Home and Online Schooling

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether there has been a rise in home schooling and online schooling, and what action they are taking to strengthen child safeguarding in this context.

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

My Lords, we are aware that the number of home-educated children has been rising for several years. While the rise in itself is not an inherent safeguarding concern, the view of many local authorities is that the increase is driven by reasons other than commitment to home education. That is why we remain committed to introducing local authority statutory registers, are consulting on revised elective home education guidance, and have launched an accreditation scheme for full-time online education providers.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, it is important to try to understand the reasons for the rise in home education. Can the Minister provide a demographic breakdown of home-schooled children by sex, age, ethnicity, location—there may be hotspots—special educational needs and reasons for home schooling? I do not expect that information to be provided now; I can have it in writing. If that information is not readily available through local authorities, could mechanisms be implemented to collect it? I am worried about children with special educational needs. Are their needs being met? I am worried about the content and quality of online education, although I acknowledge that it removes barriers to learning. I am very worried about the increased risk of children being subjected to sexual violence and domestic abuse—Sara Sharif is an example. Some girls will be at increased risk of FGM and forced marriage. What will the Government do about these things? I do not think the register is the only solution.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I share many of the noble Baroness’s concerns. On her first point, we believe there are three main reasons why parents might decide to educate their children at home. The first is that they want to do it and it is a positive choice. The second is that they feel that the school their child is at is not meeting their child’s needs, particularly where special educational needs come in, as the noble Baroness suggests. The third group is where we have genuine safeguarding concerns. The Government are working on all three aspects, and part of the consultation will aim to address them.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, there is surely another key element in the increase in home tuition: the aftermath of Covid and home working. Is it not true that we need a rapid increase in the availability of child and adolescent mental health services and direct support for parents who need help to get their children back into school?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not disagree that the aftermath of Covid has impacted not just home education but perhaps more particularly the wider issues that we have debated in your Lordships’ House related to attendance at school. The noble Lord is aware that we are expanding mental health support teams across schools and recruiting additional educational psychologists to support children.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that literally hundreds of thousands of children are missing from our schools—potentially an educationally lost generation. The charity School-Home Support has found that, particularly in poor communities, where children do not want to go to school they pretend to home educate and it is not happening. Is the answer not for the Government to bring a simple Bill which would make it lawful for parents to have to register if they are home educating?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think we have to be slightly careful about the use of the numbers. The noble Lord talked about “literally hundreds of thousands of children” missing their education. That is conflating a number of different things, and I do not want to give the impression that there are hundreds of thousands of children missing all their education. There were 86,200 children identified as being home educated in the spring of this year, 24,700 children were classified as children missing education on the census day, and 94,900 missed education for a period at some point in the academic year. On bringing legislation, I think the noble Lord will have seen that a Private Member’s Bill has been introduced in the other place, and he may have heard my right honourable friend the Secretary of State speak warmly about it.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, a large number of children went missing from the educational roll as the pandemic ended and we lifted lockdown. What is being done specifically to identify those children and return them to the roll?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department is working closely with schools, particularly around persistent absence and severe absence. Persistent absence is when a child is missing 10% or more of their school time, and severe absence is where a child misses 50% or more. We have an Attendance Action Alliance which the Secretary of State chairs, and we are expanding that to a number of other regional advice areas. We have expert attendance hubs and advisers working with schools to help identify and support these children back into school.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been a 50% increase in home schooling since 2018-19. There is currently no inspection regime to check quality and I understand that the lack of inspection extends to home education hubs or online provision. Also, the only sanction currently applied on parents by councils where there are concerns is a school attendance order. How soon will the register mentioned by the Minister be in place, and what more will the Government do to ensure that both quality and safeguarding are front and centre of policy on home schooling?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously I cannot comment on the timing of a Private Member’s Bill. On the very valid points raised by the noble Baroness about the inspection regime, that is one of the things that we are looking at in the consultation, which closes on 18 January. In particular, we are looking at how to judge the suitability of education. Importantly, much of the work that has gone into preparing that consultation has been done with parents and local authorities together so that we can build trust in both communities going forward.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has set out very helpfully the figures relating to children who are not in school on a regular basis. This is such an important matter at a formative stage in their development. Can the House assume from these figures that each of these children has a named place in school? If so, can the Minister say, in particular, what is happening to enforce the law of the land so that these children have a proper education?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not want to say that every single child has a named place, as children can move around and there can be a time lag, but obviously it is the right of every child in this country to have a named place. On enforcement, the noble Lord understands very well that there is a balance to be struck. We need first to understand why the child is not in school and aim to address that; then, if enforcement is appropriate, that should be followed through.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, the introduction of registers, to which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others have referred, is accepted universally to be hugely urgent. Can we not have government legislation rather than waiting for a Private Member’s Bill?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend will be aware that government legislation was not in the King’s Speech, but the Government remain committed to introducing statutory local authority registers for children not in school as well as a duty for local authorities to provide support to home-educating families.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned that we are dealing with special educational needs here. When will we have a structure where every school has at least some expertise in how to teach for the most commonly occurring special educational needs without going to an education and health plan? When is that going to come in?

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware that we are introducing an NPQ—a national professional qualification—for SENCOs in schools. We are also introducing support and training for SENCOs in early years to encourage early identification.

Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Regulations 2023.

Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

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

My Lords, this instrument was laid on 7 November 2023 and debated last Wednesday in the other place. Its purpose is to reproduce select interpretive effects of retained EU law in order to maintain equalities protections against discrimination. These protections are reproduced by making amendments to the Equality Act 2010. I thank the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for its consideration of and comments on the regulations.

It is important to make clear from the outset that the overwhelming majority of our equality law is contained in domestic legislation—the Equality Act 2010, approved and voted on by our own Parliament. The interpretive effects of retained EU law have a bearing on our equality framework in only a limited number of areas.

This instrument uses the powers of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 to ensure that necessary protections are put into our statutes. This will end the inherent uncertainty of relying on judicial interpretations of EU law and instead ensure that strong and clear equality law protections are set out in our domestic legislation. It applies across Great Britain.

The instrument safeguards and enshrines key rights and principles across a range of areas. First, it protects women’s rights: maintaining equal pay protections where employees’ terms and attributable to a single source, but not the same employer; protecting women from less favourable treatment at work because they are breastfeeding; protecting women from unfavourable treatment after they return from maternity leave, where that treatment is in connection with a pregnancy or a pregnancy-related illness occurring before their return; ensuring that women are protected against pregnancy and maternity discrimination, where they do not have a statutory right to maternity leave but have similar rights under alternative occupational schemes; and ensuring that women can continue to receive special treatment from their employer in relation to maternity—for example, ensuring that companies continue to offer enhanced maternity schemes.

I am sure that all of us in this place agree that women should not face discrimination for being pregnant or taking maternity leave. They should continue to receive equal pay for work of equal value and they should not receive less favourable treatment in the workplace because they are breastfeeding.

This instrument reproduces these principles in domestic law to ensure that women can continue to rely on these protections. It also maintains protections for disabled people in the workplace, so that they can participate in working life on an equal basis with other workers. It is of course important that disabled people have the same opportunities as everyone else to start, stay and succeed in work. This amendment will mean that disability protections continue to apply where someone’s impairment hinders their full and effective participation in working life on an equal basis with other workers.

Finally, the instrument maintains two protections that apply more broadly. The first maintains the status quo, whereby employers and their equivalent for other occupations may be acting unlawfully if they make a discriminatory public statement relating to their recruitment practices, including when there is not an active recruitment process under way. This ensures that groups that share certain protected characteristics are not unfairly deterred from applying for opportunities in an organisation.

The second maintains protections against indirect discrimination for those who may be caught up and disadvantaged by indirect discrimination against others, so that they are also protected where they suffer substantively the same disadvantage.

We intend that there will be no time gap and no break in protections between this law coming into effect and the removal of the special status and EU-derived features of retained EU law at the end of the year. By maintaining these important protections, we will ensure that our domestic equality framework has continuity. Importantly, these amendments do not add any regulatory burdens on business, as the legislation reproduces the status quo, meaning that the regulatory environment will not change.

I hope your Lordships will join me in supporting the draft regulations. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, those of us who participated in the REUL Bill debates were aware that the Government would need to safeguard important protections derived from EU case law and ensure they were retained—and do so by the end of this month. Indeed, I spoke during the passage of that legislation about my concerns for women and equalities legislation.

We do not regard the SI as controversial. Rather, the protections being restated today underline why this process is so important. People cannot lose rights that are being reasserted in these regulations. As the Minister said, they are massively important to women, protecting them through and after pregnancy, against pay inequality and from discrimination, and are crucial in providing people who have disabilities with protection against discrimination. Of course these vital protections need to be retained, and I agree with the Minister that it is also important that we give people certainty in law by restating these principles.

However, my questions are about the fact that we are getting round to restating these protections only a matter of weeks before they could have disappeared. That is a little concerning. So I ask the Minister about the Government’s wider approach to identifying which bits of important case law they wish to retain and then pass, through regulations, on to our statute book. It worries me that we are doing this a week or so before this law would fall. I just hope that nothing else will be lost in this process. Can the Minister tell us what measures the Government are taking to ensure that important decisions are taken about the interpretive effects of retained EU law? Do the Government have an equivalent to the dashboard—everybody will remember the dashboard that was mentioned during the passage of the REUL legislation—which was introduced to identify statutory instruments for European Union judgments that have an impact on domestic law? “How’s that going?” is, I suppose, what I want to say.

I am not going to go into detail about the regulations, because they are very straightforward and do exactly what we hoped they would do. It is therefore important to note that putting them on to the statute book and ensuring stability about this does not mean that the battle for equality is over. For example, the earnings gap between disabled and non-disabled people has increased. It is over half a century since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970, so I am sure the Minister will join me in agreeing that we still both have work to do in this area. This is providing us with the legislative infrastructure to do it, but we still have work to do.

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[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

I will, thank you.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords—or my Ladies— I am grateful to the noble Baroness for speaking in this debate. I would like to recognise her work on women and equalities over many years. Britain has a proud history of justice and fairness, with some of the world’s strongest and most comprehensive equalities legislation thanks to the Equality Act 2010. By setting out these EU-derived protections in domestic law, we will ensure that our equality framework provides clarity and continues to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of people in this country.

I understand very well the spirit of the noble Baroness’s questioning. She asked about the principles that underpin our approach in this area. I seek to reassure her, and the Committee, that the Government remain absolutely committed to upholding the highest standards in equalities and ensuring that the necessary protections are preserved after the end of this year. We are using the powers in the retained EU law Act to ensure that necessary protections are put in statute.

The Equality Hub has considered over a hundred judgments and undertaken legal analysis to ensure that Great Britain maintains that history of equality, and that the necessary protections are clearly set out in our domestic legislation. As the noble Baroness knows, the REUL Act’s restatement powers are available until June 2026; that will allow the Government to keep the position under review within this timeframe. We will publish a REUL progress report in January, in line with our statutory six-month reporting requirements. The REUL dashboard—I think the noble Baroness described it as the beloved dashboard—still exists and is available on GOV.UK. It most recently had a minor update in November, but there will be the regular update in January.

I am also happy to agree with the noble Baroness that the battle for equality is far from over. With that, I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Motion agreed.

Schools: Safeguarding

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington for securing this debate on the importance of safeguarding in our schools. Your Lordships have set me an impossible task in trying to address all of points raised; anything I am unable to cover in the time available I will follow up in writing. We have heard some very powerful and reflective speeches from across this House, and I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this important debate. As we heard, safeguarding our children both inside and outside of school is absolutely crucial. As the world evolves, so do the safeguarding risks our children face, and the challenges our schools face evolve with them.

As your Lordships are aware, all schools and colleges in England must have regard to the statutory safeguarding guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education. The guidance sets out the policies and procedures that teachers and leaders should follow to protect children while in school. Our schools and colleges are also part of a wider framework of safeguarding that includes local authorities, health and the police, each of whom have statutory duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility and everyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action.

Given the focus of the debate, I start my remarks on issues around the Government’s gender questioning guidance, but I aim to cover some of the wider points raised. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who I think was the first to raise this subject, for her tone and reflections on how much has improved over many years. I know she would agree that we owe a lot to every teacher for their part in that.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of schools supporting the social transition of pupils who are questioning their gender, including my noble friends Lord Farmer, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Shinkwin—I was sorry to hear his remarks on the re-emergence of discrimination towards disabled people. I also thank my noble friend Lord Roberts for his historical perspective on these issues. Obviously, how we respond to such requests is an important safeguarding and welfare question. As your Lordships pointed out, recent years have seen a large increase in children seeking support. The number of children seeking medical support for gender dysphoria was 20 times higher in 2022 than a decade ago. Schools are not taking decisions about clinical support, of course, but that does not mean that decisions about social transition can be taken lightly. Actions such as changing names and pronouns are serious and can have a wider impact.

The Cass review highlighted the importance of safeguarding, stressing that social transition

“is not a neutral act”,

and that

“it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning”.

But the review also says that not supporting social transition is also not a neutral act. There is not clear information on the long-term effects. That is the background to the guidance that we have been working on carefully and will be publishing for consultation shortly. I am not going to pre-empt that publication in this debate, but I can reassure noble Lords that the issues raised today are very much being considered in its development.

Safeguarding and welfare will be absolutely central to decisions taken by schools, considering the implications for individuals and for the wider school. In that context, biological sex is vitally important. Single-sex spaces, as raised by my noble friend Lady Eaton, need to be maintained; school sport, which was touched on by my noble friends Lord Sandhurst and Lord Wrottesley, must be safe and fair. It is also vital that parents should be engaged in decision-making about their children. That is a principle at the heart of other school processes, such as deciding on support for children with special educational needs, and it is just as important here. Parents are the ones who know their children and their wider lives best. I have to disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about keeping this information from parents, except in absolutely exceptional circumstances.

I should also emphasise that we will be holding a consultation on the guidance. While I am confident that we have considered the issues raised, we really do want to gather a full range of views. I hope that your Lordships and members of the public will respond to let us know the extent to which it clarifies these issues for schools because, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and others, there is a central point about having certainty and clarity for teachers on how they should respond to these very sensitive and difficult issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, asked me to clarify that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past. Just to be clear, the guidance will aim to support and protect all pupils, including those who are questioning their gender. One of the key principles to have guided this work is that schools and colleges should be respectful and tolerant places, where children are treated with compassion and understanding, and where bullying is never tolerated. But at the heart of this guidance is child safety and well-being; as I mentioned, the interim Cass report confirmed that we need better information about the long-term implications of social transition, which is why the Government are advocating a cautious approach.

My noble friend Lady Browning talked about the gap in evidence in relation to girls with autism, and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, asked that we would be driven by verifiable evidence. One of the challenges in this area is that there is insufficient evidence—I hope the noble Lord would accept that—and even less uncontested evidence. It is important that we work to fill that gap, but at the heart of the guidance will be the best interests of the child and clarity for teachers and other staff in schools about how to respond.

Going more broadly to the issues in the RSHE curriculum, noble Lords have raised the issue of sharing those materials with parents. We have brought forward the review of the RSHE curriculum. As I think your Lordships know, we have appointed an independent panel to advise the Secretary of State on the introduction of age limits on teaching sensitive topics. The Secretary of State wrote to all schools in October, clarifying how they can share materials with parents while remaining within copyright law. My noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough raised this; I would be delighted to meet him to discuss the complaints he has been made aware of and how the department has responded.

He also mentioned that the School of Sexuality Education was a contributor to the department’s guidance. Can he point me to that reference? We have checked our list of expert contributors and it does not appear to be on it. If he has evidence of that, clearly I will happily take that away if he could write to me.

The Secretary of State’s letter also set out:

“The copyright act allows schools to copy resources proportionately, for the purposes of explaining to parents what is being taught”,


including

“via a ‘parent portal’ or … a presentation”.

The letter was also clear that, where parents cannot access the parent portal or presentation,

“schools may provide copies of materials to parents to take home on request, providing parents agree to a … statement that they will not copy the content or share it further except as authorised under copyright law”.

The points made in this letter will be reflected in the updated statutory RSHE guidance, which schools will have a duty to have regard to.

My noble friend Lady Jenkin asked about the timing of the publication of the guidance and the consultation. We will be consulting on it in the near future and expect the guidance to be published in 2024, with the consultation being launched early in the new year.

I turn to online safety in schools. My noble friend Lord Leicester and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised the issue of children’s access to pornography, which obviously is a serious concern, for all the reasons that your Lordships have set out this afternoon. We have updated the Teaching Online Safety in Schools non-statutory guidance this year, which covers how to teach all aspects of internet safety, not just those relating to relationships, sex and health.

Your Lordships will be aware that the Secretary of State has committed to introducing a ban on mobile phones in schools. My noble friend Lady Jenkin asked about the timing. We expect to provide more information on that early in 2024 and, obviously and importantly, the Online Safety Act takes a zero-tolerance approach to the protection of children and will ensure that platforms are held responsible for the content that they host.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, also raised the question of whether schools would return to the days of Section 28. I can reassure the noble Lord that that is absolutely not the case. The RSHE guidance is clear that pupils should be taught LGBT content at an age-appropriate point in their education and that they should know about protected characteristics within the Equality Act. However, we need to provide clarity for schools and colleges and, importantly, reassurance for parents on the content that is being taught.

I turn to mandatory reporting, which was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Walmsley, I think there might have been a slight confusion in relation to the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, which obviously has been published and therefore predates the Government’s publication in relation to the child sexual abuse mandatory reporting duty that we have committed to introduce.

We have committed to working across government to consult on how this will work in practice, sensitive to the wider impact of this and burdens, and will work through whether action is needed at an organisational or individual level, or indeed at both. In developing our proposals, which we have consulted on, we looked carefully at the experiences of other countries that have mandatory reporting, including Australia and Canada, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked.

My noble friend Lady Jenkin and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised the very important issue of children’s mental health. Obviously, that is a real priority and concern. We are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year in NHS mental health services by March 2024, which will help 345,000 more children and young people to access mental health support. We are also committed to supporting schools with our offer of senior mental health lead training, which has already been accessed by over 14,000 settings.

Of course, the other side of mental health is resilience and well-being and I will pick up on the comments of my noble friends Lord Sandhurst and Lord Wrottesley about the importance of sport and PE, and indeed wider extracurricular activities, in building children’s and young people’s resilience.

I turn to the issues of extremism in relation to safeguarding schools, raised by my noble friend Lord Farmer and the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin. The House may be aware that I and fellow Ministers have had several discussions with faith and non-faith primary and secondary school providers, particularly in relation to the impact of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on both Muslim and Jewish and other students in a range of settings. As a result of these meetings, we have agreed to prioritise actions to tackle inappropriate misinformation and disinformation about the conflict, particularly on social media, and we will be issuing guidance to teachers and schools on promoting tolerance and addressing racism and anti-Semitism. We have also updated our Educate Against Hate website, which provides resources and lesson plans for schools to support them in holding these very sensitive discussions.

My noble friend raised the issue of protests held in school hours. The Government are absolutely clear that it is not acceptable that children are not in school because of political activism. I am aware, having spoken to head teachers, how much pressure they are under from some parents, and indeed some colleagues, to allow children out of school. I think it is very important, as a Government, that we are clear that we support them and that they are doing the right thing to make sure that their children are in school.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, raised some concerns about Prevent. I can only disagree with the vast majority of what she said. Prevent plays an important part in safeguarding. Going back to the opening comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about how far we have come, we are able to intervene much earlier, which any parent of a child at risk of being drawn into extremist ideologies, whether far right or otherwise, would be grateful for. We feel that it is a really important plank and part of that progress.

I want to say a word about attendance, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and others. There is always a competition to be the most important thing, but this is certainly one of the most important things for us in the department: partly because of the issue of safety—children are safest when they are in school; partly because of the impact on their education, and we are very grateful to the Children’s Commissioner for her recent work on the impact on children’s attainment of missing school; and also because we know that children become invisible to all services when they are not in school. School is such an important place.

It was genuinely moving to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, talk about the care that teachers take, spotting how children behave in the playground, the corridor and the classroom, and that is where we need them to be.

My noble friend asked me about whether we would consider schools and academy trusts issuing fixed penalty notices for poor attendance. Obviously, schools can ask local authorities to issue those fines and local authorities have the legal responsibility to do that. If my noble friend has examples where that is not working well in practice, I would be happy to take those up.

I am out of time, but I will say quickly to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, that we do support the Children’s Commissioner’s recommendation of mandatory participation in the attendance data; some 87% of schools send in their data voluntarily. I thank my noble friend Lady Bottomley for her incredible work on the Children Act, which has been such an extraordinary influence in this country, and to share her recognition of the work of social workers, health visitors and teachers.

In closing, I thank again all noble Lords who spoke on this debate and, on your Lordships’ behalf, all those who work in schools, teachers in particular, for their work every hour, every day, to keep our children safe.

Universities: Nuclear Energy Sector Skills

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have for increasing investment in universities to provide more opportunities for young people to acquire the skills needed to expand electricity generating capacity in the nuclear energy sector, including nuclear fusion technology.

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

My Lords, we recognise the significant demand for skills in the nuclear sector, which are crucial to reaching net zero. We have allocated more than half of the £1.5 billion strategic priorities grant for 2023-24 to support the teaching of high-cost subjects such as science, engineering and technology, all of which can lead to careers in nuclear energy. We are also collaborating with the nuclear skills taskforce, which is devising a plan to expand and enhance the nuclear talent pool.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, the nuclear skills taskforce estimates a need for 180,000 skilled jobs to deliver 24 gigawatts of nuclear energy and warns that a shortfall of relevant skills could thwart the Government’s target. Is the Minister aware of the current rapid growth in demand for skilled graduates for both the fission and fusion sectors, and that we are way short of matching supply to demand? Will the Government support the proposal from Bangor University, in partnership with the National Nuclear Laboratory, for the establishment of a training reactor, which could help to train engineers and scientists to operate in nuclear facilities in order to produce nuclear medicines and research nuclear materials and components?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am aware, as are the Government more broadly, of the shortages and pressures that the noble Lord rightly refers to; he understands that those are global pressures as well as domestic ones. I will write to him on the specific project in Bangor, if I may. More broadly, the Government are absolutely committed to trying to build this workforce and provide skills; obviously, examples such as those he gave sound important in that.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will doubtless be aware of the many good examples of apprenticeship schemes serving both the fusion and fission industries, such as the UKAEA’s Oxfordshire Advanced Skills centre, Urenco at Capenhurst, Rolls-Royce in Derby and the Nuclear AMRC in Rotherham. Urenco also sponsors departments at Manchester University and plans to do so at Bangor University. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, rightly said, there is a worldwide skills shortage, with 180,000 job shortages predicted in the UK alone. All these schemes together will not touch the sides in meeting the industry’s requirements. What more can the Government do to encourage young people and teachers to gain the skills necessary to embark on highly rewarding careers in this most exciting of industries?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. I share her appreciation for the organisations that she named. We are investing £50 million over the next two years to pilot ways in which to increase the number of apprenticeships in engineering and other key growth sectors, as well as to address barriers to entry into these professions. We will set out more detail on that in the new year, which will, I hope, go some way to addressing her concerns.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords—

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[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that a memorandum of understanding has been signed with the United Arab Emirates to provide it with nuclear technology; if we do not provide it with that technology, the Russians most certainly will. The technology will be of no use unless there are trained personnel to mediate it. Do we intend to train those UAE personnel? If so, where and when should the training begin?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Viscount will have to forgive me; I am not familiar with the details on that, but I would be happy to write to him.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, to develop nuclear technology—including fusion technology—we need many more PhD students working in postgraduate degrees, as well as more funding for those PhDs? Furthermore, as we are now not going to join Euratom and we do not have a prototype fusion reactor, what plans do the Government have to rejoin the ITER—International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor—programme?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that we need more PhDs, but we need skills at every level. That is where the Government’s strategy is focusing, starting in schools and building through T-levels, then to high-quality advanced levels up to PhD. The Government are very open to exploring international co-operation in this area—less on the research side, but the AUKUS agreement was a sign of that.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, is not the truth of the matter that the UK is not on track to meet its greenhouse gas emission commitments made at COP 26 only two years ago? The climate emergency is now, and it is already probably too late to keep our planet below 2 degrees, let alone 1.5 degrees, of climate change. If nuclear fusion technology is achieved, it will not arrive in time to save us. Should our immediate focus not be on renewable energy skills that can make a fundamental difference to net zero immediately?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely do not accept that the UK Government are not on track to meet their climate targets. We are ahead of every other major nation, as the noble Earl knows. We are also doing a lot of work in relation to green skills. Again, we will publish a green jobs plan in the first half of 2024, but we have very attractive green skills offers across every level, from skills boot camps up to the highest possible qualifications.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, when I questioned the Minister on skills on 27 November, she replied that the Government had announced £200 million of funding for local skills innovation funds. Are the Government aware of any examples of these local funds being available or currently used in the nuclear energy sector?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It depends what the noble Baroness means by the nuclear energy sector. There are some big and strategic employers, and we can see regionally—in places such as Cumbria, unsurprisingly, and Bridgwater—that there is a concentration of activity, particularly in higher education and apprenticeships. If we think more broadly of the supply chain for nuclear, I can be very confident that it is included.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, are not the technical nuclear skills that we need particularly related to smaller and medium-sized nuclear modules and reactors, of which many other countries are now ordering considerable numbers? We seem to be stuck in yet another competition while the order books are getting full. Is this not, in fact, the key to an all-electric future in 2050, without which we will not succeed?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government feel that we have made major commitments in this area. We committed up to £385 million to an advanced nuclear fund to provide funding for small modular reactor design and to progress plans for demonstration examples by the early 2030s at the latest.

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register. The Midlands region faces particular challenges in this area, with the ramp-up in AUKUS in the near term, which the Minister referred to, and future programmes such as the STEP fusion reactor at West Burton. How do the Government plan to support nuclear skills programmes in the Midlands, and will the Minister agree to meet with me and wider stakeholders to discuss how we can work together in this area?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. I would be delighted to meet with him and, I hope, include the Skills Minister. I am sure we would learn very much from the noble Lord’s expertise in this area. In response to his first question, I can say that the Government are working really closely with the nuclear sector through the nuclear skills taskforce, which includes representation from Rolls-Royce. The whole aim of the taskforce is to support the sector to develop a plan to build the pipeline that we so badly need. It is obviously excellent to see the development of the Nuclear Skills Academy in Derby, which is training apprentices from levels 3 to 6. The noble Lord will also be aware of all the Institutes of Technology bringing together further education, higher education and employers across the Midlands.

Early Years Education

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I express my sadness at the untimely death of Lord Darling. We can have some small insight into the extraordinary pressure that he must have worked under, at a time of global financial crisis, and the calmness and judgment he brought to his role. We send our very best wishes to his family, in particular.

We have heard some powerful messages from across the Chamber today on the importance of high-quality early years education. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, very much for securing this debate and all noble Lords who have contributed to the topic. Whatever our perspectives, today’s debate has highlighted how crucial it is that we ensure all children have the best start in life. Decades of evidence, as we heard today, has shown that quality early years education has a critical positive effect on children’s outcomes, in the short and the long term. That is why the Government are committed to ensuring that every child receives high-quality education and care.

I absolutely accept that His Majesty’s Opposition are rightly there to challenge the Government’s record but, before I talk more about the Government’s policies in this area and attempt to address some of the questions raised by noble Lords, I feel it is important for the record to say that some of the remarks about how unsuccessful our education system is are very far from the truth. We have seen a significant improvement in reading and in maths. Our children aged nine and 10 are now fourth in the world and the best in the western world at reading. There has been a significant improvement in maths as well. That has been thanks to the absolute focus that this Government, and in particular my former ministerial colleague Minister Gibb, paid to this very important plank for future education. I absolutely accept the challenges posed by noble Lords, but we need to keep the record straight on the Government’s record on education.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, gently again raised the important issues of childhood obesity. I will take back his thoughts to my ministerial colleagues about the importance of a review and the work he is leading in relation to ultra-processed foods. The early years foundation stage framework requires that, where children are provided with meals, snacks or drinks in an early years setting, they need to be healthy and nutritious. We have example menus for early years settings in England and provide guidance to staff on menu planning. I hope that he takes some reassurance from the focus within early years, although I accept his concerns about the wider issues of obesity.

The quality of our early years provision was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others. England has some of the highest-quality provision in the world, with 96% of early years settings rated good or outstanding by Ofsted as of August 2023, which is up from 74% in 2012. The early years foundation stage statutory framework sets the standards that all early years providers must follow to ensure that children have the skills and knowledge they need to thrive. In 2021, this Government reformed the early years framework more broadly to improve early years outcomes for all children, particularly disadvantaged children—noble Lords rightly raised the subject—in the critical areas that build the foundations for later success, such as mathematics, language development and literacy and, importantly, in play, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, articulated so clearly.

I am delighted to be able to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that we are making great progress in encouraging children to connect with nature. We recently launched our National Education Nature Park; I can send her the link. This is providing children in every school the chance to map their school grounds and upload those digitally, so that we can build a whole digital map. There are grants for schools with very low levels of biodiversity to be able to increase biodiversity. I visited an extremely urban school in Birmingham earlier this week to see what it was doing in relation to the nature park. It is growing vegetables; it has chickens and takes the eggs from them for the breakfast club’s scrambled eggs. I know that she is not pleased with everything the Government do, but I hope that she will accept that this is a step in the right direction.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I do not necessarily expect an immediate answer, but can the Minister perhaps think about whether it is possible to extend such a programme to nursery settings?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It has already been extended to the nursery sector. We are way ahead. But this is an important point because it sets children off in the way we hope they will continue: with a love of nature but also a sense of agency within it.

I turn to concerns that noble Lords raised about the impact of Covid on children’s development. The 2022-23 early years foundation stage profile results, published by the department today, show that there has been an increase in the proportion of five year-olds achieving a good level of development compared to last year. In 2022-23, 67.2% of children had a good level of development, and 65.6% were at the expected level across all 17 early learning goals—that is up 2% on last year. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, rightly raised concerns about recovery post Covid.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for raising important issues about children and screen time. If the noble Baroness has time, I would be happy to meet her and talk about the additional security that we think the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance provides to children in education settings, although she is clearly not convinced it is achieving that. I do not think there is any difference in our aims and aspirations for the safety of children, so it would be helpful if the noble Baroness would agree to explore that in more detail. I absolutely agree with her about the importance of the privacy of children’s data.

I turn to the expansion in provision. We are determined to support as many families as possible with access to high-quality and affordable childcare. A number of noble Lords remarked on a focus on encouraging people—principally women—back into the workplace, which is an important goal for all the reasons that the House will be aware of. However, it is in no way a compromise on the quality and richness and developmental value that the noble Baroness opposite set out so clearly in her remarks.

By 2027-28, we expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion each year on free childcare. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, cited the current costs of childcare, which make the case eloquently for the changes that we are bringing in, because we understand that they are a tremendous pressure on those who have very young children and wish to go out to work. This huge expansion means that millions of children will benefit from the extraordinary efforts of the sector to give children the safest and highest-quality early education and childcare. As a first stage in growing and supporting the early years workforce to deliver these entitlements, the Government consulted on a number of further flexibilities to the early years foundation stage this year, which will be implemented from January 2024, so that providers can use their existing workforce better while protecting quality and safety.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked why the Government did not consult on the planned expansion. The Spring Budget announcement responded to the concerns aired and raised by parents about the cost of childcare. Since then, the noble Baroness will be aware that we have consulted on key factors of the rollout, including funding and other changes.

The quality of our early years and childcare sector is a testament to the ongoing dedication and hard work of those in the profession. Since the pandemic, the Government have committed up to £180 million of support to promote quality and best practice and provide staff with opportunities for career progression, as we heard from a number of speakers this evening. This includes a package of training, qualifications and guidance for the workforce. We have expanded the early years professional development programme to enable up to 10,000 more level 3 qualified early years practitioners to access the latest teaching in communication and language, early mathematics and personal, social and emotional development. We are also funding the national professional qualification in early years leadership, which is designed to support early years leaders to develop expertise in leading high-quality education and care, as well as effective staff and organisational management.

In addition, we are proud to say that over two-thirds of primary schools have benefited from our investment in the Nuffield early language intervention, improving the speech and language skills of over 160,000 children in reception classes so far. More than 500,000 primary school children have been screened to identify those with language development difficulties, which we know can be such a blocker for their future education.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked whether the department had made an estimate of the dead weight in our expansion. There will be a full evaluation of the rollout, which will also look at that issue.

To return to the workforce issues, which were raised again by the noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Twycross, and other noble Lords, to support providers to recruit the staff they need to deliver the expansion in childcare entitlements announced at the Spring Budget, we are developing a range of new workforce initiatives, including the launch of a national recruitment campaign, planned for the beginning of 2024, to boost interest in the sector and support the recruitment of talented staff. We are removing barriers to entering the workforce by ensuring that qualifications are suitable and easy to understand. This includes launching a competition to find providers of early years skills boot camps, which will include a pathway to an accelerated level 3 early years apprenticeship. We are also developing new degree apprenticeship routes so that everyone, from junior staff to senior leaders, can easily move into a career in the sector.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Goudie, challenged on whether the change in the staff-to-child ratio would make it harder to retain staff. As the House knows, we are providing flexibility to providers to move from a 4:1 to a 5:1 ratio, in line with that which exists in Scotland. However, ultimately, it is the managers of settings who know what support their children need, and they will know their staff best. The Government trust their judgment as to what ratios they believe are right for them in their settings. Supporting the workforce is obviously a priority, which is why we provided £204 million of additional funding to local authorities, so that providers can recruit and retain the staff that they need.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, raised a very troubling case, if I understood rightly, of a child on the autism spectrum who was suspended from nursery school, which slightly defies one’s imagination. We do recognise that quality early years education means meeting the needs of all children, which of course critically includes those with special educational needs and disabilities. The House knows very well the importance of those needs being identified as early as possible, as emphasised in the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan, which we published in March this year.

We are funding the training of up to 7,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators, and there is also SEND-focused content in the package of support and guidance for the workforce which I outlined earlier. We are also reviewing the operation of SEND inclusion funds within the current early years funding system to ensure that funding arrangements are both appropriate and really well-targeted to improve outcomes for preschool children with special educational needs.

To finish, I want to touch on an important point that was raised in the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, today; that quality early years education is provided not only in nurseries, childminder settings and schools but also, of course, at home. We know that a stable and stimulating home learning environment is also crucial to children’s development. That is why we secured £28.7 million between now and 2025 for local authorities to support specifically the speech and language of young children who were worst affected by the pandemic, namely today’s three and four year-olds. That programme is being delivered through family hubs and the Start for Life programme. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised the importance of parenting and children having a routine, which clearly family hubs are part of delivering.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, mentioned the return of Sure Start. As I think she will be aware, we believe that our family hubs really build on the learnings from Sure Start and from children’s centres and are a single place where a family can access all the support they need, including support for mothers with mental health issues, which noble Lords also raised.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, invited me to meet the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and the Early Years Alliance. She may be aware that the department meets both groups very regularly and I know that the Minister for Children and Families has also met them. I would be delighted to as well, if the noble Baroness would find it useful. She also asked whether we hold data on children whose families are in receipt of universal credit. That is held by the Department for Work and Pensions, but I am happy to write if that data is available. I close by thanking your Lordships—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, I raised the issue of a new target for the 60,000 vulnerable babies and asked what the Government are planning to do on that. Will she write to me about it, as it is an NHS matter?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be delighted to write about that and all the other issues that I have not had time to cover this evening.

I close by thanking your Lordships for their thoughtful contributions to the debate today and to underline our shared gratitude to early years professionals who are doing such a fantastic job to deliver high-quality education to our youngest children.

Jobs Market: Graduates

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Londesborough]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the jobs market for graduates, and whether this assessment points to a mismatch between skills and vacancies.

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

My Lords, one-third of vacancies in the UK are due to skills shortages. The Government want to develop a world-leading, employer-focused, high-quality skills system that is fit for the future. Our higher education sector delivers some of the most in-demand occupational skills with the largest workforce needs, including training of nurses and teachers. The DfE published graduate labour market statistics showing that, in 2022, workers with graduate-level qualifications had an 87.3% employment rate and earned an average of £38,500. Both are higher than for non-graduates.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her detailed response, but the fact remains that we have swathes of overqualified graduates in jobs not requiring a degree. Outside London, that number has now risen to 42%, and in many regions it is more than half. Graduate vacancies are falling steeply, as is their wage premium, and students have now racked up more than £200 billion of debt, much of which will never be repaid. How do the Government plan to respond to the damaging mismatch between skills and vacancies?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his supplementary question. I recognise some of the points that he makes about the regional differences in graduate opportunities. However, on our wider skills strategy, the Government have introduced the lifelong learning Act, which will offer students the ability to reskill and upskill over their lifetimes. We are investing in skills at all levels and also focusing on making sure that the quality of all degrees is as high as can be.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I was so surprised by the absence of other noble Lords asking questions that I almost did not get up. Could the Minister think particularly about the creative industries, where, at the moment, there is a significant lack of people to fill vacancies? It is true, as I think she would agree, that, historically, it is not the highest paid sector, but it is one of the most highly skilled, and yet—and here she might not agree—the education system really does not emphasise enough the value of the skills needed for the creative industries. Could she let the House know how those skills are being better valued in the education system, so that those vacancies can be filled?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness has anticipated well that I do not agree that those skills are not valued in our education system. Obviously, those skills are evolving and developing more into digital skills; that is an area in which we are focused both in schools and in skills bootcamps, T-levels and beyond.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that we have a shortage of teachers—some might call it a crisis of teacher vacancies—in our schools. We also have a crisis of shortages in specialist subjects, such as physics and the creative subjects, as we have heard. Fewer and fewer young people are going into teaching or studying education at university. To try to avert this crisis, is there a case for saying that we will refund your tuition fees if you become a teacher?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government are not considering that at the moment, and I remind the House that teacher numbers are at an all-time high, at over 468,000.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, I welcome both the Government’s efforts to make apprenticeships more accessible to ensure that people can be supported into key occupations and the expansion of this into the health service, especially with the recent NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. In healthcare professions, cover is required for apprentices’ roles when they are studying. Those apprentices are often on full-time salaries, so backfilled funding will have to be found to ensure that those workplaces can cope. As this cannot be covered by the apprenticeship levy, what support are the Government offering to ensure that those apprenticeship routes can be successful?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government are committed to the development of apprenticeships at all levels, including, for example, degree apprenticeships for nurses in the NHS. In relation to the earlier question, we are also exploring teacher apprenticeships. I will have to write to the right reverend Prelate on the specifics of the funding of backfilling.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness tell us why the Secretary of State has cut the higher technical education skills injection fund by one-third, down from £32 million to £21 million, at a time when the country is facing major skills shortages? It is just another example of short-termism, selling the country—and graduates—short.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness talks about £32 million; our skills reforms are backed by an investment of £3.8 billion over the course of this Parliament to strengthen higher and further education. In particular, we announced £200 million of funding for local skills innovation funds, supporting the local skills partnerships led by employers.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I come back to teachers and extend the issue to healthcare workers such as doctors and nurses. I declare my interest as a member of the GMC council. If you look at the stats for trainee doctors and nurses after they have graduated, and then look at how many stay in the health service for, say, two to three years after graduation, you find that the attrition rate is alarmingly high. Is there not a case for tying some financial incentive to sticking with the health service for five years or more and at least mitigating the cost of some of your student loan?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am less familiar with the details of the health service but, in relation to teaching and children’s social care, that is why there is so much focus in our work on retention, support for early career teachers and improving the quality of initial teacher training.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Would my noble friend agree that there are many reasons why youngsters should choose a particular course at university, of which employment or potential for future employment is an important one? I declare an interest, as I have a daughter presently at university. Could my noble friend say what the Government, and indeed universities themselves, are doing to inform youngsters making choices on which degrees to pursue at university, so that they have more information about their employability thereafter?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend that young people should be well-equipped to understand not just the options for their subject but that subject at that particular institution, because we know that future earnings power, and in addition future job satisfaction, vary very much between institutions. There are improvements being made, and I am happy to send details to my noble friend on ways that students can access that information.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, further to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the question of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, this is not just for the arts, and it is about not just training up or career awareness but affordability. The plain fact is that many employers in the arts today cannot afford the skilled workers they need. It is at this point that the Government should intervene.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am always slightly baffled by this line of questioning, because when I look at the performance of our creative industries and the performing arts, I see that they are resoundingly successful, both domestically and globally. I appreciate that there are skills pressures in those areas, but they are ones that many organisations are overcoming.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, following the question of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, should not those with science degrees who have not got jobs be strongly encouraged to train to help fill the many physics vacancies which are causing so much worry in the education system?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware of the detail as to whether there is a mismatch between those with science degrees, in particular physics degrees, and vacancies. My understanding is that the opportunities for those with STEM degrees are significantly higher at higher professional levels than for those without.

Educational Technology

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for her work in establishing standards for online safety and privacy, and for securing this debate. Her speech highlighted many of the risks inherent in these technologies as well as some of the opportunities. My noble friend Lady Harding felt daunted after just a couple of your Lordships’ speeches, but I feel even more daunted coming at the end after such expertise and insight from your Lordships.

I am pleased to say in response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, about our work with AI in Education that we have been working and liaising with it, and I share the noble Baronesses’ respect. I also spent time on its website recently, and I was stunned at the range of resources that it has created. I was fortunate enough to be part of its conference yesterday, which was an incredibly vibrant event bringing together many teachers and educators from around the country.

My noble friend Lady Morgan suggested that the Government need to avoid playing catch-up; I am sure she will recognise that it feels particularly hard for government, which is perhaps not generally famed for its agility, to operate and not play catch-up in an area where the pace of change is so extraordinarily fast. The way I would try to characterise this for my noble friend is that we are looking at this through two lenses. The first is to stay very close to teachers and work closely with them to understand what their immediate needs and worries are in relation to these technologies, and make sure that we can respond to those where appropriate. However, this is also about working very hard on the medium and longer-term issues—I will touch a little more on that in my remarks, but I do not want to underestimate the scale of the task because I know my noble friend Lady Morgan does not either.

We want to create an environment where all schools and trusts can use technology to improve access to education and outcomes, reduce staff workload and run their operations more efficiently. Technology is certainly not an easy solution to all this, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, raised important questions on the role of government in protecting students from the harms of technology. She asked whether we will introduce a data protection regime design for school settings; we are developing the Education Privacy Assurance Scheme—or EPAS to its friends—to work with education settings to help them understand and deliver their obligations and responsibilities in relation to data protection legislation. However, I will look more closely at the points she raised about the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, and I will of course come back to the noble Baroness in writing with an update on that.

In relation to whether we will introduce standard procurement contracts, we are currently looking at the ways in which we can make the procurement of technology easier for schools. We have five ICT frameworks in place, which are accessible via the find a framework service, and we are looking at how we can support schools beyond the framework, such as providing support developing specifications.

In relation to the peer review of education technology, we have the same expectations for robust evidence for education technology as we do elsewhere in education. I think the House would acknowledge that we are genuinely world leading in our quality of our education research, and so only where there is robust evidence of the impact of technology will we go further in actively encouraging adoption of that technology in the classroom. We have provided £137 million to the Education Endowment Foundation. Its upcoming research trials will explore teaching approaches that use educational technology, including which features of the technology, and how they are used, may support academic attainment—or not, as the noble Baroness suggested.

In relation to filtering and monitoring, we have published standards to help schools understand their responsibilities and statutory duties to safeguard children online, and we have embedded these standards in our Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance. That update was launched in March of this year and the standards have had over 100,000 views, so this is clearly touching something that feels very relevant to schools. We have also provided useful links to training materials and guidance to support schools, including commissioning the UK Safer Internet Centre to create and run a series of webinars.

We have set technology standards on connectivity, cybersecurity, filtering and monitoring, use of the cloud, and servers and storage. We want all schools to meet these standards, which is one reason why we have provided £200 million of investment to upgrade schools that fall below our wifi standards. We are also piloting a digital service to help schools to benchmark their technology, identify areas of improvement and implement these recommendations. We are currently testing those in Blackpool and Portsmouth, and will open it up to more schools next year.

We know that technology evolves at pace and that adoption of generative AI is ever more widespread. We must work very closely with the whole education sector to provide support on how best to use the technology, maximising opportunity while minimising risk. My noble friend Lady Harding asked what the department is doing in relation to LLMs and some of the points she raised are certainly on our radar, or are things that we are actively working on. We began by launching a call for evidence on generative AI in education over the summer. We had 567 responses from practitioners, edtech companies and AI experts across all stages of education, and we will publish the responses this autumn.

In October, we began work with Faculty and the National Institute of Teaching to understand the possible uses of generative AI in education, in a safe setting, exploring the opportunities that this technology presents to reduce teacher workload; to improve outcomes, particularly and explicitly for children with special educational needs, as referred to by my noble friend Lady Morgan, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds; and to use the technology to run school operations more efficiently.

We have held our first hackathon, which was huge fun as well as very insightful. I hope that we can expand some of that work in the new year, and we will publish the findings in spring 2024.

I absolutely agree with the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, about AI becoming a co-pilot with teachers. There has perhaps been a focus on using technology to substitute things that teachers already do rather than using it to enhance what they could do.

We have worked closely with Ofqual, Ofsted, the Office for Students and the Education Endowment Foundation as we develop our thinking. We are exploring the role of the Government in relation to the aggregation and curation of content, which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to. We are also exploring our regulatory approach, including the role of a regulatory sandbox for looking at the behaviour of individual products, helping us understand what our regulatory approach should be and, as also picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, looking at how we can maximise the value of our educational IP.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, talked about the importance of children socialising. There are rightly concerns about tools that are serving children directly but, as the Committee has heard, our initial focus has been more on working with teachers and looking at some of the back-office functions. There is a tension and a need to hold on to the short-term pressures that teachers face in relation to the risk of plagiarising, for example; the medium-term issues about curation of content and regulation; and the really big-picture philosophical issues about how we think a classroom will look in five, 10 or 15 years.

My noble friend Lady Morgan and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about and challenged the current curriculum. I remind the Committee that our focus on numeracy and literacy and a knowledge-rich curriculum has helped us to be ranked the highest country in the western world for the reading ability of nine and 10 year-olds. We rank fourth out of 43 countries that assessed children at the same time for the PIRLS 2021 survey. Similarly, we have seen significant improvement in maths. I am happy to write to noble Lords with more detail on the digital content in our curriculum.

My noble friend Lady Harding asked about the exception from the age-appropriate design code. There are exemptions for low-risk services, which include those managed by education providers, that are already subject to regulatory frameworks such as the Keeping Children Safe in Education framework.

Finally, in the last minute—which I do not have—I turn to the questions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Twycross, about the role of Oak. Oak has been established as an arm’s-length body and is working very collaboratively with the education system and with teachers across the country to develop free curriculum resources.

I end by crediting the hard work and tenacity shown by teachers and leaders up and down the country, and by reassuring the Committee that the Government remain committed not only to supporting schools and students to achieve the best possible results but to consulting and working closely with the sector as we develop our work on the technology that will touch every child and teacher.

Committee adjourned at 4.59 pm.

Children’s Care Homes: Reform

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the system of children’s care homes.

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

My Lords, we want all looked-after children to live in stable, loving homes where they are safe and cared for. We are taking forward the commitments already made to improve the quality and consistency of safeguards across residential settings through new standards of care; to develop a new financial oversight regime for the market; to increase provision; and to take steps to ensure a stable and skilled children’s home workforce.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer. What is obvious, I am afraid, is how desperately unambitious the Government have been in reforming a broken system. In spite of the commitment of all who work in this area, it is a system that adversely affects the life chances of the most vulnerable children in our society. Is the Minister aware, as reported in the Observer on 8 October, that the 20 largest private operators of children’s homes, 10 of which have private equity or sovereign fund ownership, made a £300 million profit—I repeat: £300 million—last year, at the same time as local authority spending was being squeezed? Does the Minister agree that this is just plain wrong? What urgent steps will the Government take to stop so obvious an outrage happening again this year?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not accept the noble Lord’s assertion that the Government’s plans are unambitious, but I do recognise some of the concerns he raises about profiteering, which, as he knows, we would distinguish from being profitable. We are particularly concerned about those larger providers which have complex and sometimes very opaque ownership structures. That is why we want to bring much greater transparency to the market.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend look very favourably on the work done by local authorities for looked-after children? Will she ensure that in the Autumn Statement sufficient resources are available for the excellent work they do? Have the Government ever looked at the possibility of extending looked-after care beyond 18?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that in some cases there is a duty of care up to age 25 for children who have certain special educational needs and disabilities. I share my noble friend’s gratitude for local authorities and the work they do in this area.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister understands that many local authorities rushed into outsourcing these services. They then quickly discovered that not only were they facing increased demands, but the new providers could set their fees wherever they wanted and could select whichever young people they wanted. One of the terrible results of this is that young people are being placed in hugely distant parts of the United Kingdom and are losing contact with their extended family, their schools and their friends. Would the Minister consider setting up a review of the current situation in residential childcare so that we can do better for the most vulnerable young people?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely accept that far too many children who are in children’s homes—around two-thirds last year—were placed outside their local authority area. Obviously, I enormously respect the noble Lord’s expertise in this area. I hope he would agree with me that we have done a lot of reviewing. We are doing a lot of consulting, and we are very focused on growing the response from foster carers and increasing that part of the market, particularly in relation to kinship care, which I think the House believes may be the best solution for many of these children.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, in understanding that certain of these firms that are running children’s homes are making an excessive profit, would it not be a good idea if we addressed one of the accepted problems with the childcare system: the transition to adult life? If services were required to give active support to these individuals, we might have fewer problems carrying on, and we would make sure that this transition to being an independent person is easier. There is the money there because there is an excessive profit. Surely it should be used for this.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To be fair, we need to be careful not to generalise too much. We have had some egregious examples, of which the most notable recently was the Hesley Group, with terrible abuses happening in children’s homes. We also have some very high-quality providers which are focused on many things, including the transition to which the noble Lord refers.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Local authority budgets are absolutely squeezed; profiteering is eye-watering; there are reports of horrendous abuse; and vulnerable children are being sent half way across the UK. What will the Government do to end the profiteering and ensure that children in care receive the best the system can offer?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have already talked about the change to the financial oversight that we want to bring in the children’s social care market. The noble Baroness will also be aware that we are introducing a regional model for providing homes for children and we are working with partners both within the sector and in health and justice to co-design this. We will be piloting two regional care co-operatives, which we hope will rebalance that power dynamic between the providers and the local authorities.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

For those who were fortunate enough to grow up in a Sheffield City Council children’s home at a time when councils had children’s departments, the input of private equity into this sector is totally wrong. It sends all the wrong messages, and it also prevents integrated care between a local authority and the homes that are provided. All of this about loving care is, frankly, nonsense. What are needed are decent homes, and the realisation that some children actually like living in a children’s home, as I did, because it provided security and a good environment. Can we look at chasing private equity out of the system?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend and have great respect for him sharing his own experience from Sheffield. The reality of our situation today is that just over 80% of children’s home places are provided by the private sector, so we need to make sure that the sector is resilient. We are working on this in a number of ways, including increasing funding and provision, and reform, before we chase people out in a way that could destabilise provision.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister accept thanks for having mentioned kinship care, which is a very important part of dealing with this problem? Could she also tell us when the Government’s kinship care strategy, which has been trailed umpteen times, is actually going to see the light of day?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We are going to publish the long-awaited kinship care strategy by the end of this year, which will set out our national direction. Over the next two years, we will establish a new kinship carer training offer, with an investment of over £45 million to begin implementing practical and financial support packages, so that children can stay safely within a kinship group.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, for many years, I served on a fostering panel in my local authority. Research shows that, for various reasons, children in care homes have a higher rate of mental health problems. We always put that down to the shortage of funds in local authorities; does the Minister agree? For the last 10 years or so, local authorities have experienced something like 50% cuts to their funding.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not agree with that. While I agree that children in care homes potentially have more severe mental health issues, I think that, typically, children who go into a care home have also experienced severe neglect and abuse, and have more complex needs than those who are fostered.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, what efforts are the Government making to support a lot more foster carers?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government are making a great deal of effort in this area. We are investing over £27 million, in this spending review period, in a foster care recruitment and retention programme. That will start in the north-east, with £3 million for a pathfinder hub; the additional £24 million will be for a wider rollout.

Schools: Food Standards

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to review the regulations relating to standards for food in schools, and in particular whether they plan to reduce the amount of added sugar they allow.

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

My Lords, the school food standards regulate the food and drink provided at both lunchtime and other times of the school day. They already restrict foods high in fat, salt and sugar. We believe that the current standards provide a robust yet flexible framework to ensure that pupils in England continue to receive high-quality and nutritious food that builds healthy eating habits for life. We continue to keep the standards under review.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am disappointed that the Minister is not indicating that the Government are willing to undertake a review. Is she aware that they undertook a review in 2014, which eased the rules so that more sugar can be used in school meals? This is damaging the health of children, as we see from the evidence of morbid obesity. Will she review the position and please move to at least apply the regulations that applied when Labour was in power, when we had fewer children with obesity?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hope that the noble Lord recognises at lot of the measures that the Government have taken on sugar content in food generally and the positioning of food products in retail settings, as well as our wider approach to food education in the national curriculum and our investment in the primary PE and sport premium.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention to a study published this week showing a welcome reduction in the number of hospital extractions of children’s teeth due to the soft drinks industry levy. Does she agree with the chair of the British Dental Association that now is the time for the Government to double down on measures that force industry to reduce the amount of sugar in food and drink, and that our school meals regulations should be part of that doubling down?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We have made significant changes with the soft drinks levy, the regulations on home calorie labelling and the restrictions that I mentioned in response to the noble Lord opposite regarding the location of products high in fat and sugar. I understand that those location restrictions are judged to be the single most impactful obesity policy on reducing children’s calorie consumption.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, what is concerning is the apparent lack of understanding among many schoolchildren today about where and how food is produced and what is wholesome and healthy food. With that in mind, is it not time for the Government to look again at investing more in domestic sciences to teach children how to cook good food that does not include unhealthy contents?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I reassure my noble friend that that is covered in the national curriculum in a number of subjects, including within design and technology, where there is a focus on exactly the issues of where food is produced and how to cook in a healthy way, and on teaching children to cook a number of mainly savoury recipes.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has referred to a number of actions that the Government have taken that go wider than schools, but why have the Government consistently postponed the introduction of a ban on multibuy products relating to high sugar and fat content? It has now been postponed for another two years. Why is that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I may need to write to the noble Lord with a detailed answer to that. The Government follow the evidence on what will have the greatest impact. Specifically in relation to children, as I said, it is the location of products that makes the biggest difference.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My lords, the Minister referred in her first Answer to my noble friend to a certainty that food that was supplied to children would be healthy and nutritious—I think those are the words she used. If I were a parent with a child at school, how would I find the evidence demonstrating that the food being offered to them met those standards?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sure that parents can access the school food standards. We work closely with schools and help them, particularly at times of inflationary pressure, to ensure that they get the best value for money. We offer that service to any state-funded school that wants it. Again, I can write to the noble Baroness with details of where parents would find that information.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, this week happens to be Sugar Awareness Week. The Question from my noble friend Lord Brooke rightly highlights the risk of sugar in school food. Shockingly, four in 10 children now leave primary school at an above healthy weight. What more action will the Government take to ensure that all foods and drinks served in schools are as nutritious as possible? Have they assessed the impact of delaying advertising bans aimed at protecting children?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As I think I have tried to say in response to earlier questions, the school food standards are part of a much wider picture of what impacts on childhood obesity, which I agree is at very worrying levels. This Government have introduced universal infant free school meals, we have robust school food standards that are set in legislation, and we have made a number of other moves to make sure that children get a healthy diet and are educated in a way to understand what that is.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Are we aware that one of the reasons why children eat a lot of sugar is that their parents do? There is inherited bad performance when it comes to food and your social position. When will the Government get behind my Bill, which would create a ministry of poverty prevention so that these things can be dealt with? We cannot just keep expecting people suddenly to wake up to the fact that sugar is not good for them. Until we hit poverty, we are not going anywhere.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government have a strong record in this area, with changes to the eligibility for free school meals for families in receipt of universal credit. I hear the strength of the noble Lord’s feelings, but, as he will have just heard in the King’s Speech, I am afraid the direct answer to his question about when the Government will support his proposal is that it will not be in the near term.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, although it is obviously important that we inform pupils and their families about eating less sugar and having healthier diets generally, are my noble friend the Minister and her department aware of some of the unintended consequences? For example, when the soft drinks levy came in, one company found that its sales were going down, so it brought in an older version called Irn Bru 1901, which was sweeter and more expensive for consumers. How do we make sure that we do not cause the unintended consequence of unhealthier drinks?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As I said, specifically on food and drink available in school, our Get Help Buying for Schools service makes sure that schools buy not only efficiently and compliantly but well and healthily.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

This week, given what the King did yesterday in launching his charity to tackle food poverty, we need to acknowledge that this is a real issue. Many children who are entitled to free school meals have never been registered for them or claimed them. Sheffield has had an auto-enrolment scheme for free school meals, which has meant that 6,500 children who otherwise would not be getting a meal at school now are. Will the Government encourage every local authority to auto-enrol children who are eligible but not claiming? That would be a tiny but none the less significant step in tackling food poverty.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very interested in the noble Baroness’s example of Sheffield because, when I have been asked about auto-enrolment previously, I noted that the constraints around it relate to data protection and the ability to share someone’s details. I would be interested to follow up with the noble Baroness later.

Schools: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and remind the House of my declared interests.

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

My Lords, we expect all schools to be able to identify commonly occurring special educational needs. In the improvement plan we included proposals to build workforce capacity and equip practitioners to identify needs and make best use of provision. Our increase in the high needs budget, worth £10.54 billion by 2024-25, will help children and young people with SEND in both special and mainstream schools to receive the right support in the right place at the right time.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minster for that reply. How does she square that with the fact that, according to an LSE survey, in lower socioeconomic groups more people are identified as having problems, but far fewer are identified correctly with those needs than are identified in more affluent areas? If you have other conditions such as dyslexia, it is not about doing more work, but working smarter. The way your brain is organised is different; I know this only too well from personal experience. You need different learning patterns and different strategies. When are we going to get to a situation where it is not the tiger parent who gets the diagnosis, but the school?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I acknowledge the noble Lord’s point about the variability in identification of certain commonly occurring special educational needs. There is a variability as the noble Lord explained, but also regionally. That is why we are trying in our special educational needs, disabilities and AP improvement plan to make sure that at every level—from initial teacher training to the qualifications of SENCOs, to the availability of specialist support from educational psychologists—schools get the support they need and such children are identified early.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I am really concerned that parents are being told that their children’s special educational needs cannot be taken on in schools, or to move their children in order to maintain school statistics. Does the Minister agree that this is discriminatory, and what action will the Government take to prevent this happening?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If the noble Baroness has specific cases she would like to share with me afterwards, I will be more than happy to take those up and look into them. It is extremely important that children with special educational needs are in schools where they can flourish and thrive. For the vast majority, that will be in mainstream provision, but I recognise some of the pressures the noble Baroness describes and I am very happy to take this issue away and try to address it directly.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have a 45 year-old adult son with autism and learning disabilities, so I know many of the journeys that parents will have made in getting support for their children. What help is available in early schooling to support parents in identifying children with potential learning difficulties? Does she agree that, given the massive underfunding of schools and early years, schools are finding it difficult to cope with any of the demands, including children with learning disabilities?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely do not recognise the picture of massive underfunding of schools. As I have said repeatedly in the House, schools will have the highest budgets per pupil in real terms next year. There have been very significant increases over the last couple of years. Regarding the youngest children, we are funding up to 7,000 early years staff to do a level 3 SENCO qualification, so that we can identify those children at the earliest possible stage.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as laid out in the register as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. The Government’s SEND plan made not one mention of physical disability or cerebral palsy, despite referring to learning disability and autism. Without identification, how will the Minister make sure that schools support the needs of children with cerebral palsy, the most common cause of physical disability in children, to ensure that they achieve the best possible educational outcomes?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I recognise the point my noble friend makes, and she will be aware that we are running a number of pathfinder projects and testing some of our new approaches, including for children with physical disabilities. I hope my noble friend is pleased that in the improvement plan, we have added a fourth early standard. In additional to early language support, autism and mental health and wellbeing, we are also focusing on children with visual and hearing impairments whose performance at school currently is well below their potential.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, the Education Committee report of September 2023 recommends that the department scrutinise the use of alternative provision settings and ensure that children and young people with SEND are transferred there only after having a statutory assessment, and not use them as a behavioural management tool. What steps has the department taken towards addressing this issue?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously, the ESC report to which the right reverend Prelate refers is very recent, so the department is considering very seriously the recommendations from the committee. However, I absolutely recognise that behind the right reverend Prelate’s question is a concern about the quality of alternative provision; but, used well, it can provide an opportunity for early intervention and to return children to mainstream education.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Can the Minister tell the House what subsequent measures the DfE will put in place following reports from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission, and from Hertfordshire County Council this week, identifying widespread and systemic failings in SEN provision?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously, we take those reports extremely seriously, and that is the value of having an independent inspectorate. I cannot comment on the specific Hertfordshire case, but we work with the local authority or the trust in question to ensure that those issues are addressed.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will be aware that, every year, the number of children and young people with education, health and care plans who are permanently excluded from school is increasing significantly. How do we ensure that those children get their education, health and care plans implemented?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not sure that there is a direct link between implementation and exclusion; there are cases where a plan has been implemented. Of course, the last thing we want for any child—particularly children with education, health and care plans—is for them to be excluded from school. To return to my earlier answer, the Government are trying to think this through from the earliest stages for early years practitioners, equipping every teacher to teach children with special educational needs well and making sure they get the specialist provision they require. That is why our investment in this sector has expanded so dramatically.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as ever, I declare my interest as a teacher. Will the Government reconsider the priority given to parental preference in educational placements for children with EHC plans, given the opinion of many professionals that this is not in the best interests of the child or of efficient education provision, and that the popular schools are at breaking point?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Lord knows, a number of these things are under review, and we will test them as part of our pathfinders and in the improvement plan. It is very important that that balance be kept between the professional judgment of teachers, to which the noble Lord referred, and the sense of confidence that parents have in the system.