have some major red flags in relation to children’s mental health and well-being with the use of smartphones and social media and the extraordinary amount of time that children and young people typically spend on their screens. Once again, I urge the Government to address these root causes of isolation, loneliness and disconnection in our society, especially for young people, rather than introducing yet more guidance.

I am sympathetic to the spirit of Amendments 502B and 502Y in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Willis, respectively. Many schools are able to offer a forest school in primary, but this is something that school leaders need to decide on.

As the Minister mentioned, we introduced the National Education Nature Park when we were in office, with an emphasis on schools in areas with few or no green spaces, and I was pleased when I looked at the National Education Nature Park website last night that more than 3,000 schools have signed up to the scheme. That will give those children the opportunity not only to spend more time in nature but to gather a range of relevant skills, including data capture and analysis.

Amendment 472, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, would establish a national children’s well-being measurement programme. We heard the noble Lord make a powerful case for such an approach, although I note the concerns raised by my noble friend Lady Spielman and the suggestion that indirect measures might achieve some of the same ends. A lot of questions are put to pupils in the national behaviour survey regarding well-being, including about happiness, how worthwhile a pupil’s life feels, levels of anxiety, loneliness, bullying and more, and I think there is a case for looking at the range of data that is collected. If it does not meet some of the objectives that the noble Lord set out, perhaps we could dispense with some of the data collection and replace it with something more useful.

I was very struck when in office by the approach that is taken in Indonesia—the Committee cannot laugh at me at this hour—in relation to surveys of pupil well-being, which are completely built into its equivalent of an Ofsted framework. It is able to identify very quickly schools where pupils’ well-being is significantly better or worse than the average, which allows it to learn from the best and address the weaknesses of the poorest.

I am not going to speak to Amendment 496 unless someone tells me I should because I do not think that that amendment was introduced.

Finally, my noble friend Lady Berridge and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, reminded us of the tragic case of Benedict Blythe. Whether or not we are parents, we can all recognise the heartbreak of the death of a child, particularly where that death is avoidable. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, rightly pointed out the much wider and more prevalent issue of anxiety for parents of children at risk of an anaphylactic shock. I express my thanks to all the organisations in this area which have contributed to improving the response of schools to managing the safety of pupils with an allergy, particularly the Benedict Blythe Foundation for its work on the schools’ allergy code and the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation for its work on the allergy school. I hope that the Minister will be able to address the concerns raised in that amendment.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, this Government are committed to improving mental health support for all children and young people to help pupils achieve and thrive in education. We also agree that all children and young people should have the opportunity to understand and connect with the natural world, and recognise the importance of supporting pupils with allergies.

On Amendment 462 on the dedicated mental health practitioner, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, this Government have announced that we will expand mental health support teams from 52% coverage of pupils and learners at the start of April 2025 to 100% by 2029-30. This will ensure that all schools have access to NHS-trained and -supported mental health practitioners. Additionally, funding of £13 million has been agreed to pilot enhancements to this service to support those with more serious needs; for instance, young people who have experienced trauma or those with neurodiversity or eating disorders. We will look at the experience of those pilots and how they could be extended.

The issue, as other noble Lords have identified, rests particularly in the numbers of mental health staff available to deal with the most acute needs of young people. This amendment would not add to the provision of mental health professionals, although the Government have committed to increase their number by 8,500, but switch responsibility from the NHS to schools. Schools provide a range of pastoral support, including counselling, but managing mental health professionals is not their job. Mental health support teams benefit from being recruited, trained, clinically supervised and having outcomes monitored by the NHS, and there is good evidence of their effectiveness.

Amendment 472, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, seeks to establish a national children’s well-being measurement programme. The Government are strongly committed to supporting all children and young people to achieve and thrive. To help us do this, we need to understand how our children and young people are feeling. There is immense value in schools measuring, understanding and taking action on the factors which influence whether their pupils attend, achieve and thrive. Around 60% of schools already conduct some type of well-being measurement voluntarily.

We agree with the noble Lord that measurement should remain voluntary for schools. However, we do not agree that a centrally administered survey, costing millions of pounds a year over this spending review, is necessarily the right way forward. We believe in measurement, but for schools to choose to measure, it is important that the tool they use is relevant to them and they can be assured that results will not be used for accountability in an overly simplistic way.

Therefore, we recognise the need for there to be consistency of that measurement. That is why the Government have already initiated a programme of work with similar aims, with measurement experts and providers, including from the Our Wellbeing, Our Voice campaign, and with the education sector. This will involve setting standardised questions for schools to ask pupils, including about their well-being, enabling benchmarking between schools.

We will go further and provide non-statutory guidance, including tools and resources, to support schools to measure in a more consistent and evidence-based way and, importantly, to act on the findings with partners to improve outcomes for children. We are confident that the adoption of a standard set of questions across the sector and publication of operational guidance will better enable schools to share data with one another and other local partners, to facilitate local benchmarking and joined-up community action.

I hear the noble Lord’s point about national collection, and in the longer term, we will also explore whether and how this data could be collected centrally to inform national policy. In the meantime, to further amplify the voices of young people, we have committed to publishing an annual data release containing collated national survey data on pupils’ experiences in school, including their sense of belonging, enjoyment and safety.

Amendment 479, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, would require statutory guidance for schools on whole-school approaches to mental health and well-being. The Government already provide guidance, supporting schools to put in place whole-school approaches. While itself not statutory, this supports a range of statutory duties in relation to teaching, safeguarding, behaviour and special educational needs and disabilities, which are key to identifying need, and working with external services to meet that need. These existing statutory duties, the support already available to schools and the work that we are committed to on the framework, measurement and annual data collection, which I have just set out in response to Amendment 472, taken together, will provide a sound basis for all schools to put in place whole-school approaches and secure the support that their pupils need. I will write to the noble Lord about the specific point relating to the training grant and the Government’s approach to providing additional support for schools to do this.

I turn to Amendment 500, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would require newly published standards for schools in England on physical and mental well-being; this point was referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Schools already have specific requirements to teach about physical and mental well-being, which are set out in the physical education national curriculum and the statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education. Ofsted inspects the delivery of these requirements. This approach allows schools to develop their own approaches to supporting physical and mental well-being that reflect the very different circumstances of their pupils. Centrally set delivery targets could not reflect this difference.