Schools (Mental Health Professionals) Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for this Private Member’s Bill, which enables your Lordships’ House to focus once again on the mental health needs of young people. The figures of the increased prevalence in young people of mental health symptoms and illness are alarming and I dare say that there is no one in today’s debate or in your Lordships’ House generally who does not know of a young person struggling like this.

The underlying mischief that the Bill seeks to address is to get mental health support early through school counsellors to avoid those mild to moderate symptoms deteriorating and therefore to sustain access to education, which is vital. Whether through the mental health support team, designated senior lead, school nurse, educational psychologist or school counsellor, mental health services need to be accessible via schools. I suggest that the school counsellor could also be the person who co-ordinates the education provision when a child is so mentally unwell that they can no longer access education in school, a cohort that I think is even beyond that outlined by the noble Baroness.

Within the statistics on this issue, one of the most startling is the rise in the prevalence of eating disorders. Among 11 to 16 year-olds, the incidence rose from 0.5% in 2017 to 2.6% in 2023, while among 17 to 19 year-olds it rose from 0.8% to 12.5%.

When the Mental Health Act was passed in 1983, it was not envisaged that children would be detained, save possibly under the Part 3 criminal justice provisions of that Act, but many children are indeed detained under the Act. NHS Digital recorded 997 detentions under the Act of people aged 17 and under in 2022-23, although the true figure will be higher, as not all providers submitted data. The figure also did not include those children who consented to be admitted, or whose parents consented to them being admitted, to a secure institution. The Children’s Commissioner report in 2020 outlined not only racial disparities in admissions to secure facilities, but more girls being detained and consenting to admissions than boys, which may of course be due to the rise in eating disorders that I outlined, which are more prevalent among girls.

Continuing education for those in secure units is so important. Although education can be provided remotely, it may be more difficult if the child has been placed out of area—an issue that I know His Majesty’s Government have been grappling with for years. Can my noble friend the Minister outline whether out-of-area placements of children and young people have ended if they are detained under the Act? If you are so detained, do you then come out with an EHCP, or is it the obligations under Section 117 on aftercare that help you get additional resources to catch up on lost education?

In 2018 the Department for Education prepared a very helpful research paper into the education provided for children in secure mental health institutions, but only 58% of units providing education in the secure estate responded to the call for evidence. Encouragingly, in most units that did respond, discussions with home schools were reported to take place at all points during the pupil’s time in the unit—their admission, their stay and as part of reintegration to the home school. But units had mixed experiences when obtaining sufficient information on baseline levels and progress from pupils’ home schools, with only 60% indicating that this was provided for more than half their pupils. That is 60% of the 58% that replied, so less than half of those trying to teach children in these units have significant information.

We need to ensure that teachers whose careers are dedicated to teaching in the secure mental health estate—I pay tribute to them—have all the necessary information about the child’s previous education. The Bill’s suggestion of every school having access to a school counsellor would provide a person who could ensure that secure units have sufficient information about a child’s current education. It could reassure noble Lords that someone is informed or aware of what is happening in the 42% of institutions that did not respond to the research paper. That represents hundreds of young people whose education we do not know about while they are in the secure mental health estate. It is a gap that I believe needs to be filled.

While the need for mental health expertise in schools is obvious, I am not convinced that legislation is needed to achieve this. It could, in fact, be counterproductive. What if one school has a major event, such as the school next to Grenfell Tower? If that had been part of a multi-academy trust, which it was not, could not all the mental health professionals be reassigned to that school for a period of time? Sadly, that could not happen under the Bill as currently framed, for fear of acting unlawfully.

What is the sanction if a school does not provide access to such support? Sadly, recourse to the courts by way of judicial review looks like the only enforceability option. Do we really want to encourage that? Is a school leader not free to say, “I will spend my resources elsewhere, as my school is in one of the 75 local authority areas that has a family hub and students have access to mental health support and counsellors there”?

I also wonder why the requirement in the Bill is not proposed to extend to the independent sector, as to provide such services would match the requirement to provide PSHE in independent schools. While arguably, of course, some will have access to private mental health support, often late diagnosis there will put the same strain on resources in the NHS that the noble Baroness seeks to avoid, and it will have similar adverse effects on the student’s prospects. As 70% of secondary schools and 52% of primary schools in England already offer counselling services, this causes me to doubt the wisdom of needing to legislate.

It is so encouraging that 14,400 settings have claimed a grant to train a senior mental health support lead. Can my noble friend the Minister reassure me that she has used her well-known expertise with data to look at the settings that have not applied? Are they in areas of deprivation? Is there cross-referencing with NHS data for areas where young people are most at risk of poor mental health outcomes to check whether these are the settings that have not applied for the grant and to enable them somehow to do so?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving your Lordships’ House the opportunity to focus on the mental health of children and young people. While the progress by His Majesty’s Government could perhaps be quicker in its rollout, I regret that I cannot support legislation as the appropriate means to fulfil this important aim.

Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

A number of businesses offer flexible working from day one, and obviously there is a legal duty to do so from 26 weeks’ employment. As all noble Lords will recognise, we have seen a tremendous change in patterns of work following the pandemic, particularly flexibility between the workplace and home, and there is an increasing natural adoption of those approaches.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to the gender pension deficit, is it the case that, when women are getting divorced and may not have legal advice, they are not taking the correct decisions—for example, they assume that the former matrimonial home is the largest asset—and not getting the pension split on divorce? Could we have some data to illuminate that and better communication to women in those situations?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As ever, my noble friend makes a very good point. I would be happy to meet her afterwards to explore how we could make that a reality.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

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

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

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

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

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

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

T-levels

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

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

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

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

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

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

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

Unregistered Schools

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It is probably not a good use of the House’s time for me to repeat what the Government are already doing, but I reiterate that we are working closely with local authorities, Ofsted and parents to make sure that we can get the best possible response. When legislative time allows, we will bring forward legislation in this area.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend outlined, some of these children fall into home education. She outlined renewed efforts in relation to this, but part of the Schools Bill that we lost was to have a register. Is it my noble friend’s view now that that can be done through other initiatives or are we going to get legislation on it as well?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think that my noble friend knows that the Government’s position is that it would be best to have legislation in this area and to make the collection of this data mandatory. That is for two reasons: to trace those children who are home educated and unsafe and, importantly, to support those parents who are home-educating their children and perhaps struggling to do so. In the meantime, we are working closely with—and I personally have spoken to—the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to make sure that we are working in a joined-up way on this issue.

School Buildings: Safety

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I can give the House that reassurance. Not only that but any new school we construct will be net zero in operation.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, obviously, responsible bodies are legally responsible for the safety of the building. They come in all shapes and sizes. It could be a very strong, robust local authority or a large multi-academy trust with a lot of expertise; conversely, it could be a local authority that is in intervention with commissioners or a trust which has only one school. Of the 10% which have not returned their surveys, can my noble friend the Minister outline how we are going to approach those responsible bodies to make sure they respond and find out whether they are in that risky category because they are weak for other reasons?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not think we can say that the 10% which have not responded are weak. We are dealing with it by running a small call centre in the department. There are organisations that we have had to contact multiple times—including, sadly, some local authorities—and we are working with MPs and others to make sure we get all the returns. We are also supporting, in slightly slower time, all trusts to improve their competency in relation to the management of their estate, including rolling out a free specialist capital adviser programme to support them in estate management.

Water Safety (Curriculum) Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing forward this important issue for consideration, and for doing so in such a sensitive manner. While swimming is important as a form of exercise, unlike other forms of PE it is literally life-saving. Perhaps I am not the only noble Lord who remembers carrying around a soggy pair of pyjamas for the rest of the school day; they were used to ensure that you could tread water in your clothes for long enough for the fire brigade to come and rescue you. In the 1980s, swimming lessons were about population maintenance rather than technique.

It is welcome that, by 31 July this year, schools in receipt of the primary PE and sport premium will publish the percentage of their pupils in year 6 who meet each of the three swimming and water safety national curriculum expectations. But could my noble friend the Minister outline how many schools are in receipt of the premium? Will there still be a gap in the data? For instance, if schools had to apply for this premium—and they may have had to do that, as there is a site at GOV.UK—some may not have done so, which would of course lead to an incomplete set of data being collected. However, if the money was distributed directly to schools via the DfE, it would probably mean a complete dataset for year 6. Without such comprehensive data, it is not possible to assess whether there is any difference in the capability of the children to swim between maintained schools, where it is part of the national curriculum, and children in academies, where it seems not to be. Again, there are conflicting items on websites about that, but I think that is the case.

When Sport England collected data from schools in England for its Active Lives study, which the noble Lord mentioned, it showed that only 76% of year 7 children can swim 25 metres unaided. While the importance of the freedom of academies and free schools has long been debated, it has never been absolute. The handling of public money has always been monitored and, arguably, academies have more accounting requirements than maintained schools. But in terms of curriculum, the academies have never had freedom on how to teach a child to read, for instance. The phonics screening test has meant that academy primary schools have used that method. On that note, it is good news that children in England are now the best at reading in the western world, having risen from eighth to fourth place in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.

I will return to matters in hand. Academies have other duties, such as safeguarding, so I really do not think that making swimming compulsory at both primary and secondary levels, as the Bill proposes, is an unreasonable restriction on their freedoms. But perhaps the most important reason why it needs to be made compulsory, to which the noble Lord alluded, is the racial disparities as to whether people in England can swim. In October 2020, Danielle Obe, the then interim chief executive of the Black Swimming Association, said:

“The launch of the Black Swimming Association was seen as a beacon of hope to drive more inclusion, participation, diversity and safety for BAME communities in aquatics, set against the startling statistics that 95 per cent of black adults and 80 per cent of black children in England do not swim”.


Two years later, in October 2022, Swim England conducted a survey with 4,500 completed questionnaires, using online and face-to-face means to collect data. While 14% of adults in white communities cannot swim 25 metres unaided, that rises to 49% of ethnically diverse communities. Also, according to the Royal Life Saving Society, nearly 34% of Asian children cannot self-rescue.

There are many reasons for this disparity. If parents cannot swim, they are less likely to teach their children to do so. Then there is the cost of swimming, which can give the perception that it is a middle-class pursuit, as well as the time that it takes to get to the swimming baths; if you are working a number of part-time jobs, it is just impossible. Then there is the lack of culturally appropriate swimwear. New fashion designers are stepping into this gap and designing swim caps suitable for chemically relaxed hair, braids and natural black hair. It is wonderful that a swim cap has finally been approved for use in highest level of competitions for natural black hair, and inspirational that Alice Dearing became the first black female swimmer to be selected to represent Great Britain, at the Tokyo Olympics. His Majesty’s Government have lauded their collection of this kind of data on racial disparity—but surely the figures I have cited mean that action is needed. The Bill would be one small way to rectify this injustice.

School Buildings: Risk of Collapsing

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government do not have anything to hide: they have been proactive in reaching out to schools and engaging with them to understand the condition need of the school estate and the structural issues they face. The noble Lord refers to the publication of the condition data collection reports. I remind him that all the data from those surveys has been shared directly with the schools and responsible bodies concerned, so they have been able to act on the information from those reports.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, no noble Lords will want to see any of the risks outlined by the department materialise, but we have to prepare for them. Can my noble friend outline whether there have been meetings at the department, walking through what would happen if we had an issue with building material? In particular, have disaster response experts and insurers such as Zurich been included in those meetings? Also, have they taken legal advice on what happens to the personal liability of trustees under health and safety legislation if we should have a building material collapse in one of our schools?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend asked about some very detailed aspects in that question, and I am happy to respond to her in writing. The department has regular exercises through which we test out a number of different scenarios, including the one my noble friend outlines.

School Meals: Funding

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that this Government have extended the reach of free school meals in many important ways, including the provision of universal infant free school meals and further education free school meals. In relation to a Cabinet-level position, the House will be aware that in his independent review of children’s social care, Josh MacAlister recommended a Cabinet-level post of Minister for Children and his recommendations are currently under consideration.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that during a cost of living crisis, free school meals are essential during term time. However, at short notice during the cold weather there can be the closure of schools or a failure in the building. So can my noble friend confirm that there is resilience within the system to stand up vouchers very quickly for those children? The lack of a meal for one, two or three days can be essential.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I commend my noble friend for the work she did during the pandemic when she was standing up very flexible responses. We continue to work very closely with schools to ensure that children get the support they need.

School (Reform of Pupil Selection) Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving your Lordships’ House the opportunity to consider the issue of academic selection for schools, which was, until Prime Minister’s Questions in the other place on Wednesday, probably the most politicised issue in the education system. How do 163 schools in more affluent areas demand such attention, when there are 4,081 schools that are non-selective? Should the local decision-making that has allowed this historical anomaly to exist be taken away by central government to end this situation? I support this Bill as the status quo is unacceptable.

Nothing that I say is to denigrate the hard work of those in these schools. It is not personal, but it is principled and pragmatic. Here, briefly, are three reasons: education is a social experience; there should be parity of parental choice; and there is what I term the micro-geography of education.

While some non-selective schools do not have a broad background of pupils and some families ameliorate the issues I will outline with extracurricular social activities, the profile of our grammar schools, with few exceptions, is narrow. They do not have many children with additional needs, who are on free school meals or who are looked-after. At the census date last year, 68 of our grammar schools had no looked-after children at key stages 3 or 4. That is a product of not giving priority admissions and selecting on the basis of the entrance test only. If I think back to my school and remove all those children, it would have been a poorer education.

Additionally, 13% of children entering grammar schools come from outside the state sector—presumably they are from abroad or the private sector, or have been home-educated—compared with 2% in other state schools. Nowadays, employers do not want qualifications only; they want an appreciation of different talents and life experiences, as well as protected characteristics. Is this really the education we want in the 21st century, and should the taxpayer be funding it? Can the Minister outline whether the taxpayer funds the costs of running these additional examinations?

Secondly, on principle, in England parents should have parity of choice in choosing a good local school, but they are offered other additional choices, such as in the area of faith. Although a larger catchment area is served, parents can choose a faith school—not only Church of England, Catholic or Jewish but, since 2010, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh state-funded schools. It is only right to expand that and give parents of faith parity of choice. If you are going to offer selection, it should be all or nothing.

Parents living in selective areas such as Lincolnshire often want a non-selective system, but for most people, if you want selection, it is not open to you. At the moment, this choice is predominantly not given to parents in deprived areas, which tend to lack grammar schools. Noble Lords might say that that is an argument for bringing them back wholesale; this is where micro-geography is the trump card.

I grew up in a small town in the smallest county—Rutland. Rutland topped the country’s league table for the best GCSE results for the first time, but it has only three secondary schools. Much of that was due to Catmose College in Oakham, under the leadership of Stuart Williams and his great team, which has been improving things year on year, doing their teacher-assessed grades with integrity so the reintroduction of exams meant even more improvement. You could make it a grammar school, but there is no other school in the town and a huge proportion of pupils would have to travel from towns large enough to sustain a secondary school. That would be not a parental choice to travel, but no option.

The second aspect of micro-geography is that, although there has been a policy of expanding grammar schools for intermittent periods, it looks innocuous but is not always. A small town might have two schools: the grammar school is expanded, then the comprehensive school might suffer from a lack of numbers; it starts to have fewer pupils through the door, starts to get less money and then starts to fail. Education is often a microeconomy that is very sensitive to what look like subtle changes at the policy level. There are hundreds of children now travelling out of large towns to get education, because the only school now on offer is a grammar school.

I leave it to other noble Lords to add to the detailed evidence on academic attainment that the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, outlined for these schools. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for sending me some of that information. However, I noted that this is ESRC research. Who funds that? The taxpayer. Surely, we have better things to spend our research money on than looking into an anomaly created by a historical accident in our education system.

I wish I could remove the politics from this, but I fear that even the rather more heavily populated Benches of His Majesty’s Opposition have not been able to grasp this nettle politically and look at the grammar school issue. The greatest irony, in my mind, after the issue raised at Prime Minister’s Questions, is that, when assisted places were abolished, some of our private schools set about raising the money to replace them. For instance, Manchester Grammar School offers one-sixth of its places on scholarships and bursaries. You are perhaps more likely to find more socioeconomically and ethnically diverse children, and more looked-after children, in a private school than in some state-funded grammar schools. If we are going to spend our money on research, we should research that.