Sports Participation in Schools

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to the spending of the premium, a survey was done by the department in 2019, and we are aware that schools are spending a proportion of it on scaling up their workforce. Over 97% of those who teach PE have the relevant level 4 qualification, but I will take my noble friend’s comments back to Minister Gibb in relation to the reform of PE that he announced to my noble friend’s Select Committee back in July.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to those already expressed by noble Lords. There are sports facilities that stand unused when schools are not in session. Can the Minister look to putting in place arrangements by which all schools in the maintained sector—including of course academies and free schools—are required, and where necessary funded, to make sure that those sports facilities are available to their communities?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

The noble Baroness is correct that 39% of sports and recreation facilities in England are on school premises. That is why, over the last two years, we have invested over £11 million to enable those facilities to be used for extra-curricular activities for pupils and by communities. We have seen nearly 100,000 community users benefit from that, as well as nearly a quarter of a million pupils in extra-curricular formats.

Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my membership of Peers for the Planet. I will take a somewhat different approach from the noble Baroness whom I follow.

The global union federation of education, Education International, proudly proclaims:

“Education is a human and civil right and a public good”.


As such, it is essential that education has the role, right and responsibility to help children and young people ensure and secure their own future. We and they are now facing a climate and biodiversity crisis, alongside the ongoing challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic, but we are not yet confronting these issues in all our classrooms with all our children—although some teachers are teaching these topics and doing so very well. This is the main reason the National Education Union has long campaigned for a curriculum that can address these issues and fully engage learners at all key stages.

Globally, teachers discuss the need to address education about the climate and the environmental crisis through their unions, in negotiations with their employers, in Italy and elsewhere, and they are beginning to make the curriculum changes needed. As we have heard, nearly 90% of teachers in the UK agree that the climate crisis should be a compulsory part of the curriculum, but as many as three-quarters of them do not feel well equipped enough for such teaching, so it needs to be part of initial teacher education too, as referenced by my noble friend Lady Blackstone.

A very great deal about the Bill is positive, and much has already been covered by other noble Lords. However, I wish to particularly commend my noble friend Lord Knight for the following phrasing, highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett:

“instils an ethos and ability to care for oneself, others and the natural environment, for present and future generations.”

This should be at the heart of pedagogical practice. In the face of the crises that we are all confronting, the Bill will ensure that we take a key step in engendering hope, for our current and future generations, that they can and will rise to the huge global climate challenge, equipped with the knowledge, skills and agency necessary. This is a good Bill, and I wish it well for its future stages.

Early Years Foundation Stage (Miscellaneous Amendments) and Childcare Fees (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is pleasure to speak in the debate alongside my noble friend Lord Knight and the noble Lord, Lord Addington. As a former teacher, I can say categorically and without fear of contradiction that I am not anti- assessment, which is a central part of the teaching and learning process, but reception baseline assessment has very few friends and supporters. A teacher who engaged in an earlier iteration of this process described baseline assessment in no uncertain terms. She said it was unreliable, unethical, immoral and expensive, and that it should go once and for all. That is not the proposal before your Lordships’ House today, but it is worth considering why any early years professional should feel like this and how widespread that feeling is.

Is it unreliable? The British Educational Research Association, a highly regarded body, points out that assessing very young children—we are talking here about four year-olds, who have been locked down during this pandemic—is inherently unreliable. As the BERA report points out, any results would have

“little predictive power and dubious validity”.

Is it unethical? The reception baseline assessment is an accountability measure whose sole purpose is to judge the performance of schools. It is not to assist any child in any way at all. What is provided by the test is explicitly of no diagnostic value. They are to be used only as a cohort measure and the data will be used only at the end of year 6, as other noble Lords have said, to measure school-level progress. Yet, as other noble Lords have also said, over seven years a school cohort could change by up to 50%. Trying to reflect all the various changes accurately in any kind of algorithm could never really do so properly. Previous experience of the ill-fated and discredited algorithm for GCSEs demonstrates this. The current legislation also provides no information on the precise use to which the data will be put, other than that it will be entered on the national pupil database. Can the Minister expand beyond saying that it will be black-boxed?

Is it immoral? I am sure we all know that the first few days and weeks in a reception class are important for establishing, supporting, encouraging and nurturing relationships between children and their families and the team of early years professionals. But 69% of teachers involved in a 2019 pilot believed that the tests had had a negative impact on the settling-in period, which is not surprising when one realises that the teacher has to leave the classroom for 20 to 30 minutes at a time to conduct these tests with each child. For a class of 30, that could represent up to 15 hours of teaching time lost in those first important days of term.

However hard the teacher tries, though, according to University College London research, children know that they are being tested. This leads to some becoming anxious and feeling stressed, and to some possibly even feeling a sense of failure. That is a pretty inauspicious start to an education for any child.

Finally, is it expensive? My noble friend Lord Knight has already referred to the fact that if this were needed, we could do it much more cheaply by simply sampling. There is plenty of academic research on that being a suitable way of recording what cohorts can do. In my view, however, teacher time ought to be more highly valued than it is at present. I am sure it will be argued that the reception baseline assessment will reduce teacher workload, particularly in comparison with the early years foundation stage profile.

It is true that the early years foundation stage profile takes a lot of teacher time, but it is valuable teacher time productively spent. Frankly, any money spent on this reception baseline assessment system, which has attracted an open letter from 700 experts, educationists and parent groups describing the government plans as “pointless and damaging”, alongside an expert panel from BERA describing the assessment as

“flawed, unjustified and totally unfit for purpose”,

looks like a significant waste of resources, however much it is.

Research from University College London in 2020 showed that 86% of head teachers have negative opinions about reception baseline assessment, and research from More Than a Score, a campaigning organisation with which I have worked, found that 65% of parents are opposed to the testing of four year-olds as they start school. This should not be how children start the important lifelong learning journey on which they should engage. It is simply not appropriate.

Covid-19: Education Settings

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct. Engaging with unions and head teachers has been an important part of what the department has done over these times. The guidance we have issued has been in consultation, through regular meetings at official and ministerial level, to produce the best guidance we can. As I have outlined, we have issued guidance for an updated contingency plan for what might be expected of schools if they were in an area where a new variant of concern was prevalent or there was a local outbreak.

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is alas clear that the impact of Covid-19 will continue to be felt in schools and colleges well into the next academic year. All possible steps must be taken to mitigate these effects, in an attempt to avoid children and young people missing education. There is also the worry that rising cases in schools increase the risk of mutations. As inhalation of coronavirus is a major transmission route, with aerosol containing infectious virus able to travel more than two metres and accumulate in poorly ventilated spaces, practical action is needed.

In another place, the Secretary of State referred to enhanced ventilation. Last autumn term that meant many children and teachers working in coats, hats and gloves as their classroom windows were kept wide open, while many others worked in classrooms with windows that did not open at all. However, the provision of CO₂ monitors, as the Minister referenced, and air filtration devices where necessary following a risk assessment could maintain adequate ventilation.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness have a question? I am sorry to intervene.

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

Yes—will the Government provide sufficient funds to ensure that all schools can avail themselves of CO₂ monitors and air purifiers?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

To reassure the noble Baroness, I say that this is precisely why we have the pilot with Public Health England and SAGE; it is to look at CO₂ levels in classrooms. When we have the results of that, we will update any guidance accordingly.

Covid-19: Children

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank and congratulate my noble friend Lady Morris on securing the debate and on the excellence of her opening speech. I of course wish her a happy birthday, as I do my noble friend Lord Coaker. I do not share a birthday with them, but I share with them many decades of the privilege of working with children and young people in classrooms.

Coronavirus has exposed the reality of child poverty in 2021. Job losses, illness and increased economic pressure have pushed far too many families to the brink, limiting the life chances of millions of children and young people. As others have said, we know that even before the pandemic 4.3 million children and young people were growing up trapped in poverty. Most of those young people—75% of them—were growing up in households where at least one person was working, showing that that work did not provide a route out of poverty. A recent NUT member survey found that more than half the respondents had seen an increase in child poverty at their school or college since March 2020.

Poverty disproportionately impacts children and young people growing up in black or minority-ethnic families, 46% of whom are trapped in poverty, according to the statistics, and 44% of children in lone-parent households are also trapped in the grip of poverty, many with single parents working several jobs to make ends meet. Of course, gender inequality in pay compounds the challenges faced by many families. Research shows that a small but not insignificant effect of family poverty is that one in 10 girls cannot afford menstrual products, with more than 137,000 girls missing school because of period poverty pre-pandemic. Will the Minister consider following the Scottish Government’s lead in providing free period products for girls of school age?

The coronavirus pandemic has increased pressures on low-income families. Virtually all respondents in the NEU members survey reported students with limited or no access to learning resources at home during the months of the pandemic. This is not just laptops—four in five members reported families turning to schools or college for extra support during lockdown for provision of basic resources such as pens, paper and books, hence the £1 million fund set up by the NEU to help at least some children and young people to access those resources. One-fifth of schools in the UK have set up food banks since March 2020 and, of course, as was the case previously, 25% of teachers report that they personally provide food, snacks and so on to their pupils at their own expense. Poverty harms children’s physical health and mental well-being, which undermines their ability to learn, as we have heard from so many speakers.

Even before the pandemic, having poor languages skills at five years of age had an impact on a child’s academic achievement and future prospects. Children who struggle with language at the age of five are nearly six times more likely to be unable to reach the so-called expected standard in English at the age of 11. Children with poor vocabulary at the age of five are four or five times more likely to have reading difficulties in adulthood; it seems that they are also twice as likely to be unemployed by the age of 34. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, the link between poverty and educational attainment, as well as basic skills, is stronger in England than in any other developed country. The literacy skills gap at the age of five, when children start at primary school, in the most disadvantaged communities is 19 months.

What are we going to do about it? One thing that could be done is this. The Department for Education changed the census used to calculate pupil premium funding from January to October in December 2020. Ministers claim that this is insignificant, that schools are well funded and that the change will have only a temporary impact. However, this change will not just be one-off, because it will permanently remove pupils starting reception in the January intake. It will have a large impact this year because of the number of additional pupils receiving free school meals. This change to how the pupil premium is calculated means that £147 million is being taken away from children most in need. Will the Minister please reconsider that?

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Blake on her excellent speech and the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, on an interesting one. I add my good wishes to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth as he leaves this House.

I echo others in regretting the absence of proposals on social care and workers’ rights from the gracious Speech, both urgent issues to which this Government need to turn their attention. I am pleased that the Government have turned their attention to education and talked of an ambitious and long-term package of measures to ensure that pupils have the chance to make up their learning over the course of the Parliament. Sustainable recovery may take some time. I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lady Morris, who highlighted the absence of detail about this package.

To date the Government have, I believe, set aside only £250 per pupil, according to the Education Policy Institute. This compares rather poorly with proposed investment in the Netherlands of £2,500 or the United States of £1,600, for example. It must be borne in mind, too, that schools, already underfunded before the pandemic, have had to bear significant costs over this period, with the result that many may face financial difficulties and possible cuts to staffing. This is not a desirable situation, as children need more attention and smaller classes.

Your Lordships’ House has debated the issue of remote learning and the difficulties some families—including perhaps as many as 1.7 million children—have faced due to their lack of hardware and access to broadband. There is an acknowledgement that online learning of this kind may continue to have some place after the pandemic so this digital divide needs to be addressed, as do questions on the appropriateness of the curriculum and, in particular, the place of oracy within it.

A recent report carried out for the Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group found:

“The absence of oracy education hampers children and young people’s long-term opportunities and capabilities”.


Teachers, employers and young people themselves recognise that oracy skills support young people’s transition into further and higher education and into employment—as they do, of course, during earlier stages in education. During the pandemic, many children have missed out on language development. Two-thirds of primary and nearly half of secondary teachers say that during the period of school closures, their negative effect was noticed on the spoken language development of students eligible for the pupil premium, compared with advantaged pupils. Against this background, and in line with levelling up, will the Government reconsider the change to the pupil premium census dates, which I understand will take £150 million out of school budgets for the most disadvantaged pupils?

Many pupils have missed out on language development but they have also missed out on learning collaboratively, and on opportunities to participate in physical, practical, cultural and creative activities. Catch-up should not just be about literacy, numeracy and the academic curriculum. The gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged has widened and it must be narrowed by a focus on reducing, and ultimately eradicating in short order, child and family poverty.

I want to say a word about the summer break. First, we must ensure that no children go hungry but, secondly, if local authorities are properly resourced they can provide excellent programmes so that children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can enjoy an exciting and fulfilling time engaging in sporting, recreational, cultural and creative activities, and regaining some of their childhood, which, as an earlier speaker said, has perhaps been lost in lockdown. A contribution to this might well be engagement with the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge. This is not about phonics and testing; it is an opportunity for children and young people to enjoy reading for pleasure, so that children can begin to develop those skills which will take them into adulthood with reading as a pleasurable activity. I look forward to engaging in further debate on this issue.

Covid-19: Pupil Referral Units

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

The Government were keen to ensure that alternative provision got additional support, so the Covid catch-up fund was triple the amount put into mainstream provision—£240 per pupil rather than £80. An additional £730 million has been put into the high-needs budget this year. The Government are acutely aware that in these settings are some of our most vulnerable young people. I also draw attention to the amazing staff who, during the pandemic, did much to protect them.

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I salute my noble friend Lady Lawrence on Stephen Lawrence Day. In a statement at its recent conference, the NEU said that it is a symptom of poverty and racism that the majority of those in pupil referral units are working-class and black students. Does the Minister agree that, as the pandemic has laid bare the extent of racial inequality, to begin to tackle this in education schools need resources to prevent exclusions, including smaller classes and engaging a flexible curriculum, and much more investment in pastoral systems?

Education and Training (Welfare of Children) Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Blower]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is a brief, straightforward and technical Bill, but none the less important. Its purpose is simple and clear: it would extend the duty to safeguard and provide for the welfare of children to all providers of publicly funded post-16 education and training in England. All such providers would be required to follow relevant statutory guidance issued by the Department for Education, the current guidance being Keeping Children Safe in Education.

I pay tribute to Mary Kelly Foy, the Member for the City of Durham, for her work on this Bill in another place, in particular for its arrival in this House unamended. I welcome the fact that the Bill has cross-party and, importantly, government support.

As noble Lords may know, the landscape for 16 to 19 education is broad and varied. This has given rise to inconsistencies in the ways in which duties are placed on institutions and providers in this area. While there is an existing duty on local authorities which maintain schools, sixth forms and further education establishments to ensure that safeguarding obtains and child welfare is promoted, that duty does not extend in the same way to 16 to 19 academies, which, perhaps inexplicably, in law are neither schools nor colleges; nor does it extend to specialist post-16 institutions or independent learning providers.

The Bill would ensure that wherever 16 to 19 education is provided and accessed, the requirements as to safeguarding and the promotion of welfare would be the same. This lack of requirements expressed in a clear fashion needs to be remedied for all 16 to 19 education—of course, no more so than for those with complex special educational needs attending specialist post-16 institutions. Bringing specialist post-16 institutions and independent learning providers, as well as 16 to 19 academies, into line with other publicly funded 16 to 19 provision would create clarity and fairness. This is important for students themselves and, of course, for parents and carers on behalf of young people.

Clause 1 would amend the Education Act 2002 to extend the safeguarding duty to 16 to 19 academies, specialist post-16 institutions and independent learning providers, which provide further education where financial assistance—public money—is given for the provision of further education. This duty would be provided for in the funding agreements made with the Secretary of State.

It is envisaged that new T-levels will develop over the next two years. Of course, this is a work in progress at present. Many in your Lordships’ House have in-depth experience of education and will, I am sure, follow this development with interest. The development of T-levels, as envisaged, will see many more providers coming into the area. Therefore, it is critical that, if this expansion is to happen, it must be done with all appropriate safeguarding measures in place. Clause 2 extends the safeguarding duty to providers of education and training associated with T-levels or approved technical qualifications and to approved apprenticeship providers by amending the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 to ensure that funding agreements require compliance with safeguarding. With young people beginning to get back on track properly with their education, this is the time to deal with this gap in the law and ensure that any young person who moves into 16 to 19 provision anywhere in England finds themselves in an establishment in which the safeguarding duty is clear and explicit and in which their welfare is promoted.

In conclusion, I echo the words of my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett: I urge noble Lords to hold their usual enthusiasm for amendment in check in order to speed the passage of the Bill. I am sure that we will all agree that safeguarding and the welfare of children and young people are of central importance. The Bill will help to ensure that all 16 to 19 year-olds have the same safeguards and protections under the law.

Finally, I thank the Minister for meeting me at short notice to discuss the Bill; it was a most helpful meeting. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her very full responses to all the points raised in the debate and for the commitment she has demonstrated to safeguarding. It is of course true that safeguarding provisions existed but, as I and other noble Lords mentioned, they were inconsistent because of the piecemeal development in post-16 education. With the passage of this Bill, we will have a much more coherent position. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that it was not so much missed as that things just grew. However, now we will be able to put things on a much more consistent, coherent and clear footing.

I genuinely hope the Minister is right that this will be much easier for all providers to work with and that it will not require any further resources, since none appears to be forthcoming, but it will be important to keep this under review. As my noble friend Lord Young said, there are significant complexities, but we hope that the purpose of this Bill will be fulfilled and it will make everything easier to manage, so that we can ensure that all young people in 16 to 19 provision, wherever they are, are properly safeguarded and their welfare is promoted and supported.

My thanks go to all noble Lords who participated in this debate. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Watson for his support. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, there is so much to be said about women, here in the UK and globally, in the context of the pandemic. I begin by referring, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, to the TUC report on the impact on women in the recent period. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women, as seen in differential job loss, increased levels of maternity and pregnancy discrimination, exposure to unsafe working practices, the stress of home schooling—often juggled with working from home—and, tragically, heightened risk of domestic abuse.

There are so many fronts on which women still need to struggle to make progress towards equality in this society, and if that is the case here in Britain, those struggles are even more urgent globally. An estimated 70% of the global health and social care workforce are women. These frontline workers in many places face increased pressures and exposure to the virus, often with little personal protective equipment, let alone vaccination. Yet they are much less likely to be involved in decision-making about equipment and funding. This global figure of 70% is lower than the 77% of female staff employed in the NHS and the 82% of the adult social care workforce here which is female.

These are the very same women workers whom we have stood applauding week after week for their incredible work during the pandemic, and yet, when it comes to recognising their work, we see them paid, in the case of social care workers, at barely the minimum wage, as the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, said. Our nurses—here I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick—were offered a paltry and frankly insulting pay increase of 1%, not an increase at all given how much nurses’ pay has declined in recent years, and this at a time when there are enormous levels of vacancy in the NHS and in social care, frankly imperilling the effective functioning of these services.

Applause for these key workers was great but, as my mother used to say, “You can’t spend ‘Thank you very much’.” She was of course right. Perhaps, given the outcry against this pay proposal for nurses, the Government will think again and perhaps also think about the need—indeed, the requirement—to carry out and take into account gender equality impact assessments, both before the implementation of policies and thereafter.

Perhaps by International Women’s Day 2022 we will be able to celebrate fewer girls out of education globally and a reduction in the gender pay gap here at home or at least, in contradistinction to the ONS report of this week, see fewer women in higher levels of anxiety and depression, and even perhaps more men taking a fairer share of household work and childcare. Finally, but so importantly, let us not wait until International Women’s Day 2022 to see the end of violence against women everywhere. We must act with urgency on this, as the Minister said when opening.

Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, how many times the exam boards decide to intervene will be up to them, in terms of how many random and how many risk-assessed interventions. But I can assure the noble Lord that this is an assessment based on evidence. The exam boards will be training teachers in how to do this; they will be giving exemplar materials—for instance, “This is an example of a grade A essay in history”; and they will be given grade descriptors. We are hoping that all of these, along with the declaration that the head teacher will have to sign, will provide the assurance—but it will be for the exam boards, overseen of course by Ofqual, to do the external quality assurance.

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, on Friday last, the Secretary of State for Health told the nation that one in five local authorities had seen an increase in Covid cases and that this was still a deadly virus. Is this then the right time to bring 10 million people back into daily circulation? There is a settled view from education staff and their unions that schools and colleges should be open to all as soon as is safely possible. However, from March 8, mitigation should be in place precisely to ensure safe reopening. The use of rotas and a staggered approach, as well as the use of additional spaces and staff to allow for the greatest chance of social distancing, would all decrease the risk of a surge in community transmission on the reopening of schools and colleges. Can the Minister offer any hope that the Government, even at this late stage, will consider these helpful suggestions for mitigation?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

Obviously the return is data-driven, not date-driven. The controls that PHE have advised have been supplemented by the wearing of face masks in certain situations in secondary schools. It is a balance of risk. We are confident now that the public health figures in most areas for the disease are at such a level that they are counterbalanced by the need to get children back into education. But, as the Prime Minister made clear, we will be watching the data and the figures to ensure that there is not the kind of surge the noble Baroness outlines.