Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on securing this debate and express my thanks on behalf of the Government to the whole committee for the important work it has done and the valuable insights in its report.

As we have heard in a series of powerful speeches this evening, children’s social care has the potential to transform lives for the better. Sadly, as the independent review and two other key reports set out last year, the system is not delivering consistently enough for the children and families it supports. The Government have heard the call for whole-system change and are committed to responding. Earlier this year, we published our implementation strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, which set out our bold and ambitious plans to transform children’s social care. I heard clearly from the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, the need to convince not just her but others in this House of the urgency with which the Government are approaching this task. We have previously debated in this House the tension between really high-quality implementation and speed, and I hear and will take back to the department the concern about and criticism of the Government’s approach. However, I will try to reassure the House that it is based on a determination to get the implementation right, even if that means some delay in national rollout.

We have also published our draft children’s social care national framework and dashboard, which sets out in one place the outcomes that should be achieved for children, young people and families through local authority practice. It will aim to set national direction and raise the quality and consistency of practice. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked about the use of data. I reassure her that that is central to our plans.

We heard from thousands of individuals in our three consultations, which launched in February with the strategy. Most particularly, I acknowledge the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, and the personal story he told about one of the young people who gave evidence to your Lordships’ committee. I echo that the stories we heard from young people were the most powerful and were invaluable in helping to shape the strategy; we thank them for sharing them with us.

The committee launched its inquiry over the same period and assessed whether the reforms would achieve the transformative change the system needs. The report concluded that our strategy sets the right direction for the system. That mirrors what we heard through our public consultation on Built on Love. We will publish our response to this and the national framework consultation tomorrow—apologies to committee members that the timing did not quite align perfectly. We know there will be areas to go into further and that we will need to make available more detail on how we intend to deliver that reform, but we wholeheartedly support the case for urgent and extensive system-wide reform of children’s social care.

The £200 million investment over this spending review period sets the path for longer-term reform and provides an opportunity to test and learn from some of the most complex elements. Your Lordships made the comparison between the four-year national rollout in the independent review and the £200 million for the pathfinders. To be fair, we are not comparing like with like. The Government completely understand that this is not the scale of investment required for national rollout. Transformation on this scale will take time and commitment, and we need to balance the necessary reform with the need to ensure that we have interventions that we know work and that can be rolled out safely and effectively.

A number of your Lordships, including the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about the wider package of support and commitment that the Government were making. This funding of course builds on the £3.2 billion announced at the last Autumn Statement for adult and children’s social care and on further investments we have made, including the £259 million over the 2021 spending review period to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential homes, £230 million over this SR to support young people leaving care, £160 million over the next three years to deliver our adoption strategy, and £142 million to take forward reforms to unregulated provision in children’s social care.

A number of your Lordships, including the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, expressed very clearly their concerns about residential children’s homes. I absolutely hear and recognise some of the stories that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to. When I worked in the area of safeguarding before joining your Lordships’ House, it was extraordinary how perpetrators could spot vulnerable children and adults like homing pigeons. So, sadly, I recognised the stories he told.

In addition to the capital investment and addressing the disproportionate role of private sector-run children’s homes in the sector, there is obviously the whole issue of recruitment and retention, which your Lordships understand very well and is a particular challenge in the residential children’s homes market. We are exploring options to introduce professional registration for staff working in children’s homes, alongside a national leadership programme aimed at recruiting new talent into the sector. We are clear that we need to raise the status and profile of those working in the sector to address the recruitment issues.

With regard to family help, as we heard in a number of your Lordships’ speeches, these reforms are central to ensuring that children grow up with loving relationships and stability. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, talked about stable lives rather than stable homes. I would challenge him and say that the probability of having a stable life vastly increases if you start with a stable home. I do not think he would disagree too strongly—but, equally, stable lives are a great outcome also.

Through family help, we want to create a service that meets the whole needs of a family, works at building on their strengths, is delivered across multidisciplinary teams and makes sure that there is collaboration within local areas between partners. In July, we announced the first three local authorities that will be taking part in the Families First for Children pathfinder, to help us codesign this new model of working. It will go live in three areas in the autumn.

We also recognise the vital role that kinship carers play, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, acknowledged, in providing loving, safe and stable homes for children. We absolutely agree with the review’s finding that that support must improve. They are at the heart of our strategy. We have announced the local authorities involved in our family network pilots, which will promote the use of a family-first approach to children’s social care and test the impact of financial and practical support for families to support children to stay safely at home. We have also invested £2 million to deliver high-quality peer support groups, as we know from talking to families who offer kinship care that these groups can build very powerful supportive communities for them. We are also establishing a training and support offer, which will be accessible to all kinship carers within this SR period.

We are also rightly championing foster carers and all that they do to provide loving homes. We know that fostering can be hugely rewarding, but obviously recognise that it takes hard work, skill and dedication. We are investing £27 million to deliver a recruitment and retention programme so that foster care is available to more children who need it. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, will be pleased that this will start in the north-east—her voice has been heard—before a wider regional rollout. The pathfinder will be fully up and running in the autumn.

The committee raised some important notes of caution with regard to regional care co-operatives. We think that this new model will represent a radical shift away from the way the sector currently commissions and delivers care placements, which is why we are working closely with Health and Justice to co-design it. We have invited local authorities to express interest in setting up a regional care co-operative pathfinder; we are now in the second phase of that process. However, I will take back to colleagues in the department the concerns that the committee raised in this regard.

Our strategy made firm our intention to put loving and stable relationships at the heart of children’s social care. We must have a system that empowers children and young people to feel seen and heard, whatever their needs. I note the remarks from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about the important role that education can play. As I think the House is aware, we are exploring how we can increase the role of schools and other education settings in multiagency safeguarding arrangements. We have consulted on our statutory guidance, Working Together, and will use learning from that to form the proposals on whether and how to make education a safeguarding partner.

Obviously, advocacy is incredibly important; your Lordships who bring great experience to this issue will have heard that again and again. We want to update and improve the system so that we can help children navigate it, particularly at times of transition, but we also want to be sure that we include ways that standards apply to some special residential settings and develop new standards for non-verbal children so that they too can access advocacy. We plan to consult on the guidance and standards in relation to this.

I want to update the House on where we are in relation to supporting our social work workforce. If I may say so, I take slight exception to the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, about the Government’s strategy overall, including in this area. She often makes reference to what is happening in Wales; she did not do so on this occasion but I remind the House that, in its annual report, Care Inspectorate Wales talked about the real challenges around recruitment and retention, the real shortages in provision for children with additional needs, and the unprecedented increase in demand for care. I in no way wish to diminish the challenges that we face, but they are not unique to England or this Government.

The Government are already investing £50 million each year during this spending review period to recruit, train and develop our child and family social workers. However, we know that there is more to do to ensure that we fulfil our ambition of having a valued and skilled social worker for every child who needs one. Since publication, we have appointed eight early adopter local authorities to help design our early career framework and we are supporting local authorities to offer up to 500 social work apprenticeships.

We are also tackling working conditions. We have launched a national workload action group to make recommendations so that we can support social workers to spend more time with children and families. We will respond to our consultation on the agency workforce rules later this year; a number of noble Lords raised that issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, asked about therapeutic support for children who are adopted. Since 2015, over £300 million has been made available through the adoption support fund to help fund therapy for adoptive and special guardianship families.

She and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked what we are doing in relation to mental health for children in care. In the Government’s strategy is a clear mission to reduce disparities in both long-term physical and mental health outcomes for children in care and care leavers. To do that, we have to work closely with our health partners. We will set out clear expectations of practice, including service planning and commissioning, through updated joint guidance with the Department of Health and Social Care. We want to make sure that that reflects the most recent published research on the emotional well-being needs of care leavers. We will revise and strengthen levels of knowledge and skill in relation to mental health in the social care workforce, including through the early careers framework.

I will finish by outlining some of the additional steps that we will take in the coming months to progress further in delivering our reforms. The Government will shortly publish responses to our recent consultations. The families first for children pathfinder and the “foster with the north-east” support hub will be live in the autumn. We will publish a kinship care strategy by the end of 2023, setting out our national direction, and a children’s social care data strategy. We will publish the national framework as statutory guidance by the end of the year. The dashboard rollout will be phased from 2024 to help us all learn and understand how well we are achieving the outcomes for children’s social care.

By updating our key statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, we will clarify and simplify the existing requirements of practitioners to reflect updated best practice and support new policy. Our national implementation board continues to support, advise and hold the Government to account for the reform programme. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, was particularly concerned about advocacy and the voice of children and young people. We are seeking to develop a children and young people’s advisory board to ensure that we hear the voices of those young people right at the heart of our decision-making.

I again thank the noble Baroness, all noble Lords who contributed to this important debate, and everyone who contributed to the inquiry and to our public consultations. I extend my particular gratitude for their courage to those with lived experience of the system who have spoken to us and to all the professionals whose work supports children and families across the country, every day. Delivering on this will take great commitment and focus from the Government, working together with local authorities and our partners in the system. We will prioritise working with those on the ground to make sure that we achieve the kind of change in children’s lives that everyone in your Lordships’ House wishes to see. I will end where the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, started: it is one thing to write words on a page, but we need to make it work in real life.

Schools: RAAC

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, the number of schools known to be affected by the safety crisis is rising, but it is not just the number of schools affected by RAAC that matters: it is the lost learning, lost opportunity and disruption to pupils. Can the Minister confirm how many children’s education has been disrupted and how many of these are in their exam years? How will lost learning be made up for to ensure that children are not left behind?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has focused on exactly where the Government are focusing, namely face-to-face education. I take this opportunity to thank all the head teachers and school leaders who have worked tirelessly to make sure that children can, wherever possible, be in face-to-face education. As the noble Baroness knows, this morning we announced an updated list of schools: the number of confirmed cases of RAAC had risen from 147, reflecting the data as of 30 August, and what we published today, which reflects the data from 14 September, shows 174 schools. I am pleased to say that with the exception of one school, all children are either in full face-to-face education—in 148 settings—while 23 are in hybrid education, one is fully remote and one is a very new case which we are triaging at the moment.

In terms of lost learning, there is access to the Government’s national tutoring programme, and we will of course talk to schools and responsible bodies. There are disruptions to the school year; it is not exceptional, sadly, that children miss a few days’ learning but, happily for most of these children, it has been just a few days. If there are extended periods, we will look at that with the responsible bodies concerned.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister may recall that one of the first acts of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education was to cancel Building Schools for the Future. I well remember the impact it had on the city where I live. Also, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness is right, to our regret. I have not been heckled before—it is quite impressive. Under the then Chancellor, there was a plan to build 200 new schools, but the funding for only 50 was provided. Parents are worried; how do we bring transparency to this issue and how do we reassure them?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Just to be clear on the Building Schools for the Future programme, there are schools today where we have found RAAC that would have been in that programme and were among those cancelled. There are also schools that got funding through it where we found RAAC, so it is not fair to say that Building Schools for the Future would have solved this problem. We are dealing with a number of cases that had funding through that programme which did not remove the RAAC and where we are now dealing with that.

The noble Lord is right that the department argued, as every department does, for as large as possible a settlement from the Treasury. We are very proud of our school rebuilding programme, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amount of capital that has been spent over the last 10 years both on condition funding and on building new school places. During this Administration, there has obviously been a bulge in pupil numbers which has led to around £2 billion a year, on average, being spent on building new places for pupils by either extending existing schools or building new ones. In the last spending review, the budget for condition funding—maintaining our schools—was increased by 28%.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, are there many leisure centres used by schoolchildren as part of the school curriculum that are impacted by RAAC?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware whether there are leisure centres. The decision that we took in relation to schools reflected a number of factors. One was, obviously, the safety of pupils being paramount. Secondly, there was the speed with which we believed we could remediate most cases and, thirdly, the capacity and capability in estate management within the education sector. I am not an expert on leisure centres, but I assume that many will have dedicated expertise or have access to it.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister enlighten us as to whether the Government have looked at whether specialist classrooms have been taken out as a result of this, and what effect that will have on the curriculum? For instance, science labs would be an obvious example. Also, in the creative subjects, if you have lost a theatre or an arts room where you were doing ceramics, you cannot complete the course. If the Government are finding this out, what process do they have to try to get some of that information in and, if they cannot do that, what arrangements will they make for people taking those exams?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We have very good information on those issues. The noble Lord is right: it is extremely important that we establish that, and the Secretary of State was extremely clear in taking this decision that our operational response to support schools, which have been presented with a difficult decision at a difficult time in the school year, should be really well supported. For every school, we have a dedicated caseworker who co-ordinates all the strands of work that are going on to mitigate the RAAC. Then every school has a project director who is a technical expert; they will visit the school and work out with it the quickest mitigation plan. We have access to specialist classrooms and temporary classrooms for science. We have worked with the utility companies to ensure that the necessary energy, water and so on can be accessed, but there are some difficult cases. I am going on Monday to see a special school for children with profound disabilities. There are very significant requirements to make sure that those children also get access to the best education possible.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, RAAC was actually a popular building material in Europe and North America, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico, yet those areas do not seem to have had the same kind of problems. The Financial Times quoted the head of engineering at the University of Alabama, who helped to bring the product to the US in the 1980s, as saying that there seemed to be

“specific issues in the UK … with design, production and construction”.

Clearly, we are going to see a large amount of new buildings coming into schools, while there have been systemic problems in the long-term past. Is the Minister confident that the buildings coming in to replace them will be adequate and reliable for the long term? What is the Government’s standard length of building life when constructing a new school?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness says, there have been suggestions—I think they are no more than suggestions and that it is a hypothesis—that what I call the recipe, which is probably not a very technical term for its technical specifications, for the RAAC that was manufactured in this country was potentially slightly different to those in other countries or that the installation of it was. There are questions about whether the overlap at the ends of the planks has been sufficient in all cases, but I would stress that those are just hypotheses as to why we face these problems.

The other issue is, genuinely, that we have been extremely proactive. We have spent the last 18 months working with schools. We were made aware in 2018 of the first plank failing at a school. Guidance was produced at that time and it has been updated regularly since. We have engaged with every school—98.6% of responsible bodies and schools in the country—to understand whether they have RAAC in their buildings, how they are managing it and whether they were mitigating the risk. It is through that proactive work that we identified these cases. On the design and production standards, we have been working closely with our chief scientific adviser in the department, who in turn has been working across government with CSAs in other departments, to ensure that our research and understanding of this building material and others is as high quality as it can be.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That the Bill do now pass.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to express to your Lordships how delighted I am that the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill is finalising its passage through this House. This Bill is a significant moment in transforming access to post-18 education and skills as the next step toward the introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement.

I thank noble Lords for their valuable scrutiny and input throughout the Bill’s passage in this place. I express my particular thanks to Members on the Front Benches, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross, Lady Wilcox of Newport, Lady Thornton and Lady Garden of Frognal, and the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Addington, for their positive engagement and overall support for the principles behind the Bill, as well as for their thoughtful scrutiny and constructive contributions. The debates have been engaging and we have benefited significantly from the deep expertise in this House.

I pay particular thanks to those former Education Ministers and Secretaries of State who provided us with their insight. They include the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friends Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson of Marylebone.

I thank the many other noble Lords who took part in the debates and who have a wealth of knowledge across higher and further education, including honorary fellows, visiting professors and members of many of this country’s brilliant universities and colleges. I am also grateful to those leaders in universities and colleges who shared their insights with me about the potential for the Bill, the learning from the pilots and what is needed to make the Bill have a material impact once it becomes law.

Life Skills and Citizenship

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, on securing the debate and thank all noble Lords for their brief but pertinent and thoughtful contributions.

Like every noble Lord who has spoken today, we want pupils to leave school prepared for further study, work and other aspects of adult life. That is why every state-funded school has a duty to offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced, which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils, and which prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for his remarks on the important role of the family in all those aspects, alongside the school. I also thank him for raising awareness of the Living Well Together programme, which I have noted.

Subjects such as relationships, sex and health education and citizenship directly support the development of life skills. However, in the broad statutory framework, schools have considerable flexibility to organise the content and delivery of their curriculums. Schools can therefore reinforce personal development in other subjects, and through their whole-school policies and extracurricular enrichment offer, in a way that focuses on what their pupils need. From her experience in City and Guilds, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, gave examples of subjects which were about one particular topic but gave skills in a number of other areas—that is exactly how the Government see the existing curriculum. That issue was also raised by the noble Lords, Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Hampton.

I turn to statutory relationships, sex and health education. This equips young people to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way. Teaching in secondary schools develops knowledge about respectful relationships, including online, importantly, and develops pupils’ understanding of health and well-being, how to identify issues and where to seek help. The noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, talked about the ethical principles that need to underpin some of these issues.

My noble friend Lord Farmer asked about the timing of the review of the RSHE curriculum. A public consultation is expected this autumn, with revised guidance being published in 2024, and an advisory panel is providing advice on what should be taught in RSHE and at what age. I can clarify for my noble friend that the Government firmly believe in the importance of religious education, which is why it remains compulsory for all state-funded schools at all key stages.

The citizenship curriculum is compulsory within the national curriculum at secondary school and prepares pupils to play a full and active part in society. It is organised around core content about democracy and the political system. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and my noble friend Lady Lawlor both raised this. It enables pupils to understand their statutory rights, civic duties and responsibilities and to become the active citizens that your Lordships have described in their speeches today.

Other essential life skills such as financial literacy and media literacy are specifically included in citizenship education. My noble friends Lady Sater and Lord Sandhurst were among noble Lords who focused on the importance of financial literacy. I hope that the House knows that the Government feel that financial literacy is extremely important. It is covered in the national curriculum, within the maths curriculum at key stages 1 to 4 and within citizenship at key stages 3 and 4. That covers the functions and uses of money, including personal budgeting and money management. It also includes—unfortunately—taxes, debt and financial risk, as well as financial products. In the primary citizenship curriculum, pupils learn about where money comes from, how it can be used and how to save for the future.

Noble Lords did not particularly dwell on the importance of PE and sport within the curriculum, but the Government believe that it should be a core part of what every good school offers to pupils. It can help develop some of the essential personal qualities, such as resilience and the ability to work well as a team, which a number of your Lordships raised. That is why we have committed over £600 million over the next two years to fund high-quality PE and school sport in primary schools, with an additional £57 million up to March 2025 to support more sport outside school hours.

Noble Lords also touched on the importance of cultural education in developing life skills. That is why we are investing £115 million in music and the arts up to 2025, in addition to core school budgets. We have published a new music education plan and we will publish a cultural education plan in 2023 to support arts and heritage, working with DCMS and Arts Council England.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, was critical of the EBacc. However, one of the key elements of it, which I know many of your Lordships would agree with, is its emphasis on the importance of learning a foreign language, given how that equips students with the tools and the mindset to connect with people from different backgrounds—which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised—and giving them an appreciation of cultures, customs and history around the world.

I simply do not recognise the description given by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, of the National Citizen Service. It works very closely with and actively supports local grass-roots youth organisations, and in 2022 over 120,000 young people took part in its work, which is open to all 16 and 17 year-olds, with particular support available for the most disadvantaged. However, I would echo the recognition by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, of the important work of our uniformed youth organisations.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, asked about Ofsted’s assessment of citizenship and education. It looks at that in relation to both the quality of education and the school’s support for a pupil’s personal development, so at how a school prepares its pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in modern Britain, which many of your Lordships felt was extremely important.

I am left with some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Knight—I apologise if I misquote him—about how we can tweak or change the curriculum in a way to be able to fit in some of the life skills which your Lordships have alluded to this afternoon. I do not think that anyone in the Government disagrees with many of the aspirations with regard to life skills that were raised in the House today; the question is how we deliver them. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, put it very well when he gave the UNESCO definition of life skills but asked, “How do we prepare for those skills?”. Of course, the curriculum is an important part of that—although not the only part, as many of your Lordships recognised.

I point out to noble Lords who question our focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum that it is that curriculum which has delivered our extraordinarily successful creative industries and is delivering enormous innovation in technology, green skills and other areas. There are others in the House, including the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who understand better than I do about how children learn, but my understanding is that without basic knowledge in fundamental subjects, children cannot access what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, described as the powerful knowledge. Therefore, I am concerned when I listen to the House suggest that we should take part of the knowledge-rich elements out of the curriculum and replace them with life skills, because we know what can happen if we do that. It is the deprived and disadvantaged students who will be told that they do not need to aspire or get academic qualifications, and that that is good enough for them. No one in this House wants to return to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

A Failure of Implementation (Children and Families Act 2014 Committee Report)

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, on securing this important debate on the Children and Families Act 2014. I also thank all your Lordships who carried out post-legislative scrutiny of the Act last year and all who contributed to the debate today. I join others in paying tribute to the noble Baroness and her work over many years to improve the outcomes for children who access children’s social care and the family courts. I also very much thank my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, who has reflected his commitment to this issue by being here in person to listen to your Lordships. To those noble Lords who are disappointed to get a Minister from the Department for Education, I say: you have two for the price of one.

As your Lordships have set out today, the Act took forward a range of commitments to improve services for vulnerable children and families. As we have heard in this afternoon’s short debate, it sought to support: children in the adoption and care systems; those affected by decisions of the family courts; those with special educational needs and disabilities; and families with their home and work life. Although those sound like solid policy objectives, all your Lordships brought to the debate the human issues and the absolute imperative to try to improve our response for children who do not have the benefits of stability and love as they start their lives.

With that in mind, I want to touch on the Government’s plans to reform children’s social care, which many of your Lordships raised. As the Committee is aware, earlier this year, in response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and two other key reviews, the Government published an implementation strategy titled Stable Homes, Built on Love, which sets out how we plan to reform children’s social care. It sets out how we will help families overcome some of the challenges they face, keep our children safe, and make sure that children in care also have stable and loving homes and opportunities to fulfil their potential in their lives. I am glad that my noble friend Lady Wyld was brave enough to leave the section in her speech where she talked about the importance of understanding our responsibility in relation to our children and the importance of our supporting families to stay together within their limitations that she rightly raised.

Before I turn to the recommendations and the points your Lordships raised, there were a number of questions about whether we are confident that the approach we are taking to the reform of children’s social care will really deliver, in particular the test and review approach, which the right reverend Prelate raised and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, questioned. She raised the issue of funding for our reforms. Members of the post-legislative scrutiny committee understand better than most just how complicated it is to get this right on the ground. We believe that getting a balance between testing robustly and going as fast as we can—without going too fast—is the right approach. I would be happy to meet the noble Baroness again to talk about the unique child identifier; we met earlier but I am more than happy to meet with her again.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked about what progress we have made on the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision improvement plan—less simply named than the elegant Children and Families Act—since March 2023. We have secured funding since then to design and test the proposals set out in the improvement plan and have identified local authorities in every region that will test many of the measures. They will start their work this autumn.

This ties into some of the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, in particular on the national frameworks being ready by the end of the year. We are still confident about that. We will respond this month to the consultation she referred to. I hope she will acknowledge the progress the Government have made on local authorities judged inadequate in relation to children’s social care. I share her deep unease at the thought of what that looks like on the ground and feels like for vulnerable children in receipt of services, but I hope she acknowledges that our strategy to date is already working. We very much believe that this new approach will also build on it. Finally, we will publish on kinship care by year end. If I have not covered any of her points, I am happy to follow up in writing.

I will update on progress against the committee’s recommendations. I heard disappointment from a number of your Lordships that there was no earlier post-legislative scrutiny of the Act. The Government found the recommendations made by the committee and the depth of the work it carried out extremely helpful, but I will move on to some of the practical issues for the future that noble Lords raised.

We published our adoption strategy in July 2021 and in March 2022 we announced that we would invest £160 million over the next three years to deliver it, including £5 million to improve the way in which we match children with families.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, quite rightly raised the issue of improving the response for children from ethnic-minority backgrounds and asked how we are addressing racial disparities in the adoption system. I am pleased to inform the Committee that the number of minority-ethnic adopters has risen from 400 in 2020 to 698 in 2023 as part of our recruitment campaign, You Can Adopt.

We are also working with regional adoption agency leaders, who have made a commitment to develop an overarching strategy to address equality and diversity issues. Statistics on ethnic-minority children waiting for adoption are published quarterly, and the latest figures show an average of 10 months from the court granting a placement order. The noble Baroness is right to raise the issue until we can bring that delay down substantially.

Alongside that, since 2015 we have made £300 million available through the adoption support fund for therapeutic services for over 44,000 children, young people and their families. My noble friend Lady Wyld stressed quite rightly the importance of that mental health support and the unpredictability about how long one might need it for.

On the family courts and family justice, it is a real priority for the Government to address the delays in the family courts, which many of your Lordships mentioned. My department has recently invested an additional £10 million to test new initiatives to try to speed up the process. I know that colleagues in the Ministry of Justice are convening a conference with local family justice boards so that they can look together at how we tackle delays in the family courts.

The committee was very clear about the importance of data sharing and data collection—the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, very much stressed that point. My department has invested more than £2.2 million to improve family justice pre-proceedings practice and data collection. I know that the Ministry of Justice is also investing in improved data collection so that we can give local family justice boards not just their own data but data from others so that they can compare, understand and improve their performance relative to others.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, was very eloquent on the issue of private family law disputes and some of the problems that we and, more importantly, families and children are facing in that area. In March, the Ministry of Justice published a consultation so that we could support the earlier resolution of private law family disputes. The word “early” came up in many of your Lordships’ remarks. As the right reverend Prelate touched on, we are considering our response, particularly in relation to mediation, and the whole question of early legal advice is also under consideration.

I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for his work on family hubs, his insights into the need for early legal advice and his explanation of the Norwegian and Australian approaches. He also raised the important issue of joint work between the family courts and family hubs and between my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy and me. I will make sure that we can follow up that conversation, if that would be helpful to my noble friend.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Wilcox, raised the critical issues around presumption of parental involvement. We will review that before the end of the year.

My noble friend Lady Wyld raised the issues of strengthening and enhancing the voice of children during proceedings. This is a core aim of a new approach to applications for child arrangement orders and other private family law proceedings. Your Lordships already referred to the pilots running in Dorset and north Wales and we really want to draw on this experience more widely. Of course, although the pilot will not be reviewed until January 2025, we want to learn as we go along and emphasise a non-adversarial approach.

We absolutely agree that better information for parents is needed and that we need better connectivity between all parts of the family justice system.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised the important issue of kinship care. As I said earlier, we will be publishing our kinship care strategy by the end of 2023. We have already made progress, working with the charity Kinship to deliver high-quality support across England. Like the noble Baroness opposite, we absolutely recognise—and I express our gratitude to—those in families who support other family members. We want kinship carers to get the financial help that they are entitled to. That is why we have extended the adoption support fund to cover children under special guardianship and child arrangement orders. As the noble Baroness mentioned, the Ministry of Justice extended legal aid entitlements to prospective guardians making applications for special guardianship orders in private family law proceedings. We are also committed to establishing a training and support offer for all kinship carers and have committed £45 million to deliver the Families First for Children pathfinder and family network pilots, which will promote the use of family group decision-making, as well as test the impact of family network support packages.

My noble friends Lady Wyld and Lord Farmer raised important issues, as did other noble Lords, in relation to mental health support for children, particularly the join-up between different government departments. The Department for Education is working with health partners across government, including, obviously, the Department for Health and Social Care, but also NHS England, to consider how we can better work together to deliver social care and health services for children with the most complex needs. In Stable Homes, Built on Love, one of our six key missions for care leavers in particular was that, by 2027, we would reduce the disparities in the long-term mental and physical outcomes of care-experienced people and the activity to support that. I will happily write to my noble friend Lady Wyld to set out the pathway.

I always feel that something happens with the clock whenever I stand up to speak. If I may, on some of the comments in relation to employment rights, I will, with my noble friend’s permission, set out some of the points in writing rather than overrun even more than I already have.

There are clearly areas where we are taking forward recommendations from the committee. There are others where we absolutely share the committee’s aspirations in relation to vulnerable children, the family justice system and support for families, including those with children who have special education needs, but where our strategy and approach are slightly different from what the committee recommended. Our aspiration is very much the same.

I thank the noble Baroness and all noble Lords for contributing to this important debate and for the valuable scrutiny that they brought to the Bill. As my noble friend Lady Wyld said, our commitment to vulnerable children happily transcends party-political interests. I know that I can speak both for myself and my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy in saying that we look forward to working across the House on these important issues.

Teacher Shortages

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of teacher shortages in schools in England, and what plans they have to address the issue.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, there are nearly 468,400 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England, 27,000 more than in 2010 and the highest number since the school workforce census began. In July, the Government fully accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s pay recommendations, giving teachers and leaders the highest pay award in over 30 years—6.5%. This is a competitive salary and will help us to build on the record numbers of teachers in our schools.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, on Monday we discussed the literally crumbling school estate and, today, the shockingly high teacher shortages. It seems that the entire school system is creaking at the seams, with our children paying the price. Almost one in 10 of the total teacher workforce in England resigned last year: 40,000 teachers left the profession and 4,000 retired. There are shortages across the board including in maths, science, modern languages, English, business studies and DT. Does the Minister have a plan and timetable to address these shortages?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In mentioning the number of people leaving the profession, the noble Baroness omitted to mention the number entering the profession last year. There were 48,000 entrants, including 16,700 returning to the profession. I remind the House that the vacancy rate for teachers is 2.8%, which remains extremely low. However, I recognise that there are shortages in certain subjects and in certain parts of the country, which is why we are targeting our bursaries on them. I remind the noble Baroness that we should be proud in this country that the work of our teachers has resulted in us rising up the international rankings in primary reading, from 8th in 2016 to 4th in 2021—the highest in the western world.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the number of teacher vacancies has doubled in two years. The number of students wanting to go into teaching has declined by 79%. We then have the issue of specialist subjects; for example, there are 400 schools where there is no qualified physics teacher. Increasingly, we see our children being taught by supply teachers, which is not the best way to teach young people. How have we managed to get into such a situation? Did we not see this coming, and should we not have put together a plan to avert this crisis?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

First, I do not accept that it is a crisis. Secondly, if the noble Lord looks at the long-term numbers on this, in subjects such as mathematics, which is raised frequently in the House, in 2014-15 we had 75.8% specialist teachers. That is now 78.6%. There are subjects like physics where it has gone down slightly, but this has been a long-term issue, and I thank our teachers and leaders for the work they do to make our schools as good as they are.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as a trustee of a large state secondary school in High Wycombe. What consideration is being given to extending the area covered by the London fringe allowance, given the increasing challenges of teacher recruitment in urban areas outside of London, particularly areas like High Wycombe?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very happy to take the noble Lord’s point back to the department. I am aware that teacher mobility is much greater in London than in some other parts of the country. I appreciate that that represents challenges for schools, but I will take his specific point back.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

In 2018, the Minister’s own department published an analysis of why teachers were leaving the profession. Two of the reasons were being overworked and a feeling that they were unloved. This afternoon, she paid tribute to the profession for their achievements, which I welcome, but does she really think that the intemperate remarks of the Secretary of State yesterday give confidence to teachers, headteachers and schools that Ministers really value what they do?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am aware that the Secretary of State has apologised for her remarks. Working closely with her and my right honourable friend the Minister for School Standards, I can absolutely assure the House that we barely have a conversation where we do not express our gratitude to teachers and school leaders. We take workload very seriously and are continuing to work with the unions on that following the pay agreement.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, on the subject of intemperate behaviour, does my noble friend share my disgust that the Labour Party put out a message that the Prime Minister did not care about the safety of our children in schools? On issues such as the ones she has dealt with so well, we do not need people making party political points.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think the serious point here is that there is a serious situation in the handful of schools where we have had to intervene on the concrete. Of course, it could not be more inaccurate and unhelpful to criticise the Prime Minister personally in this regard.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that there is a particular problem with music teachers in schools, and that the shortage, coupled with the decline in people taking GSCE music, is really very worrying?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord has worked very hard in this area. We still have 81.1% of music lessons being delivered by quality—qualified; I am sure they are all quality—music teachers. That is down, as the noble Lord says, from 87.7% in 2014-15. I am delighted that the noble Lord is meeting with the Minister for School Standards to progress ideas on how we can encourage more children to be able to study music in school.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, in the last academic year, 94,900 children were listed as missing from education. The recruitment and retention of teachers is hugely important, but so is that of child welfare officers. Will the Minister recommit to the recruitment and retention of those? The issue of children missing from education has been much more prevalent since Covid, and they are vital in tackling that long-term problem.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. We are extremely concerned about the specific issue of children missing from education and, more broadly, about the impact that Covid has had on school attendance. Yesterday, the Secretary of State and the Minister for School Standards met the Attendance Action Alliance, trying to address exactly these issues and learning from best practice around the country.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, given the shortage that we heard about earlier of specialist teachers in subjects such as physics, what is the department able to do to broker partnerships with independent schools where teachers are available perhaps to enable pupils to study these subjects remotely so that they can gain the qualifications they want and enter the professions where these roles are so badly needed?

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point. We are extremely supportive of partnerships between independent schools and state-funded schools. That cuts across a wide range of areas, of which specialist teaching is just one. What I hear from independent schools when I talk to them about this issue is that it is very much a two-way street. It is not just about independent schools sharing their resources with their neighbouring schools. It is very much in both directions, and both groups benefit.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, if, as is clearly the case, bursaries are an effective driver of teacher recruitment, will the Government reintroduce them for arts subjects, including art and design and music, where recruitment is now falling well short of their targets—less than 60% in both these subject areas?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We always keep these issues under review, but our assessment at the moment is that the greatest pressures are in some regional areas—hence our levelling-up premiums—and in certain specific subjects, which I know the noble Earl is familiar with, which those are.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, many interesting points have been made about the amendments. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the other speakers that we would like to see this progress; it is a good idea. We want to improve access to education, which means having more and better information about fees and recognising the fact that they cannot just continue uncontrolled.

Another point I endorse is that which the Minister said in a previous speech on this subject: that the Government had a “phased approach” to this. I think consideration has been given to the many points that have been very intelligently raised; I am sure that the Minister is grateful for them.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, ahead of speaking to the amendments tabled, I thank all noble Lords across the Chamber for their contributions and the support they have expressed, both for this Bill and for the wider programme to transform opportunities to build qualifications over one’s lifetime. We heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Wilcox, about the importance of filling skills gaps so that the economy can grow. I thank both my noble friend Lord Willetts and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, for their support and acknowledgement that the Bill will open new opportunities for learners.

Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, would define a credit as equivalent to “10 notional learning hours” in the Bill. The Government believe that it is crucial that the definitions of credits in the fee limit calculations align to standard practice in the sector—a point the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, made. The Government plan to set out this detail in regulations, rather than in primary legislation. The power to do so is provided for in new paragraph 1B of Schedule 2 to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, introduced through Clause 1 of this Bill. Specifying learning hours in secondary rather than primary legislation means that providers that might choose to use a different number of learning hours per credit will simply have those courses treated as non-credit-bearing for fee limit purposes. If we took the approach of this amendment, those same providers could instead be considered in breach of the fee limit rules as a whole, with all the regulatory consequences that might bring. I am sure that is not what the noble Baroness intends with her amendment.

To be clear, as I think the noble Baroness’s amendment seeks to do, the Government do not intend to change the number of learning hours in a credit unless standards in the sector change. Learning hours are, and should continue to be, based on sector-led standards. Regulations on learning hours will follow the affirmative resolution procedure, so Parliament will get the opportunity to debate and formally approve any changes to those regulations.

Amendment 2 and Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, would require the Secretary of State to publish a review of the impact of the future Act on the progress of the rollout of the lifelong loan entitlement. Amendment 4 sets out that such a review must be published ahead of regulations being laid, and Amendment 2 would require the review to be presented to Parliament before the end of 2026. I thank my noble friend Lord Willetts for being the very eloquent messenger of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. We absolutely agree with her point and that made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Amendment 2 specifies that the review should include the impact of the credit-based method on sharia-compliant loans and skills gaps.

I thank your Lordships for these amendments. The Government agree with the sentiment behind them, if such sentiment seeks the department’s commitment to monitoring the impact of these measures on the transformation of student finance under the lifelong loan entitlement. As your Lordships will be aware, the Government published an impact assessment alongside the Bill upon its introduction in the other place in February this year. Subsequently, the department published an updated and more extensive impact assessment of the lifelong loan entitlement, more broadly, alongside the publication of the consultation response in March. As was committed to in the impact assessment published in March, and in accordance with the Better Regulation Framework, a more detailed assessment of impacts will be published at the point when the Government lay the necessary secondary legislation to implement the lifelong loan entitlement fully. Therefore, the Government already intend to publish an updated impact assessment covering all aspects of the LLE, including the measures in the Bill, when regulations are laid.

In addition, parliamentary accountability mechanisms are already in place to review Acts of Parliament and the impact that they have on policy, including post-legislative scrutiny in particular, but not exclusively. There will be continued scrutiny of the LLE and the impact of these measures in both this place and the other place, including the role of the Education Select Committee in scrutinising the work of the department.

I will just rest for a moment on the point about post-legislative scrutiny, which I understand the noble Baronesses raised at the briefing yesterday. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, will be aware that under the current government guidance and as proposed in 2008, between three to five years after an Act is passed it should be reviewed by the government department and Parliament. I can assure the noble Baroness that the Government will seek to work together with the relevant Select Committee in line with that guidance. However, while we recognise the importance of reviewing the implementation, it should be not just of this Act but of the reform of the system—and again, I can commit that the Government would like to see that review happen.

On the specific details within the amendments themselves, the timing requirement in Amendment 4 would require a review of the impact of the Bill on the rollout of the LLE prior to regulations being laid. I want to be clear here that any impact assessment which is conducted ahead of laying regulations would not be any different to the impact assessment currently available for the Bill and the consultation process. The next point at which impacts can be assessed is when the regulations are laid and, as stated, the Government are committed to publishing an impact assessment at that time.

Amendment 2 relates to the impact of the credit-based method on sharia-compliant loans and skills gaps. First, it is important to note that fee limits are set on courses, not on students. Therefore, the credit-based method—like the current fee limit system—will not depend on any characteristics of individual students. All students on a course will have their fees determined in line with the same fee limit rules, regardless of whether they use their LLE, self-fund, or use alternative loan arrangements.

I take this opportunity to assure your Lordships that the Government remain committed to delivering an alternative student finance product compatible with Islamic finance principles. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, questioned why it was taking so long. I will not rehearse all the arguments, but I think she will remember that we touched on this in Committee, and it really is linked to the complexity of implementation. Every element that changes within the student finance systems needs to be mirrored for the alternative finance product, so it is a more complicated process and is contingent, and it has to follow the building of the systems which will allow us to deliver the new approach.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, questioned our commitment to being able to deliver by 2025. I remind the House of the measures that we set out in the letter that I sent your Lordships on this point following Grand Committee. I am pleased to confirm that in August, the Student Loans Company commenced delivery planning for alternative student finance, and it is supported on this phase of work by experts in Islamic finance, the Islamic Finance Council UK. I continue to meet on a quarterly basis with the Student Loans Company, the Islamic Finance Council UK, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, Stephen Timms MP and representatives from the Islamic community to discuss the steps the Government are taking to deliver alternative student finance as swiftly as possible. Because of the delays there have been, we need to be as transparent as possible to make sure that we build or rebuild trust with the community that we really will deliver on this. I will provide a further update on alternative student finance later this year.

On skills gaps, in response to the LLE consultation, the Government made it clear that they will be taking a phased approach to modular funding, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, reminded the House, focusing on higher technical courses which have the clearest employer value. It is important to note that fee limits are not a means to address skills gaps; they are to ensure that students have affordable access to higher education provision provided by those higher education providers who receive government funding to support course delivery.

Finally, it is worth noting that the LLE policy is much wider than the provisions of the Bill, and as such, the reviews sought through these amendments would focus narrowly on fee limits and not on the impact of the LLE as a whole.

For these reasons, while the department understands the sentiment behind these amendments, they would either have unintended consequences or would be unnecessary, as there will already be mechanisms in place to provide such review. Therefore, the Government cannot accept these amendments and I hope that your Lordships will withdraw or not move them.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and her reassurance, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Berkeley, for their comments on this short debate.

Of course, we are all committed to encouraging lifelong learning—it is essential for the well-being of the country and of individuals—and we all want to make sure that it is encouraged. As I say, we continue to express concern that adults may not prepared to take on loans for this but, obviously, only time will tell. I thank the Minister for her remarks about sharia finance, because it is a concern that Muslim students are deterred from entering higher education because they cannot get the means to do so. With that, I thank all your Lordships and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, we have here a fairly formidable list of things, all of them important. I want to focus on subsection (2)(j) in the new clause proposed by Amendment 3, which concerns:

“the financial sustainability of the tertiary education sector”.

We note that student fees have not gone up in all the years they have been there and that universities now face intense financial pressures. I note that, in Committee, the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson, put forward a suggestion that student fees should rise with inflation; that has not gone further but I wonder whether the Minister could give some succour to university vice-chancellors, who are desperately worried about how on earth they can balance their books as costs go up but income does not.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I now turn to Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross, Lady Thornton and Lady Wilcox of Newport, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual review of the operation of the provisions of this Act and specifies several areas that the review must cover, including learner uptake, access to higher education and financial sustainability in tertiary education more broadly.

As mentioned in relation to Amendments 2 and 4, the Government published an impact assessment upon the introduction of this Bill in February and an extensive impact assessment of the lifelong loan entitlement more broadly in March. The Government intend to publish an updated impact assessment covering all aspects of the LLE, including the measures in this Bill, when regulations are laid.

There will be continued scrutiny of the Bill and the LLE via existing parliamentary accountability mechanisms, for example post-legislative scrutiny and the Education Select Committee. In addition, there are already systems by which the areas mentioned in this amendment are monitored. I will take each area in turn to provide reassurances as to the existing work being undertaken in these areas and the mechanisms in place for review.

In relation to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about three to five years, I was speaking specifically about post-legislative scrutiny. It is in the Cabinet Office guidance from 2008—a period that I imagine the noble Baroness might support. Obviously, as I have just listed, there are a number of other mechanisms for scrutiny.

The amendment lists a number of areas relating to uptake. I want to take this opportunity to refer noble Lords to the publications produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which will continue to include data on learner uptake and enrolments. For example, the Higher Education Statistics Agency website allows anyone to view information about higher education student enrolments broken down by year, level of study, higher education provider, subject, mode of study and more. High-level national results are also published in its annual statistical bulletin.

Regarding uptake of modular and part-time study, the Government expect to see a shift in how, what and when people study as the LLE provides support for alternatives to full-time study. For example, Universities UK polling in 2020 on modular study indicated that 82% of prospective students polled who were either unemployed, at risk of unemployment or looking to learn a new skill would be keen to study individual modules of a university degree.

Turning to access, tackling inequality in higher education is a central part of the Office for Students’ mission. The OfS shares information through its access and participation data dashboard, which allows it and the public, alongside registered universities and colleges, to identify gaps between groups. The OfS also maintains an equality of opportunity risk register, which identifies key sector-level risks to equality of opportunity in higher education and highlights the student groups that are most affected by each one.

The Government recognise the importance of supporting access, which is why maintenance loans will be available for all eligible courses and modules that require in-person attendance under the LLE, as will targeted support grants such as the disabled students’ allowance and the childcare grant. The impact assessment published alongside this Bill notes that learners who will particularly benefit from the introduction of fee limits for short courses and modules are more likely to be older, female, from ethnic minority backgrounds or from lower socioeconomic groups.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows:

“With permission, I would like to make a Statement about the steps that my department is taking to support education settings to respond to the risk of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, commonly known as RAAC.

Before I go into specifics, I want to be clear that absolutely nothing is more important than the safety of children and staff. It has always been the case that where we are made aware of a building that poses an immediate risk, we have taken immediate action. Parents and children have been looking forward to starting the new term, and I understand that the timing of this change in guidance to schools and colleges will have caused concern and disruption. However, faced with recent cases, including one that emerged right at the end of the school holidays, I believe 100% that this is the right thing to do. That is why we have taken such rapid steps to support our schools and colleges.

There are over 22,000 schools and colleges in England, and the vast majority are unaffected by RAAC. Local authorities and multi-academy trusts are responsible for those buildings, but we have been supporting schools and colleges to ensure that risks resulting from RAAC are mitigated. To date, 52 schools and colleges have those mitigations in place.

The majority have been able to continue to provide face-to-face learning without any disruption, and we remain in contact with them. Last week we advised a further 104 schools and colleges to take spaces that are known to contain RAAC out of use if they have not already done so. The majority of these settings will remain open for face-to-face learning on their existing site, because only a small part of the site is affected. A minority of pupils will be fully or partially relocated to alternative accommodation to continue face-to-face learning while mitigations are put in place.

I want to reassure parents and children that we are taking a deliberately cautious approach to prioritising children’s safety. Because of our proactive questionnaire and surveying programme, we have a better understanding of where RAAC is on the school estate than in most other countries. All schools and colleges that have advised us they suspect they might have RAAC will be surveyed within a matter of weeks—in many cases in a few days. Most suspected cases will not have RAAC. So far when we have surveyed schools, around two-thirds of suspected cases do not have RAAC. We will follow the same approach with any new cases through the professional surveying programme.

The vast majority of schools will be unaffected and children should attend school as normal unless parents are contacted by their school. As my right honourable friend the Minister for Schools explained on Friday, we will publish a list of schools once mitigations are in place. It is right that parents are informed by schools if their school is impacted, and that schools have time to work with their Department for Education caseworker on those mitigations.

I am confirming today that we will publish the list of the 156 schools with confirmed cases of RAAC this week, with details of initial mitigations in place. After that, we will provide updated information as new cases of RAAC are confirmed and existing cases resolved. This will include updates on the impact on pupils, such as how many are learning face-to-face and how many are receiving short periods of remote education. Once again, we are doing everything in our power to minimise disruption and avoid remote learning.

I must thank the professional response of leaders, teachers and support staff in the sector, who have acted swiftly to deliver contingency plans. Each impacted school and college has a dedicated caseworker to help implement a mitigation plan. This could include other spaces on the school site or in nearby schools, or elsewhere in the local area, until structural supports or temporary buildings are installed. We have increased the supply of temporary buildings, working with three contractors, and accelerated the installation of these. We have the support of our leading utility companies to ensure that those classrooms can be opened. In the small number of schools with confirmed RAAC, disruption to face-to-face learning has usually lasted a matter of days.

In terms of funding, as the Chancellor said, we will spend whatever it takes to keep children safe. That includes paying for emergency mitigation work to make buildings safe, including alternative classroom space where necessary. Where schools need additional help with revenue costs, such as transport to other locations, we are actively engaging with every school affected to put appropriate support in place. We will also fund the longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects, where these are needed, to remove RAAC.

Professional advice from technical experts on RAAC has evolved over time. Indeed, the question of how to manage its risks across all sectors has spanned successive Governments since 1994. My department alerted the sector about the potential risks of RAAC in 2018, following a sudden roof collapse at a primary school. We published a warning note with the Local Government Association, which asked all responsible bodies to:

‘Identify any properties constructed using RAAC’


and to

‘ensure that RAAC properties are regularly inspected by a structural engineer’.

In February 2021 we issued a guide on how to identify RAAC. Concerned that not all responsible bodies were acting quickly enough, in 2022 we decided to take a more direct approach. We issued a questionnaire to responsible bodies for all 22,000 schools to ask them to identify whether or not they had or suspected RAAC. Responsible bodies have submitted responses to the questionnaire for 95% of schools with blocks built in the target period.

In September 2022 we started a programme where the DfE sent a professional surveyor to assess whether RAAC is present. If RAAC was present, the previous DfE guidance was to grade it as critical or non-critical and take buildings out of use only for critical RAAC cases. Such was the level of our concern, however, that I asked officials to seek evidence of risks, including with non-critical RAAC. It is because of this proactive approach that we discovered details of three new cases over the summer where RAAC that would have been graded as non-critical had failed without warning. The first was in a commercial setting. The second was in a school in a different educational jurisdiction. In that instance, the plank that failed remained suspended, resting on a steel beam. As the plank was fully intact, DfE technical officials and engineers were able to investigate the situation. In their professional judgment, the panel affected would have been rated as non-critical but it had failed.

Ministerial colleagues and I were already extremely concerned, but then a third failure of RAAC panels occurred, at a school in England in late August. This was a panel that had previously been graded as non-critical. Because children’s safety is our absolute priority, it was right to make the difficult decision to change our guidance for education settings, so that areas previously deemed to contain non-critical RAAC are now being closed.

I want to set out why we are taking this more cautious approach with the education estate in England. Professional guidance is clear that wherever RAAC is found, it needs to be monitored closely. The school estate is very disparate, with 22,000 settings and over 64,000 individual blocks. Monitoring RAAC closely is therefore very difficult to do on the estate, and many responsible bodies do not have dedicated estates professionals on all school or college sites at all times. That is why the approach we are taking is the right one for our schools and colleges. My officials have worked closely with experts in this field. Chris Goodier, professor of construction engineering and materials at Loughborough University, has said that:

‘DfE has been employing some of the best engineers on this and have consulted us and the Institution of Structural Engineers’.


The Government’s priority is for every child across the United Kingdom to go to school safely. My officials have been engaging urgently with the devolved Administrations to discuss our findings and offer support to understand RAAC in school estates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Last week, I wrote to offer my support, including further official or ministerial-level engagement and to facilitate discussions between our technical experts.

I am aware that this policy change occurred during the recess, and therefore I was not able to notify the House in advance. For that I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I hope you understand why I felt that I had to take the decision when I did. We are taking an extremely cautious approach on this issue, but I believe that this is the right thing to do when it comes to the safety of children. I commend this Statement to the House.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Russell (LD)]

I thank the Minister for coming to the House today and updating us on this issue. As a parent myself, I am sending a child to a new school. I have every sympathy with parents who are deeply worried about the situation and everything that teachers across the country are doing. If safety had been prioritised over budgets, we would not be in this position today.

The Statement says that, within a matter of weeks, a list of all schools will be published

“once mitigations are in place”.

Although I welcome the change of heart from the Government, does the Minister feel that, with 10% of schools left to conduct surveys, those surveys will be available in a couple of weeks?

Further, the Statement says that the Government will spend “whatever it takes”. This was later clarified as coming from existing educational budgets. Given the scale and urgency of the problem, does the Minister really feel that school budgets alone will be capable of dealing with this problem?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks. I feel that I must start by countering the assertions from the noble Earl that safety has come second to budgets and that budgets have been prioritised over safety. I want to be 100% clear with the House: there is not a single case in which we have known of an immediate risk to life and the department has not acted. We have an urgent capital support fund, which we use in such cases. I want to make it clear on the record that what the noble Earl said is not an accurate reflection of the facts.

The noble Earl also referred to the publication of the list of schools, to which we have committed. To be clear, our priority—I think that many Members of your Lordships’ House would agree with this—was to communicate with parents first. When the names of schools started to leak into the press at the end of last week, one school in particular was so inundated by the media that it was unable to communicate with parents and get on and plan its mitigations. It was a school for children with profound learning difficulties. If there is one school that all of us in this House would want to keep open, it is a school for children with learning difficulties. I really think that there was an extremely good reason why we prioritised that.

I do not recognise the figure of 10% of schools needing to be surveyed. That simply is not accurate. We are confident that in the next few weeks we will be able to complete the surveys that are needed.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, focused significantly on funding and the Chancellor’s statement. The Chancellor was crystal clear in his statement. Let me just run through the funding that we are offering schools immediately. It will cover immediate capital costs relating to, for example, temporary classrooms, propping or whatever else might be needed. It will also cover revenue costs. For example, we will work on a case-by-case basis with schools but, if additional school transport costs arise, we will cover them. If schools need to rent space in another building, we will help with that. All reasonable requests will be dealt with reasonably. Our absolute aim is to remove friction for schools so that they can get children back in classrooms as quickly as possible.

I remind the House that we have, through our various school rebuilding programmes, already rebuilt more than 500 schools since 2010. We have added 1 million new school places to accommodate the increase in the number of pupils. The noble Baroness referred to the track record of the Labour Government in Wales on funding, but I remind the House that we are working with and supporting the Labour Government in Wales and with colleagues in Scotland, because they had not started this survey programme. We are all aiming for the same thing, to resolve this as quickly as possible, but we need to be fair when hurling things around. I am not suggesting that the noble Baroness was not being fair, but I am trying to set the balance. I really commend my predecessor, my noble friend Lady Berridge, and colleagues in the department who have been tireless in working on this issue.

The noble Baroness also questioned whether we could have done more sooner. I do not want to repeat myself but our understanding of how this building material behaves is as good as anyone’s. The new evidence that came out this summer is genuinely new. It is since the end of term that we have become aware of these three cases. I stop and think about the case that happened 10 days ago, and what would have happened if that had happened in 10 days’ time. This Statement would feel very different for us all.

On co-ordinating with fire and rescue services and local resilience forums, I am sure that the noble Baroness will understand that our absolute priority at the moment is working with each individual school. We have about 50 caseworkers working with individual schools. We have project directors going on-site. As soon as we get through this first phase and all children are back in education, we will of course co-ordinate, and the Government will gladly accept any other suggestions that the noble Baroness makes.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is highly undesirable for schools to have to resort to online teaching? If that is the case, would she encourage those with spaces to make them available as temporary classrooms? I have in mind, for examples, churches—that point might be noted on the Bishops’ Benches—village halls, private sector schools with available classrooms and maybe commercial premises that have not been let.

Also, if there are problems associated with health and safety regulations—planning, transport, insurance and things of that kind—can the Government address them as a matter of urgency?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend. We are most concerned to minimise online teaching and remote learning. Our children have been out of the classroom enough with Covid, and this House knows the seriousness of issues with attendance. We all know that this is the moment in the year when we want children in the classroom—on 4 September, or maybe 5 September if there is an inset day.

In relation to online teaching, perhaps it will reassure my noble friend if I say that we have already worked with 52 schools and mitigated over the last few months, before this change in policy when we identified a critical grade. The average number of days lost for those children was six. Six days is a lot. For some children it was more and for some it was none.

In the vast majority of those cases, the whole school does not have RAAC across all its roofs and floors; it is typically in a small area of the school. I bumped into someone this afternoon who was talking about their secondary school. They are able to reorganise the space in their school. They will miss one day of school tomorrow and then all the children will be back on Wednesday. That is in a big secondary school.

On my noble friend’s second point, in those first 52 cases, we are so grateful to other local schools, some of which have spare space and have bent over backwards to make sure that children do not miss a single day more than they need to.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, the safety of children in our schools is being compromised not just by RAAC construction. I remind the House of my interests, in particular as an adviser to Charter School Capital and as chair of the E-ACT multi-academy trust. In the trust, there is a secondary school with CLASP construction, meaning it has no foundations, has asbestos and desperately needs replacing. Another has external concrete cladding that is falling off, so we are spending over £50,000 a year just on scaffolding to catch it before it hurts anyone. When will the Government implement a comprehensive condition survey, not just for RAAC schools, and match it with proper investment to ensure the education budget is spent on education and not just on patching and mending the crumbling school estate?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I remind the noble Lord that the Government made a full survey of the school estate. We carried out the first one I think between 2017 and 2019 and we are in the middle of the second one at the moment. That looks at the condition grade across schools. I have the figures in front of me: in the first survey, 95% of individual condition grades—which literally look at the window frames; I am not sure about door handles but the walls, the roofs, et cetera—were graded as good or satisfactory, and 2.4% were poor or bad: 2.1% were poor and 0.3% were bad.

The noble Lord will also know that all our funding to schools for condition is prioritised based on condition need. He also knows that if there is an urgent request we will always consider it. We have already identified some the of so-called system builds, such as Laingspan and Intergrid. Almost all of that has been completely resolved and plans are in place for all of it to be removed. We have a programme of surveys starting later this year looking at the remaining construction types to understand them better and understand whether they might pose a risk.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a working teacher. I congratulate the Minister on the speed of her response to this development. We have heard a lot about buildings and children, but can the Government assure the House that they will provide extra support and counselling for senior leadership teams to reflect the extreme pressures during these difficult times, particularly those that have no local network in their area?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. I visited a school on Friday where we identified RAAC earlier in the summer. It was about to reopen. I had not got down the drive and that was literally the first point that the head teacher raised. I take this opportunity to again thank all those head teachers who are dealing with this at the moment.

On the individual issue about what support to offer head teachers, that really would come better from the school itself, the trust or the local authority. For us to try to do that in Sanctuary Buildings might not be the best route—but, as I said, we will consider all reasonable requests for revenue funding and we absolutely recognise the pressure that this issue puts on school leaders.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, a Question that I have tabled on the general wider effects of RAAC has been set down as a topical Question for Wednesday, so for tonight I simply ask the Minister this. The Statement refers to the fact that a guide to RAAC was issued in February 2021. To whom was it issued, and can she say whether, in addition to being sent to the educational sector, the guide was also made available through other departments that are responsible for other public buildings of a wider kind?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The guidance that we have produced started in 2018, just to be clear. Once we were aware of the primary school that I referred to in the Statement that had collapsed, we introduced guidance in conjunction with the Local Government Association that went to all educational settings and responsible bodies. That was followed up with additional guidance in both 2021 and 2022.

As to other departments, I am grateful to the noble Viscount for raising that. The situation is very different in different estates in terms of the size and complexity of the estate. I think the education estate is uniquely large and complicated. If, for example, one were to think about the situation in the hospital estate, obviously hospitals are, first, much bigger buildings, so it is easier to move people around if one needs to put in mitigations, and, secondly, they have dedicated estates teams to manage any risks that are posed.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend and I share the relief, as I am sure all noble Lords do, that nobody has been injured as a result of this building material. I would be grateful if my noble friend could clarify something. The Statement says that 95% of the questionnaires sent out to schools with blocks built in the target era were completed. I note that there was a tweet asking schools to complete that questionnaire, and on the back of that questionnaire, surveys were taken out. So have the 5% that have not responded to the questionnaire been covered by direct visits or phone calls by the department?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. The short answer is yes. We have had a dedicated team in the department following up and calling, in some cases several times, all the responsible bodies concerned. I wrote to all of them today, stressing the importance of returning the questionnaire by the end of this week.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

I thank the Minister for the briefing earlier today, for the Statement and for the Government’s swift action, despite the fact that this is a very difficult time to be challenged in this way. Can the Minister confirm that most students who would receive free school meals are either being provided with an equivalent meal if being taught on alternative premises or that relevant financial allowances are being made to their parents to provide appropriate nutritious meals during their absence from school? Secondly, will she ensure that, if alternative provision in terms of buildings is necessary, adequate child protection assessments will be made before children are sent to other premises?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In relation to the noble Baroness’s question about free school meals, children who are eligible for free school meals will continue to receive free school meals in the setting that they attend, if it is not their normal school, and my understanding is that they will get a voucher or equivalent in the event that they have any days at home. The noble Baroness raised the issue of making sure that there is an adequate safeguarding assessment of any alternative sites. Our experience from the first 52 schools where this has happened is that, in the vast majority of cases, alternative sites have been other schools, which obviously makes that much more straightforward. However, the noble Baroness raises a good point in relation to that, and obviously we are particularly concerned about vulnerable children and children with special educational needs.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister points out the responsibility of the responsible bodies with respect to the buildings but also says how difficult this is for some responsible bodies. Some are as small as three schools in one multi-academy trust. Can the Minister be clear about the expectations on these responsible bodies for the monitoring as well as the maintenance of buildings, particularly at the strategic level? The Minister has just referred to a survey that the department itself carries out over a number of years, and I am now left unclear as to who is responsible for the long-term monitoring of potentially serious defects in school property.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On the first part of the noble Baroness’s question, we set out the expectations for responsible bodies. I think it is safe to say that the local authorities are pretty clear what their responsibilities are. In relation to academy trusts, those responsibilities are set out in the Academy Trust Handbook. We actually strengthened, clarified and reinforced the language around that before we knew about the three schools; we did that earlier in the summer with a new updated version. This was just to make sure—reflecting the noble Baroness’s point—that there was absolutely no doubt about the practical steps that should reasonably be expected for responsible bodies to take.

I am glad of the opportunity to say that our condition data collection survey, which I referred to, is not in any way a blurring of the lines of responsibility between responsible bodies and the department. However, it allows us both to plan the quantum of funding that we need to give to those responsible bodies to maintain their buildings and to identify areas where there is greater deterioration or less. So we have a broad overview of the school estate, but that should not blur any lines in relation to responsibility.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, does that inform the quantum of money that the department gets from the Treasury, or does it just inform the quantum that is distributed among responsible bodies once the Treasury has decided what to give to the department?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It certainly informs the second although, as the noble Lord knows, larger academy trusts and local authorities have discretion to judge within their own school estate how they want to use that money. A number of things inform our discussions with the Treasury, of which the condition data survey is one, but it is definitely not the only thing.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister may be aware of a school that has been particularly badly affected: Myton School in Warwick, where 1,800 pupils face losing three days of school due to a delay to the start of term. This is a school with two main buildings dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, which were described as being both old and “in disrepair”. It is the first floor of the lower school building that is affected.

My question, informed by this case, is twofold. First, this school is now getting an annual budget for maintenance of £35,000, which is a quarter of what it was receiving, in pounds, in 2010. This is a school in disrepair. Will the Government look at the situation that has arisen with RAAC and see that there needs to be a much broader review and a much greater injection into funds for school maintenance?

Secondly, on a very specific point, the Education Secretary in the other place has said that each school will have a dedicated caseworker, with whom they will have contact to help them deal with any issues so that the department can liaise. The BBC reported late this afternoon that this school, which has clearly been very badly affected, has yet to hear from the department. The head teacher was expecting a phone call over the weekend and did not receive it. When will contact be made by all the caseworkers to the affected schools

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In relation to the injection of capital, I know the noble Baroness will have heard the Chancellor say that we will be making the money available in both the short and longer term to address the issues that have arisen from this. If the noble Baroness wants to write to me separately with the name of that school—or I can look in Hansard, since I did not catch the name—I will be very happy to follow that up. We have been tracking every day since we started trying to reach schools. I have been reassured that attempts have been made to speak to every single school, and my understanding was that we had done so. I hope that BBC report might be hours out of date, but if not then I am happy to follow that up tonight if that would be helpful.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Will the Minister explain the remarks of Jonathan Slater, the Permanent Secretary, on Radio 4 today? In talking about the capital programme for schools, including the conditions survey that the Minister has mentioned, he pointed out that in order to deal with RAAC and other capital improvements that were needed in schools, there was a funding need of 300 to 400 schools to be done each year. When the department bid to the Treasury for that money, it was given money for 50 schools by the then Chancellor, who is now Prime Minister. Does the Minister agree with me, and I think many of us, that that is not satisfactory, there needs to be a change of policy, and capital investment urgently needs to go into our schools to deal with RAAC and other issues?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We have made significant investments in our schools—£15 billion since 2015, and £19 billion in this spending review period. I mentioned that we have added 1 million school places since 2010. We have rebuilt over 500 schools, we have committed to another 400 and we have another 100 in the pipeline. The noble Lord will have heard my right honourable friend the Minister for School Standards saying that we always ask for as much money as we can get from the Treasury. I say again that where there are urgent needs we always deal with them, but we have difficult prioritisation choices to make.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend and her department on a crisis well handled and on dealing with the rather innovative interpretation of the Civil Service Code that she will have encountered this morning, which I hope the next Government will not have to suffer from, given the importance of confidentiality in running a Government. Does she think there is a longer-term learning to come from the whole episode of RAAC? Where we innovate substantially in building methods, particularly in situations like schools, we should, at the beginning, install monitoring programmes to understand how these materials are working out in practice. We are looking at big changes to do with decarbonising construction, and we risk repeating this whole cycle over again if we are not careful.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. More broadly, making sure that we have a deep technical understanding about how these building materials develop over time is critical.

With the leave of the House, I have an answer to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett: the school was surveyed on Friday. We are getting in touch with them as we speak.

T-levels

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of Ofsted’s final report of its T-level thematic review, published on 20 July, specifically its conclusions that (1) in some instances, T-levels provide inappropriate work placements, and (2) many T-level students drop out after the first year.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, T-levels are new, challenging qualifications, and we continue to offer extensive support for their implementation. We want every T-level student to receive outstanding vocational education. We commissioned Ofsted to help us identify what further areas for improvement might be needed. We welcome its report and are already taking action, including a £12 million employer support fund and bespoke workforce support to help address concerns around work placements and student continuity.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that response, but the Ofsted T-level review was highly critical, identifying what it termed a “range of shortcomings”. I hope this will lead to them being resolved. Until that happens, another issue raised in the report is of real urgency. Ofsted called for a review of the Government’s wider level 3 reforms, including the defunding of most BTECs by 2025. It points to the impact of that on disadvantaged young people. That is a point that noble Lords across your Lordships’ House have made on numerous occasions, both during the passage of the skills Act and since then. On each occasion, the Minister dismissed our fears as scaremongering. Now that Ofsted has recommended it, will she and her Ministers revisit the question of the impact of defunding alternate pathways to T-levels on young people?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government do not have any plans to revisit the defunding of those other pathways. We are confident in the quality of T-levels and the employability that they offer students. Our job is to make them work at the level of the best institutions that have been delivering them, which the noble Lord will have seen referred to in the Ofsted report. We will make sure we offer those opportunities particularly to the young people to whom he refers.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that so many students are dropping T-levels because they have been misled? They thought they were going to study a technical curriculum, but the curriculums are 75% academic and 25% technical—that is absurd. In the review she is undertaking, will she ensure that the curriculums for engineering, construction and digital skills are at least 40% technical, otherwise students will not study them? That means you will have fewer technicians for the economy, which desperately needs more.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As my noble friend knows, the qualifications were designed very closely with employers. The content of the curriculum reflects what employers, working with the department and colleges, told us that they needed. I remind the House that, historically, we have had over 200 qualifications in engineering and over 200 in building and construction. There has been a complicated, unclear landscape. We will now have a clear and high quality one.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister talked about the problems with these courses. There are virtually no problems that were not predicted. Could the Minister tell us what we are doing about careers advice for the young people taking these qualifications? Where there are courses which have failed—if everybody fails on the second year, as is pointed out in the report, they have failed—will the careers advice in the local area reflect this, so that those courses can die if they are not delivering?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not recognise the examples the noble Lord referred to. When I talk to students who have done T-levels, they are evangelical about the value it has brought them and proud of their achievements and the quality of what they have learned. In relation to careers advice, in spring this year we made available grants of up to £10,000 per provider to boost careers guidance in schools and colleges, so all students have a good understanding of T-levels and their benefits.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, what are the Government doing to encourage more small and medium-sized enterprises to offer T-level work placements, given that in many parts of the country placements in larger businesses may not be easily available and SMEs play a key role in many vital sectors of the economy, including the creative sector?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that we need a range of choices of placements, and that must include small and medium-sized enterprises. We launched recently an employer support fund, which will pay for legitimate costs employers incur in hosting placements. We believe that will be of particular value to small and medium-sized enterprises.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am slightly shocked that the Minister does not seem to be taking seriously the very serious criticisms included in the Ofsted report about T-levels—which, I have to say, my noble friend Lord Watson and other noble Lords predicted when the House discussed the establishment of T-levels. There is no satisfaction in being right, because this concerns the lives, futures and aspirations of a cohort of young people who have been badly served by T-levels, many of whom have dropped out. Has the department tracked these youngsters? What has happened to them, and have they been offered alternative options?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I will make a couple of points. I think the data that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to on drop-outs refers to the T-level transition programme—we are doing a lot of work to strengthen and improve this, for the reasons both noble Lords referred to—rather than T-levels themselves. In the interests of fairness and accuracy, noble Lords have understandably reflected some of the areas for improvement highlighted by Ofsted, but I will quote the report:

“At their best, T levels provide an opportunity to combine high-quality study of theory with excellent development of practical skills”.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, your Lordships’ House had a special Select Committee on this area and found that the complication for young people not going on to A-levels was one of the issues. T-levels are a simple way to put technical qualifications on a par with the academic route of A-levels. Could my noble friend the Minister please outline whether there are specific career guidance initiatives to ensure that children in a school which is offering only A-levels and has its own sixth form are made aware of T-levels? Obviously, that may mean they leave and go to a different institution.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. As I referred to, we are making available grants of up to £10,000 per provider to boost careers guidance in schools and colleges, so that every child is aware of the potential of T-levels. Of course, in the skills Act, the Baker clause, from my noble friend Lord Baker, means that students are getting more frequent careers input throughout their time in secondary school.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, I understand that finding suitable placements, even after Covid, is a particular barrier to increasing the number of T-levels available from providers. Some employers are poorly informed about the content and structure of T-levels. Can the Minister tell me what steps the department is taking to improve this situation?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We are investing in direct support for employers, including through the delivery of an employer support package which offers online guidance, workshops and hands-on support to employers. We have a T-level employer ambassador network, and I mentioned the employer support fund already. Obviously, we have made a very significant investment, both in capital and capacity and delivery, to allow T-levels to be delivered at the scale we need.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Ofsted report also refers to some young people who started in the first tranche of T-levels expecting that they would assist them in gaining access to university only to find that, in the case of their course, that was not possible. Can the Minister say how many universities accept T-levels for access? What steps are the Government taking to increase that number?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

There are relatively few T-levels where students have completed both years, given the timing of their introduction. Currently, 136 higher education providers have indicated that they will accept T-levels, including the vast majority of Russell group universities.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on introducing T-levels, which are, to judge from local reaction, a very successful, solidly academic qualification. We have considerable worry that there will be many students who will not be up to taking them who are currently served by BTECs. I urge my noble friend to revisit that, because these are students who we should not be letting down.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We are absolutely committed to those students. I remind the House that the current applied general qualifications produce very mixed outcomes indeed. The point my noble friend makes is valid, and, of course, by increasing the quality of the offer at level 3 we also need to reform qualifications at level 2, level 1 and entry level, to make sure that we equip students to progress to the highest level to which they aspire. With that, I also wish the House a very happy and peaceful recess.

Higher Education Reform

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I shall now repeat the Statement made in the House of Commons on Monday 17 July:

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to announce the publication of the Government’s higher education reform consultation response. This country is one of the best in the world for studying in higher education, boasting four of the world’s top 10 universities. For most, higher education is a sound investment, with graduates expected to earn on average £100,000 more over their lifetime than those who do not go to university.

However, there are still pockets of higher education provision where the promise that university education will be worth while does not hold true and where an unacceptable number of students do not finish their studies or find a good job after graduating. That cannot continue. It is not fair to taxpayers who subsidise that education, but most of all it is not fair to those students who are being sold a promise of a better tomorrow, only to be disappointed and end up paying far into the future for a degree that did not offer them good value.

We want to make sure that students are charged a fair price for their studies and that a university education offers a good return. Our reforms are aimed at achieving that objective. That is why the Government launched the consultation in 2022 in order to seek views on policies based on recommendations made by Sir Philip Augar and his independent panel. The consultation ended in May 2022, and the Department for Education has been considering the responses received. I am now able to set out the programme of reforms that we are taking forward.

I believe that the traditional degree continues to hold great value, but it is not the only higher education pathway. Over the past 13 years we have made substantial reforms to ensure that the traditional route is not the only pathway to a good career. Higher technical qualifications massively enhance students’ skills and career prospects, and deserve parity of esteem with undergraduate degrees. We have seen a growth in degree-level apprenticeships, with over 188,000 students enrolling since their introduction in 2014. I have asked the Office for Students to establish a £40 million competitive degree apprenticeships fund to drive forward capacity-building projects to broaden access to degree apprenticeships over the next two years.

That drive to encourage skills is why we are also investing up to £115 million to help providers deliver higher technical education. In March we set out detailed information on how the lifelong loan entitlement will transform the way in which individuals can undertake post-18 education, and we continue to support that transformation through the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill that is currently passing through the other place. We anticipate that that funding, coupled with the introduction of the LLE from 2025, will help to incentivise the take-up of higher technical education, filling vital skills gaps across the country.

Each of those reforms has had one simple premise: that we are educating people with the skills that will enable them to have a long and fulfilling career. I believe that we should have the same expectation for higher education: it should prepare students for life by giving them the right skills and knowledge to get well-paid jobs. With the advent of the LLE, it is neither fair nor right for students to use potentially three quarters of their lifelong loan entitlement for a university degree that does not offer them good returns. That would constrain their future ability to learn, earn and retrain. We must shrink the parts of the sector that do not deliver value, and ensure that students and taxpayers are getting value for money given their considerable investment.

Data shows that there were 66 providers from which fewer than 60% of graduates progressed to high-skilled employment or further study 15 months after graduating. That is not acceptable. I will therefore issue statutory guidance to the OfS, setting out that it should impose recruitment limits on provision that does not meet its rigorous quality requirements for positive student outcomes, to help to constrain the size and growth of courses that do not deliver for students. We will also ask the OfS to consider how it can incorporate graduate earnings into its quality regime. We recognise that many factors can influence graduate earnings, but students have a right to expect that their investment in higher education will improve their career prospects, and we should rightly scrutinise courses that appear to offer limited added value to students on the metric that matters most to many.

We will work with the OfS to consider franchising arrangements in the sector. All organisations that deliver higher education must be held to robust standards. I am concerned about some indications that franchising is acting as a potential route for low quality to seep into the higher education system, and I am absolutely clear that lead providers have a responsibility to ensure that franchised provision is of the same quality as directly delivered provision. If we find examples of undesirable practices, we will not hesitate to act further on franchising.

As I have said, we will ensure that students are charged a fair price for their studies. That is why we are also reducing to £5,760 the fees for classroom-based foundation year courses such as business studies and social sciences, in line with the highest standard funding rate for access to higher education diplomas. Recently we have seen an explosion in the growth of many such courses, but limited evidence that they are in the best interests of students. We are not reducing the fee limits for high-cost, strategically important subjects such as veterinary sciences and medicine, but we want to ensure that foundation years are not used to add to the bottom line of institutions at the expense of those who study them. We will continue to monitor closely the growth of foundation year provision, and we will not hesitate to introduce further restrictions or reductions. I want providers to consider whether those courses add value for students, and to phase out that provision in favour of a broad range of tertiary options with the advent of the LLE.

Our aim is that everyone who wants to benefit from higher education has the opportunity to do so. That is why we will not proceed at this time with a minimum requirement of academic attainment to access student finance—although we will keep that option under review. I am confident that the sector will respond with the ambition and focused collaboration required to deliver this package of reforms. I extend my wholehearted thanks to those in the sector for their responses to the consultation.

This package of reforms represents the next step in tackling low-quality higher education, but it will not be the last step. The Government will not shy away from further action if required, and will consider all levers available to us if these quality reforms do not result in the improvements we seek. Our higher education system is admired across many countries, and these measures will ensure that it continues to be. I commend this Statement to the House”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches I find very little to disagree with in the questions and comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. She looked across at me as I was voicing approval, as if slightly confused that there should be agreement across the Opposition Benches. On the defence side of things, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and I tend to agree, but on this higher education Statement, a lot of questions need to be raised to understand His Majesty’s Government’s understanding of the purpose of higher education.

Before I go any further, I declare my interests as a professor at Cambridge University, one of the UK’s four of the top 10 universities mentioned in the Statement. I am also a non-executive director of the Oxford International Education Group, which runs pathway colleges that in turn run foundation courses. That is something I want to come back to, because there are a couple of questions about the domestic versus the international dimension of higher education that could be explored a little more.

Finally, I feel that I have to admit that I am a professor of European politics, which puts me in the school of humanities and social sciences, the sort of area that the Government seem to be a little sceptical about. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has in the past suggested that if we rejoin Horizon Europe we should not be part of the social sciences aspect. Yet social sciences and arts and humanities play a vital part in educating our young people, whether at 18 or through lifelong learning. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, mentioned being a graduate of languages. Surely that is an area where we should be encouraging young people to go into higher education, to learn languages as a tool for working internationally. As a country that wants to look globally and have global trade markets, we need to be able to communicate internationally. Yet if you were a graduate of modern languages, you might not earn a high salary.

This is where the Statement leaves open a lot of questions. What do His Majesty’s Government really understand by value for money in higher education? We cannot always evaluate value for higher education purely in monetary terms. For some people, a higher education matters because they have an intrinsic love of the subject they are studying. You cannot put a financial metric on that. Also, there are people who go through higher education because they want a particular career track. They get the job they want in the industry to which they are attracted—perhaps the creative industries. They will not necessarily earn a high salary but they will be doing the vocation that they have trained for. Do His Majesty’s Government think that they should not be doing that? What do His Majesty’s Government mean by “a good job”, a phrase used in the Statement? Is it good in terms of salary or interest? Clearly, it is right that people should not be paying into the future for a degree that has had no benefit, but how do we evaluate that? Does it mean that the training needs are not met or simply that some arbitrary metric on income is not met?

His Majesty’s Government say that there are 66 providers where fewer than 60% of graduates progress to highly skilled employment or further study within 15 months of graduating. Can the Minister tell the House what is meant by highly skilled employment? That really matters for how we understand what His Majesty’s Government are seeking to do.

Finally, in terms of foundation courses, pathway colleges train international students who perhaps want to learn English and transition to being able to undertake degrees in British universities. Do His Majesty’s Government feel that they should be evaluated against the same metrics being outlined here, or is there perhaps a need to understand a little more about foundation year study? It could be about international students transitioning to the UK, but it may also be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, mentioned, about widening participation. We need to think very carefully about foundation courses, because there should not be some arbitrary mechanism whereby decisions by the Government or the OfS lead to foundation year courses being closed down, thereby diminishing the chances of participation rather than widening participation.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Baronesses for their remarks and for the opportunity to clarify what feels like a bit of a misunderstanding about where these reforms are focused. Where the Government have sought to specify quality as the issue, both noble Baronesses took that to mean potential earnings, and that is not what the Government intend—and I will seek to clarify that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, started by philosophically asking what higher education was for. I am sure I cannot do justice to this, but I think it is reasonable to say that one of the key things that this Government and, I think, her party believe is that higher education is an incredible route to opportunity and social mobility and a great mechanism for fairness in our society. But we also believe that it is not the only engine—hence our emphasis on apprenticeships, degree apprenticeships, level 4 and 5 qualifications as opposed to exclusively level 6 and, of course, the flexibility, which I know both noble Baronesses support, that will come from the lifelong loan entitlement. The definition of “quality” is not earnings: the definition we are using comes from that used by the Office for Students—looking at continuation from one year to the next, completion and entry into graduate jobs or continuing education 15 months after completing a degree.

The point we are trying to get across is that degrees vary significantly in quality. One element of that is earnings potential. Because of the way I work, I went on the Discover Uni website, which I commend to noble Lords who have not looked at it already. You can say, “I want to study maths”—which in my case would have been quite a push. But anyway, I pretended I wanted to study maths and put in four different institutions and it gave me a great deal of information about earnings potential. Most of us think of maths as the highest earnings potential degree that one can do, but there are institutions where, if you read maths, three years later you are earning £20,000. I do not think that is the expectation of a young person going to university to read maths. So just understanding the difference is important for empowering the student. The same is true for law degrees and business study degrees and, I am sure, many others. In addition, on Discover Uni you get a huge amount of feedback from students about quality of teaching, student experience, et cetera. I know it is not the only source, but it is a helpful one.

Earnings do matter because we know that feeling financially secure is incredibly important for any individual’s sense of well-being. It gives them choices in life about how many children they have, where they live, where they work, and so on. I absolutely understand both noble Baronesses’ points that it is not the only metric but to ignore it is not realistic either.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, talked in particular about creative arts. She is right to raise that because if one looks at creative arts degrees and future earning potential, that group stands out as being lower. But the focus here is where institutions have failed to meet the B3—which she will understand very well—OfS quality metrics. To repeat, that is about continuation, completion and graduate employment. B3 does not include earnings and there are very few foundation years in creative arts, so I really do not think that is going to be an issue there.

The other point that your Lordships will have heard me make more than once is the fairness between student and taxpayer and fairness to students who do not complete their degrees and then are left with part of their student loan to pay off.

In relation to accessibility, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, questioned whether this is going to be discriminating against other people’s children rather than our children. I remind her that record numbers of 18 year-olds went to university this year, with the highest percentage ever from the lowest quintile in terms of deprivation, so 25.1% of those children. A child from a disadvantaged background is 86% more likely to go to university today than in 2010.

Both noble Baronesses questioned whether our focus on foundation years might be discriminatory. The data on foundation years suggests that there are a few subjects that have grown exponentially at a relatively limited number of providers. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, talked about modern foreign languages. In 2015-16, 360 students completed MFL foundation years; in 2021-22 it was 465, so there was very little growth. Bring on those students who want to do more MFL. If we look at medicine and dentistry, the growth was very high, but from 125 students to 555. Business and administrative studies over the same period has gone from 4,250 to 35,580. There really are some examples that warrant greater focus.

I hope that I have addressed most of the points. Forgive me, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, talked about quality of apprenticeships. I have to say that I thought she was being slightly harsh. When this Government were elected, one of the things we really focused on was improving the quality of apprenticeships. A huge amount of work has gone into that. Actually, if we have a worry about the apprenticeship levy now, it is that it is going to be overspent rather than underspent. She will know that last year it was fully spent. I genuinely worry, with her party’s proposal to give employers a choice, that we will end up with half the number of apprenticeships that we have today.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement in this place this afternoon, giving us the opportunity to question her. I declare my interest, such as it is, in that I completed an internship—a stage—in the European Commission, followed by a Bar apprenticeship, both of which counted towards my professional qualification as a Scottish advocate.

Can I just press my noble friend on two small issues? One is that the academic institutions concerned will have sufficient notice of the phasing out of any of the courses concerned and that those who might have applied to them will be given alternatives to which they may be equally suited, with better outcomes for them.

Secondly, my noble friend will be aware that one of the challenges at the moment is obtaining skills and finding those with skills in plumbing, joinery, building, construction and other such areas. Will the new qualifications to which she referred actually plug that gap? That would tick a box because they are among the highest earners at the moment.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In relation to where qualifications might be phased out, I think that my noble friend is referring to the imposition of recruitment limits by the Office for Students. To be clear, that will happen after it has judged that an institution has not met the quality standards known as the B3 standards. The scale of limit will be a judgment for the OfS to make. There could be a limitation on growing a course. At the other extreme, the OfS might judge that it is not suitable to be delivered at all. I am not taking a view on either of those. I am just saying that it would follow an investigation by the OfS into quality.

I hope very much that universities are considering alternatives. Obviously, they are autonomous organisations, but there is a great human opportunity in offering some of the qualifications to which she referred. Also, from their responsibility for the financial viability of their institutions, there is an opportunity as those courses grow in popularity. For building, construction and other areas, from T-levels through to apprenticeships and other higher technical qualifications, the Government are trying to make sure that there is a pipeline of skills to meet the opportunities to which she refers.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, the last time I got up and asked the Minister some questions I was able to be very congratulatory to the Government in relation to the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill. Regrettably, I cannot be for one second congratulatory about this Statement. I think it is both retrograde and ill thought-out. In implementation, it is going to end up as an unholy mess.

Let me begin with the criteria that the Government are using to define quality, which is essentially drop-out and earnings. I thought the Minister was equivocating in her response to the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross and Lady Smith, on this subject, saying that it is not only about earnings and that she knows that other facets of higher education are important. But, when it comes to the criteria for closing down courses, this Statement makes it absolutely clear that the level of earnings from different courses is going to be a factor. It is a ludicrous thing to take, because there are many areas where people are badly paid but will have done very good degrees. There are other areas where people will be well-paid graduates but will not have done especially strong degrees from the many different academic criteria that you could use. This needs to be thought about again. It is just so mechanistic. Moreover, there is a well-established system of regulation of the quality and standards of degrees in universities, and that is what should be used to try to do something about those which have low standards.

Take the criteria of drop-out. I spent 10 years running an institution, Birkbeck College, with part-time mature students where there were very high levels of drop-out. But if anybody dares to say to me that it was because the courses were poor, I shall tell them they are talking nonsense. The reasons for drop-out are very rarely anything to do with the quality of the course. It is something about the problems students face, particularly disadvantaged, part-time or mature students. It would be far better if the Government focused a bit more on trying to find support for universities which have a large number of these students so that we do not have fewer disadvantaged students getting to the end of the courses, which of course we want to avoid.

I must not talk for too long, but I will comment on a couple of other things. I do not know how the Office for Students will collect evidence about all of this that is up to date, clear and valid. It will be enormously expensive and extremely complicated, and the OfS is bound to end up with errors about which courses it decides should not be continued and which should continue. What kind of discussions have the Government had with the Office for Students about exactly how to implement this particular programme?

I will make a final point about the social sciences. As a social scientist myself, I was somewhat offended to see that they have been identified as an area where we perhaps want fewer students doing foundation courses. I do not know why that should be the case; they are popular among students who want perhaps to come back to university a little later. Incidentally, economics is a social science, and it has some of the most highly paid graduate jobs that exist. The whole thing is an awful muddle, and more attention needs to be paid to the details of how to implement this, because standards are not static; they change all the time.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am obviously disappointed that the noble Baroness did not give the same feedback as in the Statement the other day, but I am more concerned because I think that there is still a misunderstanding about how this would work in practice. I will try to go through the noble Baroness’s points in turn.

I am not equivocating about earnings: the criteria are clear. They are the new B3 quality criteria, which are continuation, completion and graduate-level or further study or employment 15 months after graduation. However, obviously, higher earnings normally correlates with graduate-level jobs—not across every sector and industry, but frequently. If I was confusing, I apologise, but we are not equivocating.

On how it will work, the regulation and the potential for recruitment limits will happen only after intervention. So the OfS will have gathered evidence—this goes to the noble Baroness’s later point about evidence—that shows concerns about whether an institution is meeting the B3 standards. It will investigate and, if it finds that those standards are not met, it will consider recruitment limits.

The noble Baroness referred to her experience at Birkbeck. On the profile of students accessing different courses, I tried in my earlier answer to give examples of how one compares some courses. Obviously the noble Baroness is right: we know that, overall, the profile of non-completion is higher among mature and disadvantaged students. However, it is when a particular course at a particular institution appears to be an outlier in that that we think it is appropriate to apply recruitment limits.

On the social sciences, let me be clear that we are reducing the foundation year funding for classroom-based subjects, among which by far the biggest growth has been in business and management—I gave the numbers earlier. There have been some other subjects where it has grown, but business and management is the outlier. We are reducing it to the same level as that at which an access to higher education course is funded. The question I put back to the noble Baroness—perhaps unfairly, because she cannot reply—is this: is it fair to ask a student to pay almost twice as much and take on almost twice as much debt for two courses that purport to get students to the same level?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, looking round the House, I venture to ask the Minister two questions.

The Statement refers to trying to deal with students

“paying far into the future for a degree that did not offer them good value”.

That led me to look at a recent House of Commons report on student debt in general, which has some terribly telling figures. The total level of student debt is about to pass £200 billion, the maximum rate of loans that students are paying is 7.1%, and the average debt at graduation this year is £45,600. Looking back at the history, I see that 2002 was the first year of a cohort with large amounts of debt. More than 20 years later, 44% of those debts are still not paid off.

So my first question to the Minister is: paying far into the future, are the Government really taking account to the impacts—economic, social and health—of now the second generation of students having to keep paying off debts, many of which they will never pay off at all, that will now weigh them down over 40 years?

My second question builds on the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and others. Even if, as the Minister asks us, we put the question of income to one side and just look at graduate jobs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, there is very much a regional issue here. People may do a maths degree in some places, but they might choose, because of the circumstances of their life, not to move to a place where they can get a graduate job, as defined by the Office for Students. But that does not mean that they are not benefiting from that degree.

What about, say, a grandmother—the Government say that they are keen on lifelong learning—who does a history degree and puts all her time, energy and talents, when she is not caring for her grandchildren, into doing local history and writing up local history? That is never going to make any money, but it is hugely contributing to the community and her enthusiasm will undoubtedly transmit to the grandchildren and their friends. Or what about someone who is a carer; they start a degree, the university knows they are a carer, it has affected their studies at school and they drop out half way through to go back to their caring responsibilities? Are we not going to see an impact on admissions? Will institutions be forced to direct themselves towards admissions of people who are then going to fulfil the criteria down the track?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In relation to the noble Baroness’s first question about the impact of debt on students far into the future, it is genuinely very interesting—given the level of debt and the amount of debate about debt—that demand to go to university continues to increase and continues to increase in very disadvantaged communities. Young people with an older brother or sister who is grumbling about repaying their student loan know that this is the case, yet there is huge demand for our universities.

I think the noble Baroness would also recognise that there are other taxpayers. Somebody must pay the costs of higher education and currently we have a balance between the students themselves and other taxpayers, some of whom have not been to university. That is a delicate balance to strike. But if one were to do away with student debt entirely, somebody would have to pay and that would obviously fall on every other taxpayer.

In terms of the individual examples she gives, whether it be deciding to live in a particular part of the country or choosing not to take a graduate job, or the grandmother, or the carer, I do not think any of those things change as a result of this. What we are saying is, you have two courses delivering the same thing, and in one course 40% of people drop out and in the other course 10% of people drop out with a similar profile; should we not be asking why that is happening?

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her interesting analysis of the Statement in replying to questions. I was particularly interested in the questions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Blackstone. Can I probe my noble friend on two points?

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, referred to salaries not necessarily being a good indicator of the value of a course, particularly in arts and humanities. Humanities graduates can earn lower salaries than those who go into other subjects, but might I suggest that there is a middle way on this? History is my subject; I began my professional life in Cambridge as an academic historian for my first two jobs. But I found that many historians went into other jobs: they converted by the GDL—a law conversion course—or moved into media and the BBC, or the Civil Service. What humanities give, and I urge my noble friend to pay full tribute to this, is that a subject such as history encourages the training of the mind, which can be adapted and applied to more professional or vocational subjects. For instance, it is no accident—this is anecdote, but I think it is true—that classicists helped to start Silicon Valley, so there is not such a gap.

With regard to the point made about dropouts by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I could not agree more that one cannot necessarily blame an institution for poor teaching. Good heavens—Birkbeck College is renowned for attracting good students who take advantage of the flexible courses on offer, which can be taken at night. However, I suggest that we have a real problem here. It must be for the institutions to pay particular attention to selection procedures, so that applicants for their courses are suited to the courses on offer, despite the pressure for fees which most institutions are under today.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend very much for her remarks. She does not need to convince me about the importance of a history degree in allowing you to do different things. Personally, I read history, went into the City, ran a charity and now I am here. I am not quite sure what your Lordships might take from that, whether it was a training for the mind or that I just got lucky. My noble friend is absolutely right that the kind of critical thinking skills that one gets in a number of academic disciplines, including history and other arts and humanities subjects, are incredibly important—arguably, increasingly so as we move into a world of AI and beyond.

Again, my noble friend is right about selection procedures. I would say in addition that we see really excellent examples of not just selection but initial support for students, whether that be in an institution such as Birkbeck or in an institution which typically takes more students who have just left school. That is clearly very important and something that many institutions work on. The last point I would make in relation to her remarks about selection also relates to the remarks in the Statement about franchise providers. It concerns the importance of the care that we believe the main institution that is issuing the degree needs to take on which franchise providers it works with.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

My Lords, I think there are no further questions.