King’s Speech

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to have been present at the first King’s Speech in over seven decades and to take part in this debate. I declare my interests as set out in the register.

With the spotlight currently on the Covid inquiry and the mistakes made, damage done and lessons to be learned, it was heartening to see the opening of the Speech set government plans in the context of the long-term challenges that Covid has created for the UK. Unfortunately, optimism that it might include necessary measures to address the pandemic’s wickedly long tail faded as the pages turned.

To understand the real damage wrought by the pandemic, we need not to look back but to the future: to the challenges of long Covid for individuals and the NHS, to the impact of isolation and loss on mental health, and to the future success of a generation of children whose education was so severely disrupted by lockdowns.

Most children lost half a year of schooling through Covid. That is about 5% of their overall learning. The effect of this will echo through their lives, on career options, earning potential and, by extension, tax revenues available for public services. As ever, children from disadvantaged backgrounds suffered the most.

The full-blown pandemic may be behind us, but its impact on young people’s education goes on. Many have simply not returned to the classroom, which is a scenario described by the Children’s Commissioner as

“the issue of our time”.

In the last autumn term before the pandemic, 4.7% of all children were absent from school. In 2023, the figure was 7.5%. Persistent absence, which is when a child misses at least 10% of possible sessions, has also risen sharply, from 13.1% to 24.2% over the same period.

There is nothing in the gracious Speech to tackle this, despite strong evidence linking school absenteeism with various life-course problems, including risky behaviours, teenage pregnancy, psychiatric disorders, delinquency and substance abuse. The commissioner’s latest report highlights the link between absence and attainment; the likelihood that persistently absent children will end up not in education, employment or training; and the fact that 81% of children entering the criminal justice system have a history of persistent absenteeism.

The causes of absenteeism are complex and diverse, but it does seem to be a particular issue where additional vulnerabilities are present, particularly in children with special educational needs, physical disabilities and behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. This means that the failure to deal with absenteeism is another route by which the already disadvantaged are disproportionately affected, and that the gap between the more and less fortunate in our society grows ever wider. As the gracious Speech was silent on this issue, can the Minister perhaps tell the House how the Government plan to tackle this epidemic of absenteeism and the causes that lie behind it?

The introduction of the advanced British standard makes it into the gracious Speech, with a promise that increasing the number of subjects at key stage 5 to a minimum of five, expanding overall taught hours and introducing maths and English as mandatory until 18 will

“ensure young people have the knowledge and skills to succeed”.

It is unclear whether the evidence supports those assertions. Studies from Switzerland and Germany suggest that increasing instruction time has, yet again, the effect of widening the gap between high- and low-performing students and benefits only the students who already do better at school. It also flies in the face of OECD principles for curriculum redesign, one of which is to allow for flexibility and choice for teachers and students.

Of course, numeracy—and, indeed, financial literacy and budgeting—are important skills for employment and for life. But improvements need to be targeted across all stages of education. The key question is what kind of maths is to be included post-16, given that so many students achieve excellent results in GCSE maths but go on to struggle with A-level. It is vital, too, that reforms carefully consider the impact on the 6% of UK children who suffer from dyscalculia, a specific learning disability that impacts the ability to understand, learn and perform maths and number-based operations.

Children are already concerned about what this means for them. I have been lobbied by a 10 year-old relative who argued cogently and passionately that her educational experience and outcomes would be impacted by these reforms, given her learning style and needs. Significant improvements have been made in the teaching of children with dyslexia and other reading disabilities, but despite the Department for Education’s assertion:

“All teachers are teachers of special educational needs and disabilities”,


there is currently no formal requirement for maths teachers to learn about dyscalculia as part of their training. Regardless of whether the advanced British standard is progressed, does the Minister agree that training needs to be updated so that maths teachers can recognise dyscalculia and better support students affected by this condition?

I shall finish by echoing concerns already expressed around the House about the absence from the gracious Speech of a mental health Bill. This is a bitter blow for the 2,000 people with a learning disability and/or autism currently locked away in mental health in-patient units, who often receive poor-quality, and sometimes horrific, treatment, as has been revealed in numerous undercover investigations and Select Committee reports.

Our understanding of mental health has changed a great deal since the Mental Health Act received Royal Assent in 1983. There has been some updating, but legislation still lags behind ambition, and the fact that laws currently allow people to be detained for no other reason than that they have a learning disability or autism is, in itself, evidence of the need for change. So I hope the Minister will be able to tell the House why the Government chose to omit this Bill from the gracious Speech. There is widespread agreement, and cross-party consensus on the need for reform. Surely the Government should be using the last Session of this Parliament to deliver a manifesto commitment on which they were elected—not once, but twice—to bring this Bill before the House?