Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Barker

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, I now invite the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to take part remotely.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group: Amendment 137D and 143IB. Amendment 137D replicates Amendment 171V that I had in an earlier group, for children who are home educated or out of school long-term for other reasons.

Amendment 137D sets out that a local authority must take account of the advice of a doctor, social worker or youth offending officer when considering school attendance orders. This comes back to the issue that I have talked about often in these groups, where some parents have their children out of school not because they want to but because their child is not safe in school, whether that is for medical, psychological or other reasons. For the reasons I said earlier, and I will not go through them again, many parents say that the officer at their local authority refused to acknowledge the reasons why the pupil was out of school. This amendment ensures that the advice of the relevant independent expert must be taken into account when considering orders and school nomination notice for a school attendance order.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely on this group. I therefore invite her to speak now.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has already expressed the worries from home educators and why she is opposing the clause standing part. My queries are more probing as to whether these clauses and the schedule should stand part.

On Clause 49 on school attendance orders, many Peers have already raised a surfeit of problems during the debate. Unlike the current system on the government website that I described, there is no sense of a ladder of penalties, of support between each stage before progressing on, or how local authorities will work as constructively as they can with parents and pupils before the process for school attendance orders kicks in. I know that the Minister said before the break that the guidance will talk about support. The problem is that, if that guidance is not in the Bill or referred to in the Bill, it might easily be missed and ignored.

On Clause 50 and failure to comply with the school attendance order, I want to come back to something the Minister said at the end of the debate on the first group. I am sorry, and I appreciate that the Minister is probably getting frustrated by this, but I have frustrations myself. She said in response to my question that prison terms were increasing from three months to 51 weeks because magistrates’ powers were now being increased from three months to 51 weeks. In fact, the current maximum is six months. It is going up to 51 weeks, but it is not currently three months. I was slightly bemused by that.

Usually, a maximum prison sentence is defined by the level of the offence, not the sentencing power of the court that is going to hear it. That is exactly why I quoted examples of crimes that would receive sentences of up to six months—threatening someone with a weapon or a second offence of possession of a gun. The example that I gave of a 12-month sentence—I appreciate that 51 weeks is not quite 12 months—was of very serious harassment and stalking, over an extended period, which involved a large team of police investigating over many months, not to mention the distress it caused to the 30 people who were the targets.

I am hearing from the Minister’s response that the drafters decided that, because magistrates will have the opportunity to sentence a convicted criminal to up to 51 weeks, that should be in the Bill. There are three worries and three groups of people involved in this. First and most importantly, what is the impact on children of a parent, especially if it is a single parent, going to prison? For three months, a temporary foster placement or possibly a short-term placement with kinship carers might be possible, but social services view a 51-week sentence very differently, even if the parent comes out after half the sentence has been served.

The second is the impact on prisons. We already know that our prisons are overcrowded. I have no idea of the numbers the Minister thinks are likely to be involved, but it might be useful to have an indication. The third is the impact on the parent who is themselves imprisoned. I ask the Minister if the Ministry of Justice has said that it is content with lines 18 to 20 in Clause 50 and this new, much-increased maximum sentence of 51 weeks.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be taking part remotely in this group. I invite the noble Baroness to take part.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, especially today when the Anti-Bullying Alliance is asking all of us to encourage children to talk to someone if they are isolated, depressed or bullied. We know that they are not alone, but of course they feel fearfully alone.

Amendment 145 returns us to the issue of mental health in children in schools, which I raised in earlier parts of the Bill. It looks specifically at school attendance policy and ensuring that any mental health illness that has contributed to truancy is taken into account. That is helpful and fits neatly with my other amendments about following the advice of a doctor.

Amendment 170 is more general, and asks for Ofsted to assess the mental health of a student body—the overall health of all children in a school. We know that children and young people, their parents, their families, Ministers and parliamentarians are all too aware of the effect of the pandemic on their mental health. It is really important that we learn from that.

That is why I am particularly pleased to see Amendment 171M placing a duty on the Secretary of State to report each year on the physical health and mental health of children at school in England. This is particularly helpful, especially with all the concerns expressed recently. I particularly like the physical side: we all talk all the time about how important it is that children take exercise and that they eat properly. On all sides of the House, we discuss it often. But I do not think we actually assess what is happening in schools. For the Secretary of State to have to prepare an annual report on this will be extraordinarily helpful. I particularly like, in the amendment, proposed new paragraph (b)(iii) and (iv), which specifies

“the length of time spent by pupils waiting for mental health support provided through their school”

and

“the adequacy of provision of mental health support in and through schools.”

That is because at the moment there is no focus. We keep saying that schools are the front line of mental health problems; indeed, we know that money has been put in by the NHS to provide counselling services, but we need to be able to see how long children are waiting and whether that money is sufficient. I have to say, wearing my health portfolio hat, that we know that mental health is still really underfunded, so we need to understand if delays continue even after some of this money has reached the front line.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, is absolutely right: the NHS cannot do this on its own. But I would go further: managing children’s mental health problems must be a joint venture between the child’s school and their access to mental health services. By cataloguing this in a report, the Secretary of State can be held accountable, alongside the Secretary of State for Health, for making sure that the Government deliver on their promises for mental health for our children.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Barker

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is participating remotely. I invite her to speak now.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am a signatory to Amendment 86 in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lord Storey, who unfortunately cannot be in his place today. Our amendment requires the funding formula to be accompanied by an assessment of the funding to support pupils disrupted by Covid and the ability of schools to support such pupils. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for going into a lot more detail than I propose to do this evening.

I want to make two points. The first is a broader one. The extra funding for post-Covid catch-up is welcome, but how much of it is essentially baseline budget, and what is the impact of that on small rural schools, versus the highly targeted catch-up funding for those pupils who need it? I will discuss one particular group of pupils in a minute.

I note that the notification on all schools and colleges that will receive the extra funding for catch-up, published by the Government recently, talks about the additional investment also supporting the delivery of a £30,000 starting salary for teachers, alongside a further £1.8 billion dedicated to supporting young people to catch up.