Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 171 in my name. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and her officials for taking the time to meet with me.

Although I immediately concede that there may be drafting issues—in particular, the scenario that I am going to outline may not be dealt with as swiftly as it would need to be by the use of regulations—the amendment is a vehicle to explore with Her Majesty’s Government the legal powers that the Secretary of State has, or does not have, if there should be a failure of a building material within the school estate.

The estate comprises nearly 64,000 teaching blocks and its condition, as noble Lords have mentioned, is an issue that is beginning to be discussed more publicly. Many noble Lords spoke to the issue at Second Reading. While I know that my noble friend will not be able to comment on the recent alleged government leak to the media that some issues in the school estate pose a “threat to life”, there are a number of specific issues in the public domain. For example, reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete is found in hospitals in Norfolk and Suffolk; the BBC reported on it on 16 August 2021 and, when I checked, it had made the news again on 27 April 2022. It is a material also found in schools. In the news report from 2021, the NHS foundation trust was taking legal advice on potential liability for corporate manslaughter.

The question that I am asking Her Majesty’s Government to consider is whether the Secretary of State needs a legal power to be able to bring certain school buildings into their ownership or control—usually that would be by way of a power to direct—if there were a failure in such a building material. To try to avoid the risk of this sounding like a law examination paper, there are, I think, four brief steps to consider to get to the scenario where the Secretary of State might need such a power of direction. First, school buildings and virtually all land are not owned by the Secretary of State. Land and buildings are leased to the academy trust—in that scenario, from the landowner, usually the local authority, a diocesan trust, other charitable trusts, occasionally a university or FE college or, in a very small number of cases, from the DfE when it is a free school. The academy trust is, in law, the “responsible body” in charge of the land and buildings. For maintained schools, the responsible body is the local authority and, for maintained church schools, it is the relevant diocesan authority. Responsible bodies are legally responsible for the building.

Secondly, obviously, if there is a building material failure, it could be present in other school buildings. In such a situation, responsible bodies—here I must put on record the excellent capital team of the Department for Education—would of course spring into action. They would be inspecting, sending out surveyors and providing reassurance on the safety of buildings.

However, to move to step 3, if a responsible body says “No, we disagree with the Department for Education and the assessment of our buildings; we are closing them”, the DfE may maintain until the cows come home that the buildings are safe, but it is not the decision-maker.

Fourthly, noble Lords might say to me, “All these responsible bodies and schools are insured.” That is correct, but insurance or the DfE risk assurance protection are irrelevant to the liability that a responsible body, and possibly its trustees, might believe they face under the Health and Safety Executive powers or any criminal liability. The department of course faced similar issues to this when dealing with health and safety during Covid but, under the Coronavirus Act, the Secretary of State did have a power to direct a school to open or close. The political realities of using that power were another matter of course. That power to direct has gone.

I accept that the risk of this occurring is very low but, if it does materialise, there could again be disruption to the education of hundreds, if not thousands, of pupils. I believe this is a legal question that parents and schools should know has been considered in your Lordships’ House if, God forbid, this eventuality ever arises—even if the DfE says to noble Lords, “No, we do not want such a power to direct the ownership or control of school buildings to the department.”

When one of noble Lords’ main criticisms of this Bill is the scope of the powers that the Secretary of State is taking in Part 1, it would be ironic if, by way of this amendment, I have discovered the only power that the Secretary of State does not think he wants. While I appreciate that my noble friend the Minister might not have an answer today, I reserve the right to bring back this important issue on Report.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Moynihan, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for having on two occasions said that I must sign an amendment and then failing to do it. I must also declare an interest here; although young people may fall down occasionally, it is usually older, occasional sportsmen who do so, and I am certainly in that category.

As was mentioned before, many sporting facilities are on school grounds. If we want people playing sport, and playing it as safely as possible, we should really make sure that, at the very least, school sports grounds—which have more structure and over which we have more control—have access to defib. It is a pretty common practice now. Most people say that, if you follow the instructions, you will be able to use it correctly, although extra training cannot hurt. Indeed, it sounds like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, is a man to be beside when you are under any stress at all if he has the thing with him. If we can put something in the Bill that says we will have better coverage of defib capacity and some training on how to use it, or at least make it more common, that will be a definite step forward.

I live in a village designed for horseracing, and on the high street there is a nice big yellow defibrillator, because if people fall off horses and get injured, defib might be required. This is something we can do easily and in a straightforward manner that will make people’s lives that little bit safer. I recommend that we embrace this and go forward with it, if not in this exact form then, I hope, something very like it.

I will briefly cast my eye over the other two amendments in this group. On the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, I like the idea in proposed new paragraph (b) of having a list, including sports fields, to make sure that we know how they are doing. I have a Private Member’s Bill that puts a little more emphasis on this, so possibly I am biased.

I do not have to tell the noble Baroness who will be responding for the Government just how important is the capacity of computers to help many people in their educational process, and making sure they are up to date. These are two good examples of why the idea within the amendment should probably be brought further forward. It would be a good thing.

As for the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, I had not really considered what she has brought forward but it does sound sensible. I look forward to hearing the answer. It occurs to me that there is a certain degree of irony here; we often argue against overregulation, but this sounds like one they have missed that might be very useful.

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Our view is that the current arrangements allow the department to take action proportionate to the level of risk and support schools with advice and funding when needed, but without abrogating the responsibilities and legal duties of the sector. We do not think that additional powers to compel schools to open when they have safety concerns are required at this time. The department taking on direct responsibility for school buildings, or compelling schools to open when they have safety concerns, could actually reduce safety overall as it could undermine the incentive to maintain buildings effectively and obscure the currently clear responsibilities for the safety of pupils and staff in our schools.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

The amendment is not saying that we should compel schools, for that reason. My noble friend may need to come back to this, but what happens in a scenario where there is no agreement between the department and the responsible body about what should happen to a building? That is the key issue in the amendment: transferring the responsibility to the department. Although I appreciate the detailed case-by-case examples, it is a very different scenario if you have a building material fail across thousands of schools and risk going across the system. Can my noble friend say what happens if there is disagreement in that kind of scenario?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It might be most helpful to the Committee if I come back to my noble friend. She is right to insist to have this point discussed on public record but it would be more useful to take a real example that we can quantify in some way.

On Amendment 167 in the names of my noble friend Lord Moynihan, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, we absolutely recognise the importance of defibrillators. That is why our guidance for building new schools has included the provision of defibrillators since 2019. As noble Lords referred to, we have also worked with NHS England to establish a framework for schools to purchase defibrillators at a reduced rate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his update on the latest in defibrillator technology, and I would of course be delighted to meet with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and colleagues.

I was touched by the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to the tragic death of Oliver King; a friend of my children died in a school local to us, so I am all too aware of the tragedy involved in such cases. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has committed to working with the Oliver King Foundation to ensure that all schools have access to defibrillators. We are currently working on options to deliver these life-saving devices, and I look forward to being able to update noble Lords on that before too long.

I am told, for your Lordships’ benefit, that there is a defibrillator in Black Rod’s box, so we are all now informed.

I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, to withdraw her Amendment 156 and ask other noble Lords not to move the amendments in their names.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I want to raise a point probably connected to the comments of my noble friend Lord Baker, which may help my noble friend the Minister. I raised on the first day in Committee the consideration of the legal vehicle that we are dealing with here, which is potentially affected when you move from the bilateral to the unilateral, and any implications for not just charitable status but the role of charity trustees, as well as that of company directors, as in most cases these are charitable companies. I know that my noble friend intends to write to me, but it may be that the comments that follow from that have a connected purpose to what my noble friend Lord Baker has said in relation to any effects on the charitable purpose as well as the vehicle. We are dealing with a legal entity, and the implications for that need to be fully considered in the change from a bilateral contract to the unilateral situation that my noble friend proposes.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a chair of an academy trust and as a trustee of the Education Policy Institute.

I shall give a little background on trustees and their role and recruitment. When I became an academies Minister in 2013, it was clear that the very good initiative started by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—who I see is not in his place—to find academy sponsors, such as myself and my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Baker, had been put very much on the back burner by officials in the rush to academise; it took a very long time to warm these people up and it was a long process. I said I did not care how long it took to warm these people up; we must have this process. I did not care if we got chucked out of government and the Labour Party came back in and used all the people that we had found—good luck; it is a very noble purpose.

As it happened, we did not find too many nutters like myself and my noble friend Lord Agnew who were prepared to go from a standing start to being full academy sponsors in one move, but we found hundreds, if not now thousands, of people who were prepared to go on the boards of multi-academy trusts as non-executive directors, pro bono, to serve a very good public purpose. I wonder how many we would have found if they knew they could be chucked out by the DfE at its whim.

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[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of the arguments from the noble Lords who have led this debate. I shall make one or two points that perhaps have not yet come out strongly. The freedom to set their own admissions arrangements was given to academies when they first started. To be honest, I think that was a huge mistake. In local areas, it caused terrible animosity between the academies and the other maintained schools. That is part of the rift and the bad feeling that exist in many communities. I do not know many schools that, in setting their own admissions criteria, have sought to prioritise the poorest and most challenging children, those who have been excluded from more schools than anyone else, those without supportive parents and those without a room to work in at home—that is not how choosing your own admissions criteria actually works.

This is not the schools’ fault but, in terms of judging schools by how well they do academically, our whole system incentivises schools to have admissions criteria that get those children who are most likely to do well academically. If we were to change the accountability mechanisms so that we had as our most important accountability measure how much you can do for the poorest 5% of children in your city, we would have a different system, but that is not the way it runs.

However, I also blame schools. I was a teacher for 18 years. At the heart of it, I have always believed that the job of a professional teacher is to teach the children who end up in front of you on any given day—not to pick and choose; not to reject and throw away; not to say, “It’s easier to teach you than you”, but to do your best with the skills you have with the children in front of you. I taught in a school that was very challenging, and as a teacher the greatest rewards come from the progress you make with the children who are furthest behind when you start—but that is not the way the system works. There have been too many examples of academies that have used their ability to have their own admissions arrangements to select the children, or the parents, that will put them highest in the accountability stakes.

If you are a school that is undersubscribed, this argument does not matter to you. If you cannot get enough kids through the door for your published admissions number, then none of this matters. It matters only if you are a school that is oversubscribed, because only when it gets to oversubscription do the criteria for admissions come into effect. So think that through: if you are a school that is undersubscribed and not attracting children, so not getting the money, you have to take whoever no one else wants. Therefore, you do not improve, you do not get as many children, you do not get the money and again, you do not improve. That is the cycle that happens: undersubscribed schools do not attract children and therefore find it very difficult to improve.

Looking back, when the academies started under the Labour Government they were addressing the needs of those schools in the most challenging areas. In truth, what happened was that if you gave them a new building, a new head and a committed sponsor, they still did not have a cross-section of students coming through their doors. The idea at that stage, in giving them some power over admissions arrangements, was to try to get a better social mix. I can sort of see that, but it has gone way out of kilter with how it should be. In 2010, the minute the vision was that every school should become an academy, that just did not make sense.

I say to my noble friend Lord Hunt that where schools differ from hospitals is that who you treat in one hospital does not usually have an impact on the neighbouring hospital or another in the outer ring of the city. But schools are interrelated: who you choose to admit has an effect on every other school in your locality as it is an interrelated business, so it is very important that we do not have schools competing with each other in any geographical area for the bright kids. It has to work across such an area, for two reasons.

First, successful schools will always manage to attract children who, quite frankly, are easier to get the high results with—I would not say they are easier to teach. That has an effect on other schools and creates that bad feeling, so it is interrelated. The way you choose to admit pupils has an effect on other schools in your locality. I do not mind what they do, whether they band or have feeder schools, or measure it in yards from the school. What I do mind is that all schools in a local authority area ought to do the same. If you want a social mix, you can band right across the local authority area. I am not sure I like that but I do not have a problem with it because the behaviour of one school will not badly affect the performance of another.

In Birmingham, however, the minute you let over 400 schools set their own admissions arrangements there was chaos. It meant that they do not match each other. Some people of a faith with a child of a certain ability live in a place where they cannot get them into their local school because they do not live close enough, or into a faith school because they are not of the right faith. Neither does their child have the right ability to get selected in the banding arrangements, so where do they go? They go to the school that still has places left. That is not choice, but it happens in areas where there are a lot of schools that are allowed to have separate admission arrangements.

In supporting very much the amendments put forward, my plea is that it has to make sense across a geographical area. That means you cannot allow schools within the same area to have different admissions arrangements from other schools within it. I think the local authority should manage that, and that there is nothing wrong in all the schools getting together with a local authority, the parents and the primary schools to decide what those criteria should be within a national framework set down by government. But at some point they have to come to an agreement, because education is about a social as well as an academic experience. Your social experience is, in part, the children who are around you in your school—and that matters.

To be honest, that is why parents go to so much effort to exercise choice over where they want their child to go. It is not just for the academic experience but for the social experience—again, it is different with a hospital. That social experience will be right for all children, or as good as we can make it for them, only if we have some camaraderie within a geographical area so that people sit down with the same admissions arrangements. Having done that, teachers should do what they do: get on with teaching the children in front of them, not spending time on trying to get a different bunch of children in their classrooms because they think it gives them a better chance of success.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I have a quick comment. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his history lesson. During the period he mentioned, Rutland had the unfortunate experience of being part of Leicestershire. Had grammar schools still existed then, I can only look back and wonder what my own education—with no money for tutoring—would have been if the local school in the market town had been left as a secondary modern.

I have a specific question on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about the backstop power, which I was surprised to see included in, I think, the White Paper. What is the timing of that? At the moment, we know that some boroughs are under extraordinary pressure. When we nationally decide, for instance, to admit tens of thousands of families from Hong Kong—which is a great policy—we create extraordinary influxes of children into particular areas. I was just reading a Manchester Evening News article about the pressures Trafford Council is under at the moment, having had an extraordinary influx of Hong Kong Chinese families into the area. This has unusual ripples in Trafford, where there are grammar schools within the borough.

What would the timing of this be? At the moment, we have local authorities which cannot have any effect on admissions, particularly in those secondary schools that are academies. There is a proposal for a backstop power. This was also before we admitted tens of thousands of Ukrainian families into this country. If in the consultation it is decided not to have the backstop power—I recognise the view from those in the academies sector on local authorities’ admission policies—is there not a case for some emergency power in a situation when tens of thousands of families come into an area? You need different admissions arrangements because you have to think about the cohesion of the area locally. If you have an influx of families, families who have lived in an area for many years find that they cannot get their children into the schools they want. There are also the unpredictable ripples of selection in an area. Can my noble friend the Minister outline the timing of this, because there are boroughs under pressure today?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify how special educational needs fits into this picture? I know the Government are currently looking at this area, but it is one that has led to the growth of legal firms to fight a way through the system. It is a failing system. I remind the Committee of my interests in special educational needs, and dyslexia in particular. With dyslexics, for instance, we are discovering that something like 80% of those on that spectrum are not identified within the school system. There is capacity here for a group that exists but we know is not even being spotted. Should we not have some capacity for dealing with the people with these sorts of problems, because we know they are going to come across? This also applies to all the spectrum of non-obvious conditions and hidden difficulties.

If the Minister cannot reply now, when we are looking at this, could she write to us about what the Government’s thinking on this sector is at the moment? It is yet another element when it comes to choosing a school or a school’s willingness to take on a pupil. We know there are people fighting this. As I said, if ever there was a definition of failure, it is that you need lawyers to get your rights. That has to be the classic case. Can the Minister give us an idea of the Government’s thinking about admissions? If you cannot get into a school because it has set criteria, regardless of any formal test or examination, it will change how things work. It will be very interesting to hear what the Minister says about government thinking on this, because it is another factor that will affect this whole process.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am struggling to think of the collective noun for former Cabinet Ministers that are going to address the Committee—probably a “clutter” of them, behind my noble friend.

I shall speak briefly. I pay tribute—and noble Lords can imagine what I stepped into in the department following my noble friend Lord Agnew. We were left with a hard rump of cases. One thing that I do not think has been mentioned so far—and I approach this mainly as a lawyer—is the nature of the vehicle that is the multi-academy trust. It is a charitable company, but of course there were so many of them that the regulation from the Charity Commission in 2014 was passed to the Department for Education to make the Secretary of State the chief regulator.

In terms of the hard rump that is left and the issues that we need to deal with, it is because of the nature of the legal vehicle that there is a very high bar for intervening, as the Charity Commission sometimes does, in a company or charitable company, when one of the issues that you may need to sort out is that the governance has gone wrong. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can answer that point. Is there something here that we have not discussed—it might be the nature of the legal vehicle that we are using—that has actually led to some of these issues and leaves you with a hard rump that you cannot get at? The Academy Trust Handbook was renamed because it covers not just money—it covers essentially governance and safeguarding, and health and safety was also put into it, so it was clear to the sector that these were the rules and framework that it needed to work to.

The second point that I want to reiterate—it was made by my noble friend Lord Nash—is that it is a very important move to move fundamentally from a bilateral arrangement, where both parties have to consent, to any type of unilateral arrangement. I know that the issues have been well addressed by other noble Lords about the nature of those powers. When you have that consenting arrangement of the contract between two parties, it is also talking to the value of the service that the other contracting party is delivering. Overwhelmingly, these single academy trusts and MATs are doing a great job; they are abiding by the contract. However, with that hard rump, you need to intervene. As I often used to say in the department, why do I seem to have more power if the computer I bought from John Lewis goes wrong than I do if the education of children is being failed by them not delivering in accordance with the contract?

My final point—and I have not had the privilege of meeting my noble friend yet about the Bill—is, faced with this situation, if the Government are considering pausing, what is the view of the MATs sector? It is now sitting there with the prospect of this legislation and a unilateral situation. There are MATs on very old contracts that need changing. What would they choose, if they were given that choice—progressing with this legislation or agreeing to a new form of contract? Most of these issues to do with articles of association and new forms of contract have been dealt with, due to the noble Lords who preceded me. Is there now an issue that now needs addressing? If those MATs will agree to new contracts and go on to new terms and conditions, is that not also a way that my noble friend the Minister can look at, now that the sector is seeing what an alternative would be for them, if they insist on not having proper separation in their governance or not having the new agreement? That may be a pragmatic consultation that we could have with the sector at this stage of the Bill.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate from so many noble Lords. I shall try to be concise, because so much has already been said. This group of amendments again seeks to put safeguards around the power that the Secretary of State has to make on standards for academies, and seeks information from the Government about what lies behind this taking of broad powers. Colleagues have spoken to the damning Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report, which takes such issue with powers in this Bill. I shall not tread over old ground, but I wanted to note what other noble Lords have said, such as the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher on the Henry VIII powers. “We don’t want Parliament involved”—what a blow to democracy that is. My noble friend Lord Hunt spoke eloquently on the unacceptability of these matters in relation to the report, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, reminded us that this report was personally forwarded to the Secretary of State.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, took us back to the 1870s, and how the department has never done these things before, and the glaring omission in the proposals of the social context of a school. My noble friend Lady Blower reiterated the nature of the power grab, and reminded us that a national service, locally delivered, was the aspiration at the beginning of our teaching careers, but the local dimension is no more. It speaks to a worrying trend across government, denying Parliament the opportunity to deal with matters in the Bill in favour of shoving something through via statutory instrument later down the line, once they have worked out what they want to do. It is not even the cart before the horse—it is the cart before the cart.

I ask the Minister with sincerity, in trying to understand the rationale behind this power grab, what is the reason for this approach? Has the detail of the specific measures the Secretary of State would like to take not been fleshed out? Perhaps it has been. If so, is it controversial, at an increasingly controversial time for the governing party? Is it meant to give some wriggle room in response to political or media pressure to act in an unforeseen area, so it buys the ubiquitous “get out of jail” card, if the public reaction—like so much public reaction to the Government these days—is hostile?

I struggle to understand why Parliament and parliamentary scrutiny will not be given the chance to debate the rights and wrongs of what the DfE intends to do. I understand that the White Paper is meant to give colour to some of these questions, but its offering is limited on many of the concrete measures that the Secretary of State may or may not be looking to impose. It hardly needs me to remind the House that this Government will not be in power for ever, as has been noted by the noble Lord, Lord Addington—and some may say the sooner the better, in the light of the current state of our countries. But these powers will be there for others to wield in future, or indeed repeal, if the Government are determined to push this through despite the strong voices that we have heard today to the contrary.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, with children sitting GCSEs, BTECs, A-levels and other qualifications, it is rather apt that today this Bill is having its Second Reading. Many noble Lords will, like me, be waiting with bated breath for the full performance and attainment gap data that will, sadly, perhaps confirm that Covid has disproportionately affected our most disadvantaged students. I welcome the Bill for the changes it makes for those students, but I am concerned about some missed opportunities.

Perhaps 20 years ago there was an ideal world of home education, done solely by parents who truly believed in it and did it very well. If those halcyon days ever existed, they are over, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his persistence and foresight in this matter. It is important to recognise, however, that there are parents who educate at home who have not chosen to do so for ideological reasons but because failures in provision for special educational needs children made them feel forced to remove their children from school and educate them at home.

The current situation was drawn to my attention by concerned head teachers. If a child in year 9 or year 10 is falling behind, any good school will engage persistently with parents, and sadly a tiny minority view that as a hassle. Some have cottoned on to the idea that if you tell the school you are home educating, the hassle from the school goes away. That is the story of some of the young people in our towns and cities today, and the local authority needs to know their details at the very least. They are vulnerable to criminal and sexual exploitation as well as to not getting an education. There is the risk that some parents may choose to keep their children away from other influences and expose them to truly extremist views. Then there are those who home education allows to harm their child physically and emotionally. Home education, or not being on a school roll, has been a factor in a number of the most serious cases of harm to children and in harm done by children who end up in the criminal court system. Although the Bill puts a duty on parents who are doing a good job, for the common good it is time to legislate.

Part 1 may seem technical, but it is essential to delivering better education for our most disadvantaged and SEND children and sorting out some of the messy world of trusts. It deals with the amber lights; I will come to the red lights later. The changes since 2010 mean that the Secretary of State has direct responsibility for the quality of education in our schools. I believe it has enhanced the role of the MP as it is the MP’s job to hold central government, not local government, to account. In theory they are better qualified to come to the Secretary of State who purchases the services and should sort of them out. The Secretary of State may, inter alia, already see an amber light in relation to an academy’s finances or may be aware that a trust has got hold of some Section 106 money and is embarking on an extensive building project with scant construction resources on the trustee body. Currently the Secretary of State may be powerless to intervene, but if you can catch problems, whether with finances, building or governance, you can sometimes get into a school or trust before the education of the children suffers.

All this intervention is about preventing failure and making good use of public funds, and most academy trusts do a very good job. But rather like the great parents who home educate, the Secretary of State must have power to sort out the trusts which are in breach of standards or agreements. I have numerous questions in relation to the clauses and I hope we are not going to end up with a blend, with some matters dealt with in standards and some left in the agreements, which seems to be a possibility under the Bill. But I look forward to discussing those matters in Committee and hopefully in meetings beforehand.

If the red light of an “inadequate” Ofsted judgment can be avoided by these interventions, so much harm will be prevented. Once there is an “inadequate” judgment, the school’s contract can of course be terminated, but inadequate schools tend to have disproportionate numbers of SEND and free school meal children in them, so intervening early is essential to prevent this. Despite the best help from the House of Lords Library, the DfE, which produces the data, does not seem to produce free school meal and SEND figures separately for inadequate or RI schools. The Children’s Commissioner did her best in her Ambition for All report, saying:

“If you are a child receiving free school meals, you are 1.4 times more likely to be going to a school that is less than good.”


In short, children who are most in need of a good school are the least likely to be going to one. I do not often speak of Members in the other place—and particularly the right honourable Angela Rayner MP—but she did ask a question about this before the pandemic. It was maybe in a bit too much detail to give the department its dues, but I hope my noble friend the Minister will rectify this, as it is essential that MPs and Peers are able to look at the cohort of children in our failed or failing schools.

I am grateful that this Bill sits alongside the consultation on RI schools, as repeat “requiring improvement” judgments should be a red light and be able to end the role of the trust or the local authority with the schools. This has to stop, and two RI judgements should be that red light.

My final red light issue, which I will raise in Committee by way of an amendment, is, as many noble Lords have talked about, the state of school buildings. There is a school rebuilding programme, but there remains significant concern about certain building materials used in hospitals, schools and other public buildings. It is the expertise of your Lordships’ House to think through the unexpected consequences and ensure that the Secretary of State has the requisite legal powers should there be an issue with building materials affecting numerous schools which becomes relevant. Letters of comfort may not be enough if the responsible body’s lawyers advise them that they can be exposed to liability governed by the Health and Safety Executive.

I am disappointed that none of the barriers that cause local authority-maintained schools to get stuck and not transfer into the academy system are not addressed in this Bill. Nor are the changes to trust law that can help certain transfers. I am disappointed that the parents of children at a grammar school, rather than a wider electorate, can ensure that the school remains selective. As of January 2021, only 4.9% of children in our grammar schools had free school meals; this really cannot be helping social mobility. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister—as the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, outlined—could consider whether there are matters to do with the admissions code, which the Government used persuasively for looked-after children, that can be looked at in this regard.

I applaud the vision of the Bill, but it has to lead to a nimble and quick solution for academy trusts that are failing. While this legislation will give the Secretary of State the ability to intervene, it has to be used urgently and should be like a 999-urgent situation when a school is failing.

Education: Multi Academy Trusts

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Lingfield for tabling this debate. Like many in your Lordships’ House, I would not be here without the great state schools of Catmose College and Rutland County College, which is now Harington School. If these schools had failed, my parents would not have been able to get me to the next secondary school, even though it was a merely 20-minute drive away, as they worked shifts. I think Rutland may be great in terms of the ambitions of the White Paper, as it may be close to full academisation. I hope the Minister can update me.

MATs should free everybody to do what they are best at. They hold land and have changed the Department for Education. I shall make just three points about them. Freeing everyone to do what is best is regrettably not part of what is mentioned in the White Paper. It takes great teachers and leaders to run a school, and the research is very clear about their effect in delivering the best curriculum across their family of schools, but what about great teaching assistants, fantastic estate management and food? In a cost of living crisis with more than 20% of children currently eligible for free school meals, great cooks are needed. Of course, governors are volunteers giving their time to the next generation, and the hidden figures are the school business professionals who are running the operational side of schools, especially the money.

I have to say that I was sad to read a White Paper that neglected to mention the majority of the school workforce. This is what, at its best, the MATs model should deliver by freeing every member to deliver their best. According to Ofsted, after the pandemic leaders in MATs felt more supported, as these back-office functions were done for them. MATs have also enabled some of our best schools to share their best practice, such as Wallington County Grammar School as the anchor school of Folio Education Trust, which has opened Coombe Wood School in Croydon, which is already the most popular school in the borough. I disagree with my noble friend: it is a problem in the system to have schools sitting in what I would term splendid outstanding isolation and not contributing their best to the system, which this grammar school head is clearly leading the way in doing. MATs also enable innovation to come into the system, such as Harmonize Academy in Liverpool which is an outstanding AP free school—outstanding under the new framework I might add—founded by a black-led church group led by Tani and Modupe Omideyi.

This freeing up of everyone to do what they are best at is also important in the context of small rural schools which often have limited resources. I am delighted that the Church of England has publicly stated that it will bring large numbers of these schools into the academy sector. Alas, the increased funding under the national funding formula for such schools and local authority presumption against closure is not bringing the protection that many thought it would. Not all these schools can be saved, but grouping them in a MAT is their best chance of survival and enables them to deliver high-quality education across often very small schools.

To deal with the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, I am not sure that we will ever solve the research problem of proving the results of MATs vis-à-vis the maintained sector. It is a dynamic picture. For many years, every inadequate maintained school has been statutorily converted into an academy, so the comparison data is very difficult, as failure in the maintained sector is brought into the academy sector. With the excellent consultation on dealing with repeat RI-judged schools and the power to make them academised, the data is going to be even more skewed.

On holding land, to my surprise, less than 1% of schools is on land owned by the DfE. It is the local authority, diocese and the occasional university or FE college, private charitable trusts and, of course, now MATs, which have publicly funded buildings on their land. In legal jargon, they are the responsible body for the land and buildings, but the funding for repairs and renewal is on the taxpayers. The DfE is probably England’s largest building client. I pause to give my huge thanks to building contractors, responsible bodies and the excellent DfE capital team. Although the DfE had more than its fair share of news headlines during the pandemic, school places not being built was not the cause of them. When you cannot command building supplies, as you are not categorised as critical national infrastructure, this was no mean feat.

The estate is still mainly that built to serve the post-war baby boom in a time of shortage of building materials—and, therefore, the development was of materials and system builds much of which are at the end, or near the end, of their design life. This might seem a dull issue, but I think that it is an important one. The DfE is, I think for the third time, doing an external survey of the entire school estate, so it has expert evidence of which are the worst buildings. Any of those responsible bodies can be weak—Croydon, of course, recently went bankrupt—or an LA may have recently failed an Ofsted social care inspection. Dioceses have varying degrees of health. The General Synod recently outlined in its report that some are solvent only due to central funds. The Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool is struggling with educational standards, and MATs may be known to the department to be struggling for any of the reasons above. SATs or very small MATs may be the responsible body for some of our worst buildings.

I have been so impressed by my noble friend’s expertise on data, so I hope that this is a question after her own heart. Can she give assurances that data is cross-referenced in the department so that any weak responsible body is checked to ensure that its buildings are not at risk? Much of the time, that would just be a constructive phone call—but if the DfE knows that a small MAT has one of its worst buildings after being surveyed and that it is not applying to the department for the money to do repairs, is a red flag raised? While other building safety issues are in the headlines in the Grenfell inquiry, it cannot be said that MPs are not raising the state of school buildings. It could be one of their top concerns. Alas, noble Lords will remember the issue last November at Rosemead Preparatory School in Dulwich, where a ceiling collapsed and injured—thankfully, not seriously—a number of children. Had this issue had been spotted by the independent schools inspector or Ofsted, whoever inspects it, or are changes necessary to the frameworks to ensure that such matters are noted in future inspections?

Finally, on a changed DfE, it has gone from sending out money to local authorities to fund schools to managing the performance, currently, of thousands of contracts, which may become in the White Paper the statutory academy trust standards. The ESFA and the regions group as well as the capital department means that the DfE is massively an operational department, not a policy delivery model. When the pandemic struck, the DfE already had a small army of officials overseeing the educational performance of contracts with MATs. They already knew the regions, schools, LAs and the issues on the ground, and were turned into what noble Lords may remember were called the REAC teams. I want to thank them. They were led at the time by the National Schools Commissioner, Dominic Herrington, and worked night and day to support schools and LAs during the pandemic. But they also achieved the transfer of many failed schools to new academy trusts while also running the REACT operation.

Disadvantaged children were affected by missing school, and the effects were even more acute if you were in a school that Ofsted had judged inadequate or requiring improvement. The Children’s Commissioner’s excellent report on schools includes all the necessary data on this issue, but I might flag that that report and the White Paper all rely on the pre-pandemic 2019 data. In her report it said that, if you were a child on free school meals, or a child in need or SEND, you were more likely to be in such schools and less likely to get good GCSE passes.

I wholly welcome the consultation on RI schools to give the Secretary of State powers to intervene—currently to cancel the contracts—but it does not make the depth of the issue clear. Although it states that over 200 have been rated “requires improvement” five times or more, some have been RI six, seven, eight, nine or 11 times. These children have been in schools that have been less than good for more than a decade. One school in the system, an 11-RI school, has never been judged good by Ofsted since the very existence of Ofsted.

The areas of the country will come as no surprise. The north-east in general and Stoke-on-Trent have a problem with secondary schools being repeatedly RI. This power of intervention is vital to any levelling-up agenda, but how long will parents whose children are in an inadequate or repeat-RI school, whether maintained or an academy—and we should be as firm about academies that fail as maintained schools—wait for that new leadership? The current MAT system based on contractual regulation or a future system could be nimble and deal swiftly with failure.

While it might be right that MATs should come under a duty to co-operate, failed schools are often stuck, because not all local authorities co-operate, although they are under a duty to facilitate the conversion. Sadly, not all Anglican dioceses consent swiftly to their failed schools going into the neighbouring Anglican diocese’s MAT. Are inadequate schools still stuck in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, as only a Catholic-led MAT will do and there are not enough of them? Or are the schools stuck as the MAT refuses, perhaps rightly, to become responsible for buildings that are in need of significant repair?

Although it is excellent to offer a parental pledge to notify you that your child is behind in English or maths, if they are in a failed school, do you not also need a pledge about the maximum time to get the school under new leadership? Can my noble friend outline how long is the DfE aim for this new leadership to be in place? What is the average time to get a failed maintained school into a MAT or transferred at the moment? Will legislation be needed to deal with any of these issues? Sadly, the White Paper is silent on what are, as I have outlined, some of the main blocks to a swift transfer of failed schools.

Finally, the failed schools in the system, as noted by the Children’s Commissioner and from my experience in the DfE, have disproportionate numbers of free school meal and SEND children in them. Also, too many of our good and outstanding schools have free school meal and SEND percentages in low single figures. I found this infuriating. I was disappointed by the lack of consideration to the use of the admissions code or Ofsted’s framework to insist that all schools take a minimum of the national percentage of both categories or, as the Children’s Commissioner suggests, to give certain categories of children priority admissions, as was done for looked-after children.

Parts of the White Paper are ambitious—the statutory academy trust framework, local authorities directing academies to take certain pupils and the SEND review on national standards across all schools—but if you cannot get disadvantaged and SEND pupils into some of our best schools, I fear the ambition we all have for our most disadvantaged children will not be met.

Rather belatedly, I conclude by congratulating my noble friend on the proficient and accessible way she has taken on her ministerial role. As I hope was clear in my time at the Dispatch Box and in this speech, I am passionate about education, especially for the disadvantaged. If you have to lose your job, it is great to have a friend, not only a noble friend, take it on. I also wish to thank what I used to term “the two Mikes”—the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson—whose forthright and knowledgeable opposition I always respected. Although he is not present in your Lordships’ House today, I always valued the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on the needs of SEND children. As I believe officials would testify, this was woven into everything for which I had responsibility.

Although governing during a pandemic was challenging —and I often felt like I was living in a bunker—I cannot conclude without thanking the civil servants who served me and my private office especially when, for long periods, we physically saw only each other. They offered me much wisdom and humour, and I was a better Minister because of them.

Social Mobility Commission

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord; I do not believe that that is the case. The number of children living in poverty has actually declined since 2010. In the recent social mobility action plan that we issued in December, we reasserted our aim to focus on areas such as the word gap, which we know is one of the biggest areas of disadvantage for young children. We have put more emphasis on high-quality post-16 choices for all young people and, as I mentioned at the beginning, we have closed the attainment gap by 10% in the last seven years.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in 2016 your Lordships’ House had a one-year Select Committee looking into social mobility, on which I served as a member. We looked at social mobility for those young people who did not go to university. In fact, the majority of young people go into jobs, vocational training such as apprenticeships or into further education. Could the Minister please outline whether there is an intention by the department to ensure that some of the commissioners come from a non-university education background?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I certainly hope so, because I did, so I know that it is quite possible to have an interesting and fulfilling life without having gone to university. Our T-levels are very much aimed at that group of people who do not consider a university career as their priority. There is a growing awareness that there are other routes. There is an education and skills company that is also doing a lot of work with schools, providing mentoring and showing that there are routes other than just university.

Social Mobility Commission

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I completely agree with the right reverend Prelate that this should be a cross-party action. That is why we had a former Labour Cabinet Minister as the chair of the last commission. To pick on one policy of this Government over the last seven years, the sponsored academy programme has gone out to 150 local authorities and taken in some of their most failing schools. Those schools were in areas where 21% of the pupils in the secondary sponsored academies were eligible for free school meals, which is dramatically higher than the average of 13%. When we began the programme and those schools joined it, only one in 10 was good or outstanding, but today nearly seven in 10 are good or outstanding. That makes another 400,000 children who were in failing schools but are now in better schools, and largely they were in areas of deprivation.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I was a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Social Mobility in 2016. The committee looked at the transition from school to work for the majority of young people. The majority actually do not go to university or end up as NEETs; they go into vocational education, training or apprenticeships. Can the Minister outline whether the Government will ensure that at least one of the commissioners has personal or other direct experience of that transition or the social mobility of being from the vocational or apprenticeships sector and then achieving a position in society as a result? It seemed to us that many of the policy workers—Whitehall civil servants and indeed Ministers—came from degree backgrounds and did not necessarily have a full understanding of the challenges facing the majority of young people who do not go to university.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point, and it is something I will take back to the department for consideration. I can speak personally as someone who never went to university. I realise how important it is that we provide good career paths for pupils leaving school who do not go to university. That is part of the reason why we have created T-levels, which will involve a substantial investment of nearly £500 million a year when they are fully rolled out over the next three years. So I can give some reassurance that we regard this as an important part of the strategy.

Social Mobility Committee Report

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it was indeed a privilege to serve on this committee. I, too, am grateful to the many people who gave evidence to us and to the committee staff, Luke Hussey, Emily Greenwood and Morgan Sim, who responded to my numerous requests, often at the last minute. I view the Government’s response as an introduction, as our report ran to nearly 140 pages and the response is only 11 pages of very widely spaced text with large margins. I hope the Minister will agree to meet interested members of the committee to discuss the detailed report in more depth.

I came through the academic route from school—A-levels at sixth-form college, university and then a pupillage in Kings Chambers in Manchester—to become a practising barrister, but from a background of parents who worked all their lives in a factory. I was therefore not hugely conversant with what I now know to be the vocational route, but you soon learn that if you are to get that elusive tenancy as a barrister you need to impress not only your fellow barristers, your pupil mistress, the head of chambers, if you come across them, and those solicitors who give you work, but also the clerks. Clerks then had usually joined chambers at 16 as a runner, and then had a junior role in the clerks’ room before becoming a junior clerk and rising up the ranks. They were vocationally very talented as salespeople and negotiators and were incredibly business-savvy. Even after you were taken on as a barrister, you soon knew if they were not pleased with you when the work given to you as a junior barrister involved travelling from Manchester all the way to Pontefract or Hull for a 10-minute hearing.

Looking back, there was a clear career progression for clerks, and they were deservedly highly respected. They had not picked up any of the social conditioning that Mr Tony Moloney of National Grid described to the committee in his evidence, which said that,

“if you do not go to university you have failed”.

Besides being wrong as an attitude, this would mean that the majority of our young people have failed as the majority do not go on to higher education or become NEETs. The majority—the committee debated many labels for this group but settled on simply “the majority” to get this simple point home—go into further education, work or apprenticeships.

I will not be able to do justice to the enormous amount of evidence we heard as I make four brief key points. They are, first, looking at ourselves, then a simple system, then flexibility and, finally, a new vision for the majority. Let us begin here at home, looking at ourselves, the House, Members and the Civil Service. I commend wholeheartedly the recent introduction by the House of Lords of apprenticeships that will provide high-quality entry-point careers to young people within the administration of this workplace. The committee met the head of the House of Lords staff privately, and I am very pleased to see this development. With regard to Members of your Lordships’ House, I recognise that it can be difficult to provide work, or even work experience, when many of us are part-time and have few support staff, but I know that many noble Lords wish to give back and to provide opportunities, which is why a group of us will be writing to the Lord Speaker to ask him to look at the viability of running a formal work experience scheme here. This would seem an obvious next step from Peers’ outreach to schools and, combined with the contacts gained by Parliament’s excellent Education Service, there must surely be a network to advertise and recruit for a meritocracy-based work-experience scheme here.

Also close to home is the Civil Service scheme, which I have raised in your Lordships’ House previously and about which I was in correspondence with my noble friend Lord Bridges under the previous Government. If I understand correctly—and I read his letter very carefully—there are high-quality apprenticeships in the Civil Service, but you cannot join the fast track at the age of 18 on an apprenticeship. You have to transfer in later on. Why? We received evidence that you can join Deloitte, National Grid or M&S and be on the path to the top from the start. In fact, they were clear in their evidence that senior managers, even directors, of M&S and National Grid began as apprentices. The noble Lord, Lord Stone of Blackheath, who ran Marks & Spencer, joined from being a market trader in Pontypridd. Sir John Parker, who former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked to run Harland and Woolf and who turned it around between 1983 and 1993, joined that company as an apprentice and went on to be president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. You can join the British Army as an officer at 18, so why not the Civil Service? Such embedding of the lack of parity of esteem for graduate entry against those who enter at 18 undermines the stated view of Her Majesty’s Government that vocational and academic routes are equal in value. I hope the Minister will be able to inform your Lordships’ House today that the fast track is being reviewed to sort this matter out lest talented young people be deterred from applying.

My second point is about simplicity. Our report recommends a system along the lines of the UCAS system so that the majority of students have a simple access point with the relevant information about various vocational qualifications, careers and earnings. This recommendation is repeated in the State of the Nation 2016 report by the Social Mobility Commission, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that of all the recommendations, it should be a priority for the Government. I was going to say that the current system is complicated, fragmented and so on, but it is not actually a system. It really is not if you try to engage with it. It needs coherence. It sets too many young people up to start on the wrong route. Too many young people spend a year doing the wrong vocational course or starting A-levels and then needing to switch. If at this point they find the right route for them, that year can have funding implications for their study as the next two years may fall partly under the adult education budget, apparently partly depending on their birthday. I confess I never felt confident that I fully understood the complexities of the funding arrangements for the 16 to 19 cohort. Some simplicity, as with UCAS, is urgently needed.

My third point is about flexibility. In this regard, I shall refer first to a case that struck me and other members of the committee: young people who are carers. A charity facilitated discussions with young people. A lady in her early 20s, whom we met, had been thwarted in her career choice as her caring responsibilities, which she had borne most of her life, entitled her to carer’s allowance. She wanted to be a midwife, but that was a full-time course. Although she could have done the time around her caring responsibilities, the inflexibility of the system meant she would lose her carer’s allowance. She was allowed to undertake only a part-time course, and midwifery was a full-time course in her rural, east-coast location. Many noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly champion the situation of care leavers, but we hear much less about young people who are carers. Will the Minister confirm that this issue, which is specifically raised in our report, will be investigated by Her Majesty’s Government and/or the Social Mobility Commission to look at proposed solutions?

Another point is about flexibility and self-critique by employers to ensure their recruitment is open to all. I found the evidence from Mr Moloney of National Grid and Ms Codd from Deloitte in October 2015 most compelling. National Grid not only focuses on trying to recruit ex-offenders, which is admirable enough, but has also sought to reach young people with learning disabilities, of whom only 7% get into employment, although 70% of them gain employment from the programme in the firm. Deloitte has gone to great lengths to recruit 200—rising soon to 400—people at the age of 18 on a level playing field.

Ms Codd’s evidence is worth quoting to your Lordships, as it gives some indication of the depth Deloitte has gone to in order to achieve that level playing field. She said that,

“the BrightStart scheme … has five components, and we have looked at each of those components thoroughly over the past two years to make sure that the playing field is completely level and we are not inadvertently favouring anybody from middle or upper socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, we still set a requirement for 260 UCAS points. However, when we look at academics we contextualise that now, so it is about looking at the background within which any achievement was attained. We have also introduced blind CVs when it comes to institutions where individuals have studied to make sure that we can remove unconscious bias … we have moved away from a competency-based interview to an interview that focuses more on values, because again we realised that if we focused on competency, as in, ‘Give us an example of when you did something’, that was inadvertently disadvantaging those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds”.

It is taking this to its suppliers and clients. Why? It is the right thing, but she also said it is a smart thing to do:

“For us it was a real business imperative. We want the right talent. We want the best, and the best does not necessarily have to come from a particular background”.

I hope it will be a key government priority to ensure that the new job creation we are witnessing in the digital economy is, again, open to all. I hope the Government will look at how high-tech start-ups are ensuring that there is a level playing field. This very new business model needs to ensure that it breaks the mould and is open to all.

Finally, even if all firms had the best procedures, our report recognises the deeply embedded cultural problem that vocational training is viewed as the poor relation. If we are to have shared—or some might say, British—values, we also need a vision for our country where every job counts and is valuable. Changing culture is about more than changing policy; it is about promoting different role models, particularly in the media. I join the right reverend Prelate in his concerns about the context of social mobility. It seems often to be portrayed as people only progressing up an already established class structure. What message are we sending to the hundreds of thousands of people we need to build homes or to care for older people? We need to return to a national vision that does not just value work on its income—although I accept that in some areas the wage needs to be raised to the living wage—but under which every person’s job is valuable, to bring about the cohesion that we all desire to see in 2016.

Education: British Values

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the think tank, British Future.

I could not agree more with the commitment by the Secretary of State for Education,

“to ensure that all schools—faith and non-faith—make sure that children are integrated into modern Britain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/2014; col. 269.]

I am grateful that my noble friend Lord Storey’s debate explicitly states that this should be for all educational establishments, universities as well as schools, private as well as state-funded. But I regret that this discussion is against the backdrop of the issues in Birmingham and so soon after the often acrimonious debate around whether Britain is a Christian country.

British values have been left for too long in the “too difficult” box and we stir only when there are headlines about gender segregation in universities and have a feeling that that is not quite right. The increase over the past 15 years in the messages and ideas from all over the world that we can receive via our smartphones means that this debate is long overdue. Of course, it is difficult to pin down British values, but failing to agree on everything does not mean that we will not agree on some things. Whether others share our values does not dilute their Britishness.

I have two quick examples. Women are equal citizens in our country, exhibited by equal pay; voting rights; being on the board of a FTSE company—for the first time in our history there are no all-male FTSE company boards; staying at home with your children, or working, or doing both; and having equal access to our courts. Some girls grow up within rural or religious communities where women’s roles are assumed. The role of British values in education, practically, is to show girls that there are other options for them—then, they choose. I am not naive about the community or cultural barriers that there are to exercising such a choice, but unless these girls are shown those other roles, we know that the choice that they make to stay in assumed roles is no choice at all.

Secondly, there is the issue of choice in religious identity. As chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom I have accidentally picked up evidence that the freedom to change your religious beliefs is not as widely embedded in our society as I had assumed. A report from a lady within a black Pentecostal Church community, who wants to become a humanist but is not at liberty to convert, broke all my stereotypical thinking on that issue. The United Kingdom promotes freedom to convert in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and broadcasts such values via the BBC World Service. So why do we not do the same in our education system? We must stop assuming that values are somehow picked up by osmosis. They need to be taught, promoted and defended. Two world wars won us the freedom to have this very debate on British values and it is time that we used it.

Education: Social Mobility

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for this wide-ranging debate and particularly for its focus on social mobility. I am not an expert in the field of social mobility; I am a case study. I am so fiercely proud of the state education that I received that my title, The Vale of Catmose, was the name of my state comprehensive school. It is now called Catmose College, and in its 2012 Ofsted inspection it received “outstanding” in all four categories as well as overall. I warned your Lordships—I am fiercely proud.

I am the first generation of my family to go to university, and sometimes I still pinch myself to think that from a great-grandmother in service, to a mother who worked the most punishing shifts in a local factory, to my being on the Conservative Benches in the House of Lords is quite a journey. However, I am sure that I am not alone in becoming more and more grateful as time goes by for all the education that I received. A quick glance around the globe, particularly at girls’ education, should make us all appreciate the level of primary and secondary education available in this country at no cost to the child. Such education is pivotal and is the key foundation stone of all social mobility.

I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, that I have some unease myself with the term “social mobility”, as education is important for all human flourishing, and social mobility has somehow come to imply rising up some kind of economic ladder or even a class system. I have appreciated the Government’s focus on vocational education and apprenticeships, as I believe that good education will mean that someone at Eton who wants to be a plumber will be encouraged just as much as a budding brain surgeon in Brixton.

However, education enables children to be socially mobile in this limited sense, and the OECD report in 2010 marked us as the worst among the developed countries. Secondary education is particularly important to social mobility as this is when exposure to the workplace begins, particularly through work experience placements. It is so often a teacher who acts as a talent scout, spotting the gifts of their pupils, opening up horizons and offering them advice. When I began, at 16, to enjoy the more extensive freedom that existed at a sixth-form college, I was advised by a teacher that if I stopped skipping lessons I might get to a land called Oxbridge.

Before global technology brought the world to your smartphone, many rural children needed the world opening up for them. I recently had my nephew Kyle in for a week’s work experience. He lives in deepest rural Derbyshire, and he commented that he had never met so many people from different countries before. None of his friends did anything like as adventurous as coming to London for a week, but I could not help wondering how to ensure that such work experience was opened up more equally to children. Your first work experience placement is often the first rung on the ladder of your CV. As a former lawyer, I was interested to note the recent comments of the Supreme Court judge, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, about the “startling leap” in the proportion of privately educated and Oxbridge lawyers now entering the profession. She said:

“One of the causes of this, apart from … the networks that their parents have, is the”,

preponderance,

“of work experience and internships in today’s recruitment criteria”.

So although primary and secondary education is one factor in social mobility, it is not the only one. Law is not alone as a profession in this regard; fashion, the creative industries, the media and of course politics all suffer from this. It is through the Twitter campaign, Intern Aware, and friends who work at the BBC that I have been told that you can no longer get work experience at the BBC through knowing someone who works there; everyone goes through a central system and is selected on merit. Could this be a model to be adopted for all public institutions? I understand that some commercial firms, such as Deloitte, are also adopting that strategy. Would it not be possible for the wonderful Peers’ outreach scheme somehow to connect that to the work experience placements offered in your Lordships’ House? I do not just mean with Peers ourselves, as I have outlined.

Recently I was on a train to Cambridge when I stumbled across two 18 year-olds, who were clearly going for the day, sitting opposite me. Obviously, their parents were on the opposite side of the carriage, being embarrassing. They got into a conversation and one of them happened to mention that she had been here to do work experience. At an appropriate juncture I interjected into the conversation and asked for some feedback about that, and inquired where she had been. She mentioned some department to do with seals that I had never heard of. She had had a wonderful time, which I thought was great. I asked her, “How did you happen upon your placement?”. She replied: “My daddy knows the person who runs the department”. When the taxpayer is paying to keep the lights on and to keep the place running, I wonder whether we should be looking at a more objective system of selection.

Secondary education will also be aided to enhance social mobility with what I consider to be this Government’s most radical and exciting policy: to get rid of the divide, however one wants to term it, between private and public schools. However, I believe that this change and partnership began under the previous Government with the significant change to the Charities Act so that no longer is education presumed to be a charitable benefit. One has to produce some evidence to receive gift aid.

I am pleased to note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that schools have much to learn from each other. I commend Future First, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which is bringing in something that private schools have been good at: keeping in touch with your alumni. The state system has lost much by not keeping records and not calling on the experience of those who have been through the system, which Future First seeks to introduce.

I grew up in Oakham, a small market town where, in relation to this divide, there is a context to look at. Oakham is dominated by one private school, but has a state comprehensive school. Over the years, when people have asked, “Where did you go to school?”, and I have answered, “Oakham”, they have immediately leapt to the assumption that I went to the private school. Back when I was being educated, there was complete separation. It was not safe for us to play sport against each other. We went to different bakeries at lunchtime, and we were instructed to use different newsagents. I know that things are changing, but the Minister would do well to look at geographical—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

I hate to interrupt the noble Baroness, but I cannot resist asking her whether she is aware that Oakham School and Uppingham School were founded by Archdeacon Robert Johnson in the 1580s for poor boys and poor girls.

[Baroness Berridge]

Yes, I am aware of that. Indeed, when Oakham was a grammar school my father passed the 11-plus to go there. I say that that was when I grew up. I believe the context is changing, but there are sometimes particular geographical issues which matter to children growing up in such small areas. There can be that divide between children at the private school and children at the state school. It perhaps does not matter if you live in London.

Most encouraging for this fiercely proud state-educated Baroness is that it seems that the daughters of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister will follow in my footsteps.

Will the Minister outline how we are going to sort out the key problem of work experience placements on the “mummy and daddy know” basis? As I have outlined, I confess to my involvement in that system.