Schools: Foreign Languages
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, given that there has been a substantial increase in foreign language teaching in primary schools, are the Government concerned about the drop from 84% in 2012 to 76% in 2013—and what specifically are they doing to make sure that primary foreign language teaching does not drop further?
Ofsted: Academy Chains
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Nash
There have not been any concessions. It is completely unnecessary for Ofsted to inspect chains’ head offices. Its batched inspection methodology, which it has used in a number of cases, is working extremely well. Ofsted has a great deal to do. As of September this year, it is taking in-house all its subcontracted inspectors, who do the vast majority of its inspections, and it is unnecessary to ask it to do a further task that is not needed.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
Could my noble friend explain to the House what role the new regional commissioners will have in relation to academy chains and Ofsted? For example, if Ofsted finds that a school is not being supported as it should be by its parent academy chain, whose responsibility is it to remonstrate with the academy chain and make sure that it gets that support?
Lord Nash
The regional schools commissioners are responsible for looking at the performance of academy chains, particularly schools that are doing poorly. They are in close touch with all academy chains. Each regional schools commissioner has a responsibility for an academy chain, and it will be their task to make sure that appropriate support is brokered and, in extreme cases, to help to broker a change of sponsor.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I also put my name to this amendment, and I very much support everything that has been said so far on these issues. I congratulate the Government, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash, in particular, on having listened to what Peers and charities in the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance have said. They have done a great deal to work out a way forward. Again, I will not repeat the many things that have already been mentioned, which are now on the table to be worked out in detail, but the area that perhaps interests me more than any other is the role of governing bodies in ensuring that teachers in schools have the training and expertise that their staff require to cope with situations.
We all know that there is a shortage of qualified school nurses; we hope to hear from the Government how their number might be increased. It is not only that; an area that worries me concerns those with special needs that also involve mental health problems. Those students may well need guidance from an increased number of educational psychologists, among others.
We all want to hear from the Minister what plans the Government have to ensure that this partnership between so many organisations will be delivered to the benefit of children and families generally, so that they will feel—as they have not felt in the past—that they are being supported in the situations that they have to cope with and have always tried their best to cope with. However, they have felt very much that they did not get the help they deserved. I thank the Minister for what he has done so far and hope that he will be able to reassure us still further on some of the areas about which we have concern.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I, too, offer my thanks and congratulations to the Minister and the Government for the considerable progress made since Committee and for the frankly stunning indicative guidance. It is not yet out for consultation, but it is extremely helpful. Of course, the problem with providing your Lordships’ House with such prospective guidance is that we all have things that we think could better it. I will not repeat the points that noble Lords have already made, but will add briefly the two or three that I am concerned about.
I reiterate that the guidance must make it explicit that children with diagnosed health conditions are given an individual healthcare plan, even if there are no obvious actions, not least because medical and health conditions change and for a child at school suddenly to have to go through that process, when it was known about at the start, seems rather foolish. It will speed up the planning process and the school’s ability to monitor the child’s health if they are already on the radar of the school.
I particularly like the section in paragraph 39 on unacceptable practice. This is extremely helpful, but there is one glaring omission. Nowhere does it say that schools must take account of a doctor’s diagnosis rather than make their own. In Committee I mentioned a young man who was struggling with severe ME and chronic fatigue syndrome; but because the head did not believe that ME existed, he was given no rest times and was actually excluded because he was unable to take part in sport, which was deemed to be bad behaviour. Despite the fact that his hospital consultant had given the school formal advice, the head chose to ignore it. That is unacceptable bad practice and, in my view, it needs to be included.
That relates also to the ambiguity in the guidance about whether pupils with medical conditions should have individual healthcare plans. We must not have a get-out clause for schools. I hope that the Minister will be able to give reassurance on that point and others that my colleagues have made.
Finally, I give my particular thanks to the Minister and his team for meeting me to discuss my idea about access for teachers with frequently asked questions on a range of health conditions. This is now progressing: discussions are about to start with officials in the Department of Health. I know that the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance already has a date to discuss that and other things with the department in the very near future. When a school nurse is not around, this tool for teachers is going to be absolutely vital. It is not going to be technical and complex but will help to alleviate the fears that a teacher will have if a child suddenly moves into their class with a condition of which they have no experience at all, and if they want to understand both the learning and social implications of such a condition.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Non-Afl)
My Lords, at this time of night I shall be brief and not repeat anything that has already been said. However, I wish to make effusive remarks about the Minister’s response to the case made by the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance and for bringing forward a government amendment to the Bill, for which we are grateful. I thank the Minister for ensuring that the indicative draft of the guidance was available before we discussed this element of the Bill.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for proposing this very important amendment. He sought a response from the Minister on what happens if a school—schools now have a very clear responsibility to look after these children—fails to get an adequate input from the local health system in terms of support and making plans for individual children. From time to time staff at schools across the country say that they would like to provide a better response in this regard but are unable to do so because they do not get adequate training and support from the local health system. Therefore, this amendment is important as it would reinforce the existing duties under the Children Act—which, alas, are currently ignored—and make sure that a school is not put in the impossible position of having a statutory duty but no means of carrying it out if it is not given the necessary support.
School nurses are important but so are specialist nurses for various conditions because in many cases their specialist knowledge will be required to establish an adequate plan for each child. Therefore, this issue cannot be left simply to school nurses, quite apart from the workload issue that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, raised.
I know that this issue is of great concern to the trade unions. It was, indeed, their only stumbling block. I held the mistaken belief that the trade unions were not willing to take up this challenge on an ideological basis. However, their concerns were practical ones. They were very willing to see teachers give this support to children provided they were properly supported and trained to do so. Therefore, the question is: what does a school do if the NHS does not step up to the plate in providing training and support for it?
The indicative guidance rightly talks about the role of Ofsted in ensuring that schools meet this new duty. However, there needs to be further discussion between the department and Ofsted about the latter’s role and what it will be able to do in relation to this issue. The guidance says that inspectors are already briefed to consider the needs of pupils with chronic or long-term medical conditions and to report on how well their needs are being met. However, that was not quite the impression I got when I met the Chief Inspector of Schools a few weeks ago, so clarity is needed about what requirements will be laid on Ofsted, not perhaps in terms of this duty being fully inspected but at least the forthcoming guidance to inspectors should brief them on it. Perhaps at some stage an ad hoc report could be produced on how well the guidance is being implemented. I press the Minister to tell us what a school will do if it hits a brick wall with the NHS.
Baroness Brinton
“Provision and support for bullied children
(1) The Secretary of State must produce an anti-bullying strategy (“the Strategy”) (and consequential Code of Practice and Statutory Guidelines) for schools and further education institutions on ways of preventing and protecting children and young people from bullying and ensuring effective recovery programmes to counter the consequences of severe bullying.
(2) The Strategy produced under subsection (1) must include a comprehensive definition of bullying.
(3) The Strategy shall ensure cross links between the SEN and Anti-Bullying Codes of Practice and Statutory Guidelines, so that schools are aware that some bullied children and young people will have special educational needs.
(4) Where the impact of bullying results in a pupil or student having social, mental or emotional needs, schools and further education institutions should use the graduated approach detailed in the SEN Code of Practice, but if those needs are complex and will not be met through this approach, then an education, health and care plan should be made.
(5) Where any bullied child or student who has been out of school or further education institution for a period of three months or longer, and who has mental or emotional problems (whether or not they are impacting on the child or student’s learning), the school or further education institution will have a duty to help provide an urgent referral to the child or young person’s local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.
(6) A bullied pupil or student who is unable to attend their school or institution, but who is still on the roll, must be brought to the attention of the local authority by their school or institution within three months of starting to miss school.
(7) Where a pupil or student is brought to the attention of the local authority under subsection (6), it has a duty to find alternative provision that is suitable for the pupil or student and their needs, and the pupil or student’s educational establishment has a duty to co-operate with the local authority.
(8) During an inspection, OFSTED will expect a school or institution to provide details of the plan for any child out of school for an extended period who is still on the school roll.”
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend for the helpful meeting and exchange of letters that we have had on this important matter of provision and support for bullied children since Committee. I have laid a much simplified probing amendment in the hope that we can make further progress, given that there was considerable cross-party support for the original amendments.
My amendment falls into four distinct parts. The first three sections all seek to strengthen the definition of bullying and the cross-links between the special educational needs code of practice and the bullying code of practice for all bullying incidents. The new draft definition, which I was kindly shown, strengthens and picks up many of the points in the original amendment. There is one minor omission. The second to last line of the new paragraph refers to how bullying can result in intimidation of a victim through the threat of violence or by isolating them either face to face or online. I am afraid the reality is that we need to insert the words, “as well as actual violence”. Apart from that, the new definition is extremely helpful and I am grateful that we were allowed to see it.
Can the Minister give the House more concrete evidence that, when bullying has happened, a school or college is required to consider the SEN implications for that pupil or student, and that there will be formal cross-links between the two codes of practice? If the Minister can provide that reassurance, it would go a considerable way towards the original amendment tabled in Committee, which asked for all severely bullied children to be considered as having special educational needs. This is because a very large number of children are affected both physically and mentally, because they and their families often seek help from doctors and because at present there is no requirement for children and adult mental health services to prioritise them.
Subsections (4) and (5) of the proposed new clause address that. A child out of school for a period of three months as a result of bullying almost invariably suffers from depression. They can self-harm, develop panic attacks or anorexia or want to kill themselves—and as we know, around 20 a year are successful in killing themselves. Speedy access to CAMHS is vital. Will my noble friend provide reassurance that children in this state can get the help they need, with quick referral? Three months out of school is too long for a pupil to be away from learning and without active support. Will he also confirm that a child diagnosed with clinical depression, whether from bullying or not, would be considered as having a health condition and therefore come under the guidance that we have discussed in the previous group of amendments?
The next part of the proposed new clause—subsections (6) and (7)—tackles the difficulty of educational provision for those children so severely bullied that they cannot face attending school or college. I remind your Lordships that academic research by the National Centre for Social Research estimates that on average 16,000 pupils or students a year are in this position. That is the equivalent of 16 average-sized secondary schools, which is a shockingly high number. I am grateful for the points that the Minister commented on in Committee. There is some specialist alternative provision through the new free schools, but at present there are only a handful in the country as a whole, and most of the alternative-provision free schools focus on students with emotional and behavioural difficulties and only a handful on bullied children. There is certainly nothing that would cover the 16,000 children who need support.
These children cannot face going into the school where the bullying happened, even in a special unit inside the school—they cannot even cross the boundary through the school gates. They must not go to pupil referral units or to an alternative provision for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. What can be provided for these children, both in the short term and the longer term? What support can local authorities access to make that provision for them work, as some schools do not allow the money to follow the child, even though the child is not in school? Finally, will the Minister ensure that at the very least Ofsted will ask schools to account for children who are not attending for long periods, for whatever reason, and to state what action the school has taken to help them?
I end on a positive note. The Government are doing very well on beginning to change the culture around bullying, particularly through their £4 million support for the Anti-Bullying Alliance, and including the work of Anti-Bullying PRO, which is training pupils as anti-bullying ambassadors. I have seen them in practice and in training and they are extremely impressive—but it takes time, and only a few can be trained at any one time. It is a small organisation and there are thousands of schools.
I have also seen the wonderful new online ChildLine help that helps combat cyberbullying and sexting, called Zipit. If noble Lords have not had a chance to look at it, they should do so. It is a polite and slightly tongue-in-cheek way for the young to put down friends and pupils who send them inappropriate or bullying messages in a way that does not make them feel as though they are victims. The whole thing can be simply calmed down. ChildLine has done very well by producing that. Frankly, more needs to be done, and I hope to hear the Minister today provide reassurance to your Lordships’ House on this very serious issue. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his full and detailed response. Much of what he has said has gone a considerable way towards addressing not just my concerns and those of other noble Lords who have spoken but those of the APPG on Bullying, which has been looking at this issue for some time. The only outstanding issue, which cannot be tackled through legislation, is the monitoring of alternative provision to make sure that it is available across the country. Perhaps I can bother the Minister outside the Chamber in future to make sure that that happens.
I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this fairly brief debate. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that one of the reasons for reiterating the importance of having a strategy nationally and in schools was to have all the information in one place. Part of the problem that schools have faced is that there have been lots of disparate bits of information that have not all been drawn together. We were aware of where there was a requirement but it was thought to be beneficial for schools to have something in one place to work their way through. I hope the cross-links that the Minister talked about—between SEN, the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance and the bullying code of practice—will go some way to doing that. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I find myself in some difficulties in knowing what I should think about where we are going. I have listened to the impassioned speeches and, like many speakers, I have had very direct contact with young people who have suffered in very real ways, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, illustrated, from the side effects of cyberbullying, the new technology and all those issues that will surely be taken on board when the group reviews the guidance in relation to schools.
I would, however, like to ask a couple of things of the Minister while I am thinking through where I stand. First, I am concerned that the review will not be comprehensive. The world is so different now. To the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I say it is a very different world to even when the noble Lord was putting his group together. It is certainly a very different world from when I was listening to children talking on the lines at ChildLine. Even then, very young children were extremely confused about sexuality. There is no doubt that we need to get sex education for all children firmly into the educational process.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, that the age of innocence, with respect, is long past. If you have watched the penguins with David Attenborough or the midwife programme, you have it all there before you. Much as we would like our children to be innocent, what the parents that I talk to worry about is not the innocence of their children but how their children will protect themselves and retain their own capacity to be responsible in a world that bombards them continually with these images. No child who lives in the modern world, unless they are totally in a bubble, is going to escape that. We have got to ensure somehow that they are prepared.
In saying that, however, I want to hear what the Minister has to say about PSHE. I thought my noble friend made an extremely important point about relationship education not being all about sex, and I hope the noble Lord will hear that and, indeed, others who have spoken. Certainly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, what came out time and time again when talking to children at ChildLine was that the issue was not just sex but the whole relationships issue—their friendships, how they negotiated groups and how they managed to move from one friendship to another without trauma. That was what mattered to them.
Unless we have that PSHE, for which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has campaigned for so long, which provides that thorough education—about how you grow up, how you become a citizen, how you learn to live in a mass of relationships and how you manage to negotiate this impossible world; thankfully, I did not have to negotiate that, but I now have to do so with those young people for whom I am responsible—I shall be very disappointed.
I know the Minister takes this very much to heart and would like to achieve something like this. I understand that it is not easy. I understand that it is about training teachers, about helping parents, and maybe about family learning, where families learn together about some of these issues.
I am uneasy, however, about voting for an amendment that simply puts sex education on the statute book without thinking through the complexity around how we achieve it. So my last question for the Minister is this: if he has an expert group and if he looks at how this might be introduced, would there be a timetable with an end date, so we do not go around the circle yet again without coming to an end that achieves something for our young people, who desperately need it in this modern world?
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I was chair of education in Cambridgeshire in the late 1990s. One of the things that Cambridgeshire has always done well is sex and relationship education policy; indeed, many other authorities use its framework. I particularly want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, that explicit sex, in the terms that I think worry many people, is not taught at key stage 1. Actually, the key stage SRE policy is vital because it provides child protection. I am looking at the Cambridgeshire syllabus at the moment, and it says that children must understand that they have rights over their own bodies, understand what makes them feel comfortable and uncomfortable and learn how to speak about it. That is exactly what I want a five year-old to be able to understand, and all the graded teaching, right the way through the system, is age-related and appropriate.
One of my concerns is that not all schools provide excellent SRE because there is no consistency across the sector. I am afraid that that is one of the reasons why we need to be able to provide that framework so that there is consistency. This is not just about the whim of parents or schools; it is vital for the health and safety of our children as they grow up in a very different society.
I have heard comments about worries about a review kicking things into the long grass. In this instance there is division—but then there is always division, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight would accept; had there not been division in his party when in government, this would now be compulsory. Let us not get into that political debate. We need to keep this debate on the agenda and keep it going. In a perfect world, I would like to see not only a compulsory curriculum but one that provided the reassurance that all parents would understand that their children were being given safe and appropriate advice to protect them in future.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that this is not just about 12 and 13 year-olds; I have seen primary schoolchildren making sexual advances to younger children and girls. I have seen primary children sending and looking at the most sexually explicit messages that you could imagine.
We spend a lot of time arguing about which kings and queens we should be studying in history, yet we seem to just push this issue aside. It is important that we equip our young children with the skills to deal with the social and emotional problems that they are going to face in their lives. It is important that they know about relationships, loneliness and isolation, and that they know how to deal with being bullied, or indeed with being bullies themselves. Other things, such as how to manage their finances when they get older, internet safety and child abuse, are also hugely important. As a society, though, we pick up the problems but almost ignore how we can deal with them.
Sadly, passing an amendment like this, as good as it is, is not completely the solution. You can pass such an amendment but we must also get quality training for our teachers in PSHE and sex and relationship education, and leadership in schools that does not look at this as a little tick-box exercise and say, “Well, we’ve done that, we’ve carried out our duties and if Ofsted come along we can show them a bit of paperwork here”. I have seen that happen far too often. It is also about inspectors, when they go into schools, properly ensuring that PSHE is being taught. We as a society have to understand and appreciate that this is probably the most important thing that we can do to support young people in schools.
On the website of the PSHE Association, which is a very good site and well worth going to, a question that I constantly ask is highlighted: “Do academies and free schools have to teach PSHE?”. The answer on the website is no. Why are we not giving as much importance to ensuring that all our schools, whether they be academies, maintained schools or free schools, are teaching PSHE? The amendment just talks about maintained schools; it does not mention academies. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, when he was—no, I am not going to say that.
Labour introduced academies and I understand why they did so; they wanted, if you like, to give a sort of uniqueness to them by saying, “Okay, you can have more control over your curriculum”. However, that has suddenly now led to a huge growth in academies—some 53% of our secondary schools are academies—so half our schools will not be bound by any amendment that is carried. We—again, as a society—should say that a narrow national curriculum should say, as it does on the label, that it is national and it is a curriculum for all. I hope that we will give some thought to ensuring that this involves all schools—even, dare I say, independent schools as well.
Schools: Non-attending Pupils
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Brinton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what the relevant bodies are doing to ensure that pupils who have not been formally excluded but are not attending school are provided with a full-time education.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, the subject of this debate may affect only a small number of pupils in terms of the total school population—some thousands of children a year—but their education is put at risk either by a lack of co-ordination by their school when they are out of school and getting help elsewhere or, I am afraid, the complete absence of any support.
The statutory guidance, Ensuring a Good Education for Children Who Cannot Attend School Because of Health Needs, which was reissued this May, is helpful but sadly not followed by all schools. The main categories of children that I have met or heard from recently are those with medical conditions, children who are so severely bullied that they cannot face going to school, or those who have been excluded informally by the school and pressured by the parent.
Perhaps we can tackle that last one first. Over recent years there have been anecdotes about children with emotional and behavioural difficulties not being quite difficult enough to be excluded, and this is worsened when the school does not want them on the premises during an Ofsted inspection. I had hoped that this habit had died down, but recently I heard from the National Deaf Children’s Society about two very different cases from different parts of the country.
In the first, a parent was repeatedly called to her deaf child’s school from work during lunchtime and told to take her son home because of “social disruptions” caused by his learning difficulty. The repeated phone calls acted informally to exclude the student from school and to burden the parent, and very few formal steps were taken by the school to remedy the problem. In the second case, the support assistant of a deaf student was called to jury duty for 12 weeks and the school failed to provide any supplementary support for the student. An Ofsted inspection was taking place and the mother was pressured into not sending her child into school so that the inspector would not see the problem.
Schools are also very anxious about recording authorised and unauthorised absences. One student received multiple “unauthorised absences” from school because he had to attend his medical appointments. His parents had informed the school of the medical needs but the school still held him accountable and required the parents to meet officials to discuss the absences. The parents said that they felt under pressure to avoid their child going to necessary medical appointments so as to improve the school’s attendance figures.
I ask the Minister whether there are robust systems in place to ensure that schools are being held to account for these informal exclusions. How will Ofsted be made aware that they are happening? Who can parents report things to if they are worried that the school is not listening or behaving properly? This is true especially for academies and free schools, where there is no recourse to a local authority for help.
Last month I had the privilege of meeting, here in the Palace of Westminster, a number of pupils and students from the Alliance of Healthcare Conditions. Some of their stories are also worrying. I met an 18-year-old girl who, at 14, had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma and had a tumour removed. This meant she was out of school, either in hospital or at home, for the best part of a year just as she was starting her GCSE courses options. Her maths teacher, who was also the deputy head of the school, called every other week to check in and offer her support for maths, which the girl then passed very well at age 16, having returned to school. But there was absolutely no co-ordination between the school, other staff, and the hospital school or her home tutor provided by the local authority when she was at home.
I talked last week to Dr Clarissa Pilkington, a pediatric rheumatology consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital, who confirmed that this problem is widespread among hospital schools. She said that hospital schools would welcome more contact with children’s schools, not least because they can target support at the right level of learning, especially for students working towards exams or qualifications. The statutory guidance I mentioned earlier talks about liaising with a school when the child is going back to school, but it does not talk much, if at all, about the school liasing as the child goes out of school and into alternative support.
Dr. Pilkington also commented that appropriate learning and short bursts of concentration can help her patients manage their pain and other symptoms, so learning is useful to the medical process too. Will the Minister please say whether there is a requirement for such co-ordination in cases where it is obvious that children will be out of school for an extended period? Who checks the level of support that a pupil or student gets at home if they are out of school for a period, and are the local authority and the relevant home tutor given access to staff at the local school so that they can set the appropriate level of work?
I know that my next example is an independent school, but the Telegraph recently reported that the parents of a student attending an independent boys’ school were pressured, by threats of exclusion, into removing him. The student, who was eventually diagnosed with severe ADHD, had passed his entrance exams with high marks, tested well, participated in athletics, but struggled with homework and long tasks due to difficulty concentrating. That is not uncommon with ADHD. He also struggled with sleeping. Eventually a meeting was called at the school. The deputy head promised to provide details of an educational psychologist but failed to do so and recommended a school counsellor instead. His parents were eventually told he would be excluded if he continued to behave in that way. They felt compelled to remove him before he was excluded. Following his formal diagnosis by a pediatric neurologist, he now attends a new school with smaller classes and full-time SEN staff. The pupil was very distressed by the behaviour of his former school. I raise this example to say the problem is not confined to the maintained sector.
I now move to children so severely bullied that they cannot go to school. The Minister and I have talked about alternative provision for these children, but that is not the focus of this debate, even though much more of it is needed across England and Wales. I want to know what happens to the pupils defined as school refusers but still on the school roll, often because the school will not accept that bullying is happening in the school. Last week I heard of a young man who was the victim of homophobic bullying, who was last in his school two years ago. He cannot get to alternative provision elsewhere because the school insists that he must return to the specialist support unit inside the school, as the school believes it can handle the problem. It has failed, however, to take into account that he is still taunted and bullied on his walk to and from the school and inside the school on his way to the unit. He is now 17. He is approaching the end of his school career with no qualifications, clinical depression, and despair about the whole education system. Can the Minister say what a student and their parents should do when a school behaves in this way?
Admissions is another issue for children with medical conditions. An 11-year-old girl I met has very serious allergies, causing life-threatening anaphylactic shock. Because of her allergies, the hospital consultant has said she should not travel on public transport. Her mother applied for her to go to the local school. Her appeal to go there was refused because the school said it was not a medical condition despite the intervention from her consultant. Worse, the staff at the school said they would refuse to use the EpiPen if she went into shock, so she could not attend the new school from the beginning of term. When I last talked to her mother 10 days ago, she was still out of school. Are schools allowed to decide what is and is not a medical condition? Medical need for admission has always been prioritised. It is shameful that some schools are running away from their responsibilities. I know that the Government are being very helpful in the Children and Families Bill on the issue of staff giving emergency medication, but refusing a child a place in school is patently ridiculous.
To conclude, there are too many pupils out of school for extended periods who are invisible to the system. I ask the Minister whether there is any record of the level of educational attainment for these young people out of school for a long time. Is there an opportunity to disaggregate the data from the whole-school figures to show those on the roll but not currently attending, and, perhaps more importantly, is this something Ofsted should be asking schools to account for? Most importantly, what are the Government going to do to ensure that this very vulnerable group of pupils gets access to the education that it deserves and is entitled to?
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 223, to which my name is attached. I will be brief, because most of what I would have said has already been said well by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.
I particularly support the emphasis that he put on the need for teachers to have the right training to deal with children with medical conditions. Without that training, it is likely that any guidance issued will be completely defunct. The NHS, local authorities and schools need to work co-operatively to ensure that training is provided and accessible to teachers.
I welcome the government amendment most sincerely. I am glad that the Minister has tabled it at this stage. My only problem is that, without seeing the draft guidance, we have no way to comment on whether its breadth and depth will be adequate to meet the needs of children with medical conditions. I therefore hope that the Minister can make a commitment to bring forward the draft guidance before Report, so that we can improve it—not criticise it, but help to improve it.
I also want to ensure the inclusion of medical conditions not already mentioned—the list is exhaustive— such as diabetes, epilepsy, asthma and allergies, but also cancers. It is often thought that children with cancers have short lives. Some, unfortunately, do, but most childhood cancers are now long-term conditions and should be treated more as chronic diseases, not short-term ones. I hope that the Minister will include dealing with cancers in the guidance.
The guidance must recognise both the social and emotional needs of young people with long-term medical conditions, and the fact that a health condition can impact on a child or young person’s ability to learn. Another important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, was the need to involve the parents and children to ensure that the school understands their condition and its emergency needs. A child having a hypoglycaemic attack requires immediate treatment. A child having an allergic attack requires immediate treatment. A child with a migraine needs to be treated with compassion, because they may lose their vision and hearing. Putting them in a corner or a quiet room does not solve the problem. Those are some of the things that children with a medical condition suffer on a daily basis in schools. If we cannot get things right for children in the Bill, we fail them.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, with the permission of the Grand Committee, I would like to speak sitting down. I have added my name to Amendments 67 and 68, and I will not repeat the points that my noble friend Lord Storey has already covered, although I completely agree with them.
I, too, want to focus on children with medical conditions. We have had a lot of information, but I have met three or four children with differing conditions. The problem is when schools do not recognise a medical condition. A young man aged 18 with ME had a statement, but it was for his behaviour, not for his medical condition. Even after the consultant wrote to the school, the school refused to believe that the condition existed. A girl with a congenital heart condition was taking an exam. The invigilator had not been informed about the technical equipment she had to wear, and she was pulled out of the exam. Cancer has already been mentioned. There have certainly been some serious educational support issues. I met one young lady who, in the year she had off from formal schooling, had one supportive teacher who kept in touch academically and socially. None of the others did. Home tuition via the local authority was extremely patchy and had not linked up with the school, and nor had the hospital school. As a result, the year was, in her phrase, “entirely haphazard”.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I rise to speak in support of Amendments 65D and 219. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, Amendment 65D was a recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am very grateful to him for moving it so ably. There are really no more arguments to put, because he put all the key arguments. Does the Minister accept that the amendment avoids the crude binary distinction between inclusion and specialism that the Government understandably wish to avoid? If he does, will he accept the recommendation? If he does not accept it, is there some other wording that he would accept that would enable the principle of inclusion to be put in the Bill? As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, it is an important principle.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights also gave its support to Amendment 219. It is a broader amendment than the amendment recommended by the Joint Committee. UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2013: Children with Disabilities report emphasises that an accessible environment is essential if children with disabilities are to enjoy their right to participate in the community. The right to participate in the community is fundamental to citizenship. I am sure every noble Lord in this Room believes in the equal and full citizenship of disabled children. Therefore, I hope the Government will be able to accept this amendment.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF. I, too, am delighted to be speaking in favour of Amendment 219, which can bring about the transformation of education—much of our emphasis today has been on education—and, importantly, health and social care services, which is needed to make them truly inclusive for families with disabled children.
I strongly believe that the starting point for looking at the reforms to SEN in this Bill should be that a disabled child has just as much right as every other child to be involved in their community, to be visible in their own community and to have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. Despite some very welcome reforms to support for disabled children and children with SEN in the Bill, I fear that the right of disabled children to participate in their community will not be sufficiently realised through the Bill. This concern is shared by UNICEF and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, noted.
There is compelling evidence that families with disabled children currently encounter huge difficulties in accessing support in their community. Indeed, Scope’s recent Keep Us Close report found that a mere 14% of families with disabled children said they could get all the support they needed in their local community. Therefore families which already face immense challenges on a daily basis more often than not encounter a closed door when it comes to ensuring that their children enjoy the same opportunities as other children.
The Government previously stated in Committee on the Bill in the other place that there are already duties in place to ensure that appropriate provision is made for children and young people with special educational needs and disabled children and their families. However, such duties are clearly failing to achieve their intended purpose. Although the Equality Act 2010 requires organisations to be proactive and responsive in ensuring that the public services that they provide are inclusive and accessible, the reality is that services for disabled children are often developed, planned and commissioned separately from other community services, and consequently miss more strategic opportunities to create joined-up support and a more inclusive society. Parents are confronted with local activities and services that are inaccessible or a lack of support services to enable disabled children to join in with local activities such as youth groups or even simply playing in the park with their peers.
The Government need to set out a clear strategic direction and create a strong imperative for local authorities to focus on accessibility of local services, and that is exactly what the amendment would do. Although a number of local authorities undertake excellent work alongside families with disabled children to ensure that their needs are met by mainstream services—notably Suffolk, Leeds and Blackpool—not all local authorities are as progressive. Many local authorities and voluntary organisations want to provide more inclusive and accessible services, and the amendment would help to give them a chance to do that.
Such a duty on local authorities and NHS bodies would not have to be burdensome. Disabled children and those with SEN more often than not do not need hugely different or specialist services. With small changes to an existing service, we can make them accessible and inclusive for disabled children. It is not about providing more and separate services, but, rather, targeting current provision in the most effective way.
Indeed, making services accessible and inclusive for disabled children is just as much about changing attitudes as it is about making physical adjustments. It is about breaking down many of the fears and misconceptions about what inclusion means and ensuring that services see children simply as the individuals who they are—forcing services to think more creatively about how they can meet the needs of families with disabled children and allow the 1.7 million disabled children and children with SEN to reach their potential.
Lord Ramsbotham
Briefly, I support my noble friends Lady Howe and Lord Low on Amendment 219. I commend to the Minister, in forming the regulations, an enormous number of examples of good practice around the country which should be taken note of, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. Some of them were drawn to attention in the report of my committee on the links between social disadvantage and speech, language and communication needs. We were fascinated that, for example, in Walsall, assessments were made of children in secondary schools. Nowhere else in the country could we find that being done in the same way. In Stoke, they were training lollipop men and dinner ladies to identify conditions in children which they might bring to the attention of the authorities so that they could be followed up, based on the fact that no longer is child development a requirement in teacher education, which I find an extraordinary state of affairs.
I speak here on behalf of a coalition called the Communication Trust, which would be more than happy to share all that it has learnt with the Minister and the officials responsible for drawing up the regulations to make certain that they incorporate as much as possible of what is already known.
Schools: Careers Service
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Nash
I think that the noble Baroness’s ambitions and objectives for careers guidance are the same as mine. However, I disagree that the gold standard is a face-to-face interview with a careers adviser. The gold standard is what all good schools do, which is to seek to identify their pupils’ passions, interests, aptitudes, strengths and weaknesses at an early stage and to work with them throughout their time at school to provide a direct line of sight and contact with the workplace. That is what a good education is all about. A few interviews at the end of your time in school is a poor substitute for that.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, given that the Ofsted report said that three out of four schools were not working well with the new arrangement, despite a handful of excellent examples, this is a devastating indictment. The Barnardo’s research shows that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds need that face-to-face quality, independent advice. In the recent Education Act, the new code of practice said that vulnerable pupils need this face-to-face advice. Will the Government tell us whether this is happening and, if they do not have the figures, should they not be asking for them?
Lord Nash
My Lords, the noble Baroness uses the expression “a devastating indictment”. The previous Connexions regime did not work and hardly anyone, from Ofsted to Alan Milburn, had a good word to say about it. That is pretty devastating. There is clear guidance on pupils who will specifically benefit from face-to-face advice—disadvantaged pupils and those with learning difficulties or disabilities. I think that I have made my position clear. What we regard as a really first-class education is what I outlined rather than last-minute careers advice.
Schools: Admission Policies
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for confirming earlier that some religious free schools can select up to 50%. How does the department monitor the percentage of admission by faith in schools, particularly in those previously independent religious schools that are now free schools.
Education: Sex Education
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Nash
Our teenage pregnancy rates are now at their lowest level in more than 40 years, and data for 2011, released by the Office for National Statistics in February this year, showed a continuing decline. The Government believe that the best protection is a good education, and we believe that our curriculum reforms will strike the right balance to allow all schools to improve their focus on the issues that are relevant to the circumstances.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I am sure that the House is pleased that the Government have put more about sex and relationships into the curriculum, but surely some concerns must remain if academies can choose not to teach it. How are the Government going to ensure that academies teach young people about sex and relationships?
Lord Nash
My noble friend is quite right that academies are not obliged to teach sex education, although, if they do, they have to have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on these matters. I repeat the point that Ofsted inspects for all social, moral and cultural provision in schools, and we will be ensuring that it focuses on this point.
Employment: Young People
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, for initiating this important debate, which is vital to understanding what we need to do as a country to prepare our young people for their working lives.
Employers, when surveyed, say repeatedly that young people leaving full-time education—whether at 16, 18 or after a first degree—often lack employability skills and a real understanding of the world of work and how they must adapt and learn to succeed. In June, John Cridland, the director-general of the CBI, said that the quality of careers guidance is not good enough and that many young people leave school or college with little knowledge of the workplace. He warned that the Government,
“may have adopted too laissez-faire an approach”,
when they gave the right to schools to run their own careers advice. Careers information, advice and guidance—which I will shorten to IAG—are critical to inform and guide young people and their families about the opportunities for further education and work. We parents need our own information to be updated; entering the workplace is very different to how it was in our day. I shall focus principally on IAG.
Our present system is failing too many young people. Eighteen months ago, the Association of Colleges surveyed 16 year-olds. Only 7% knew that apprenticeships were a post-GCSE qualification. Less than 20% were able to name BTECs, and only 9% could name diplomas. All these are very good vocational routes into the world of employment. The BBC recently reported Joshua Robinson, an apprentice at Cisco Systems, as saying:
“Apprenticeships were never mentioned as a viable alternative to university and the problem really lies in the perception of schools”.
Yesterday, at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, of which I am a member, we heard from some major engineering employers about their excellent apprenticeship schemes. We heard of a young man who had a clutch of GCSEs at grades A and A*, and who was absolutely clear that he wanted to do an apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce. Yet his teachers were telling him that this was the wrong route for him and that he must go to university. I suspect that they did not know that advanced engineering apprenticeships have a strong progression route right through first degrees and often into postgraduate study. I suspect that the teachers did not know that there were 11 applicants for every apprenticeship last year, with many, many more applying to organisations such as Rolls-Royce, Babcock and others. Sadly, I suspect that their aspirations for their students were to map out the same experience as their own: A-levels and a traditional academic course at university.
The employers yesterday were also clear that employability skills were an issue. Some good practice existed but not enough, and they applauded those further education colleges and universities that focused on them. They involve exactly the skills to which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, referred. Communication skills are key but there are others, including leadership and working as part of a team, which do not seem to be taught in most schools and colleges. Employers are also often concerned about literacy and numeracy in young employees. We alone of the OECD countries allow young people to give up maths and/or English if they follow an academic route such as A-levels. While our A-level system has much to commend it, involving in-depth study of subjects, it is possible to leave behind one of the two core subjects that every employee will need in the 21st century.
With the raising of the participation age in compulsory education to 18 by 2015, does the Minister agree that all students should continue with both maths and English, whether pure or applied, or as literacy and numeracy, until they are 18? The international baccalaureate insists that students continue with English and maths, and there are real benefits that young people often do not realise that they need until later in their life at college or university, or when they start work. It also allows pupils to utilise their broad education by bringing creative solutions in from other disciplines to their future jobs and apprenticeships.
For those young people who follow vocational routes, there is a focus on continuing with literacy and numeracy, and I am sure that this is right. However, I suspect we need new courses that are particularly relevant for the industry that they are going into, such as English for engineers or statistics for humanities students, that will give them the skills they need. The key message to students must be that the lower your skills level, the more chance there is that you will be out of work. Recent youth unemployment statistics show that a quarter are without five good GCSEs, 14% have good GCSEs but no further qualifications, and 8% have a degree. That could not be clearer: the higher your qualification, the less likely it is that you will be unemployed.
For many young people, the best route into work is through an apprenticeship. This Government have created over 1.2 million new apprentices, and we need more employers to come on board and develop apprenticeships. There are some excellent examples of employers working in schools with both pupils and teachers, and it is evident that where it happens, everyone benefits. I believe that this should start in primary school, and I am grateful to the Government for starting IAG at 13, but business link days for 10 and 11 year-olds give children the chance to design things, to create marketing ideas and to test out experiments which can fire their imaginations and move them away from the all too common aspiration of being a footballer or, even worse, a footballer’s wife. It is also important to ensure that pupils follow the right courses at the right levels. The engineering employers we spoke to yesterday all commented that the lower level maths GCSE exam at grade C does not provide a starting point for engineering apprentices at 16, so pupils who want to go into engineering, and their teachers, should push to do the higher level exam as a minimum.
We need to see if the new arrangements for careers advice in schools are working, and I suspect that this will be a common theme of the debate. Many concerns were raised in your Lordships’ House during the passage of the Education Act 2011, not least the move away from face-to-face advice for most young people. Can the Minister tell us when a detailed review is planned and what the Government will do to ensure that young people get access to information? That is because we are still hearing about examples of schools refusing—and I do mean refusing—to allow brochures from local FE colleges or employers offering apprenticeships into their schools. How on earth can our young people and their families come to an informed decision about progression routes if they do not know about them? What action will the Department for Education take with schools where this practice persists?
The National Careers Council report, An Aspirational Nation: Creating a culture change in careers provision, provides an excellent perspective on how we can improve IAG for our young people, and asks for the role of Ofsted when reporting on IAG in schools to be strengthened. Can I ask the Minister if he supports this specific proposal, as well as the report more widely? Careers advisers are themselves coming together for accreditation and for continuing professional development, which is to be commended. We must not hamstring them by reducing the scope of their advice because of the actions of some schools. The OECD has argued that:
“As careers diversify, career guidance is becoming both more important and more challenging. More complex careers, with more options in both work and learning, are opening up new opportunities for many people. But they are also making decisions harder as young people face a sequence of complex choices over a lifetime of learning and work”.
It is vital that we have a strategic careers service that supports young people in their early and later decisions about subjects and levels of subjects. It should ensure that they have access to information about all the options open to them, not just about progression in their current school’s sixth form. Pupils should leave school, college or university with a good, broad range of qualifications and skills that will make them not just employable, but able to achieve their aspirations and ambitions for their lives.