Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
To move that this House takes note of the reports of the Adoption Legislation Committee on Adoption: Pre-Legislative Scrutiny (1st Report, Session 2012–13, HL Paper 94) and Adoption: Post-Legislative Scrutiny (2nd Report, Session 2012–13, HL Paper 127).
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I was delighted and honoured to be asked to chair the first post-legislative scrutiny Select Committee on the current adoption legislation. As we went along, we also became a pre-legislative scrutiny committee. Consequently, we published an interim report to express our views on the first two clauses of the Children and Families Bill in December 2012 and our final report in March 2013.
I begin by thanking the committee staff and our specialist adviser, Professor Harris-Short, for their dedication—I use that word deliberately—extremely hard work and the efficiency of their support in the evidence-gathering and in writing the two reports. I am also very grateful for the enthusiasm and enormously valuable input from the members of the committee. It would be invidious to single out any particular organisations among those which gave evidence, and we are extremely grateful to all of them for their invaluable contributions. In writing each report, we felt that we were running to keep up as we received, and had to digest, the Government’s adoption initiatives at short notice. Our committee staff wrote and rewrote the reports to meet those initiatives and our views on the adoption clauses in the Children and Families Bill.
We heard evidence over several months and made a considerable number of recommendations. In the time available, I will pick out several of those that I consider the most important and refer to the Government’s initial response. Inevitably, I shall omit important issues. As we considered the evidence presented to us, we had very much in mind the right of the child to be brought up in his or her birth family, whenever possible, and the right of parents and their children to respect for their family life. Children should not be removed from their birth family unless their welfare requires it, but, sadly, not all children are able to remain with their birth families. The welfare of the child is the paramount consideration.
It was abundantly clear to us from the evidence that there is no need for far-reaching changes to the adoption legislation. The main issues of concern we found were the unacceptable delays in the adoption process, failures of the processes and practice, and the shortage of adopters. Even for babies and young children, who are seen as easier to adopt, the delays are significant. The average age of a child at adoption is three years and eight months, and the average length of time taken from entry into care to adoption is two years and seven months. The longer children wait to be placed, the more difficult the adoption outcome for them and for the adopters.
From the evidence presented to us, we identified numerous failures of procedures and, particularly, of practice contributing to those delays. Consequently, much of the evidence we received focused on those failures and how they might be addressed effectively. Our recommendations have therefore been largely directed to those issues. They are set out at some length in our final report. The initial response of the Government sets out sensible steps to be taken—and steps that are being taken—to reduce delay, but there is nothing much new or that we did not know before we started our investigations.
There is undoubtedly potential for more children to be adopted. Adoption is unique as a change of the status of the child who becomes the child of the new family. The Government are to be congratulated on recognising the importance of adoption and seeking practical ways to improve the situation in guidance as well as proposed legislation. However, there are not enough potential adopters and, further, there are many children suitable for adoption and placed for adoption—that is, ready from the court procedures to be adopted—but who are not adopted for lack of available adoptive parents. In March 2012, there were 4,263 approved adopters and more than 4,600 children who had completed the adoption process and were ready to be matched with adopters. The process of matching is slow. In addition, there were many more children for whom an adoption decision had been made but who had not completed the court process. Until now, potential adopters have been largely recruited by individual local authorities and retained by them on their books. The national register is an excellent initiative and will, I hope, mean that approved adopters will be more widely available, which should improve the matching process from a wider pool.
However, adoption is only one relatively small solution to the large numbers of children entering the care system. For various reasons, adoption is not appropriate for many children. On 31 March 2012, there were 67,050 children in care, of whom more than 60,000 were placed away from their families. Proper provision has to be made for these vulnerable children who need to be looked after away from their birth parents. All these children need to be loved, cared for and provided with stability and long-term security. Most of them may be cared for by other members of their family, friends, special guardianship or long-term fostering. However, a danger was articulated to me by a district judge this week that the 26-week requirement for the completion of care proceedings may concentrate on process rather than on the welfare of the child and may create injustices through the inability of some social workers to make adequate assessments of the birth family and of the wider family who might otherwise be able to take over the care of the child. I therefore stress the importance of early family conferencing throughout all local authorities.
The committee was concerned that the Government’s proper concern with and focus on increasing adoption may risk disadvantaging those children in care for whom adoption is not an option. Improving the outcomes for all children should be the priority. All routes to permanence merit equal attention and investment. In the initial response, the Government have set out a number of steps already taken to improve the fostering process and commissioned research on special guardianship.
The committee believes that early intensive work with birth parents where there is capacity to change has the potential to allow the children to remain safely with their parent or parents and would reduce the number of children entering the care system. There are excellent government-supported early-intervention initiatives, but the committee was concerned that a substantial sum—£150 million—is to be removed from early intervention to help local authorities improve their adoption procedures. The Government’s initial response has, rather surprisingly, been to point out that fostering for adoption is a form of early intervention. That is true, but it removes the child from the birth family. Early intervention, working with the birth family, can be successful and, if so, the child can remain in the family and fostering for adoption would not be necessary. It would be most unfortunate if the potential benefit of early intervention were to be undermined by the greater focus on adoption.
We are told that a significant increase in the budget is being allocated to early intervention. I should like to hear from the Minister how that increase is to be distributed. I provided the Minister with my draft earlier today.
On post-adoption support, most children are adopted from the care system and most of them, other than babies, will have had unhappy experiences in their birth family, which is why they have been removed from the family. Adoption provides the opportunity for the adopted children to have a secure and stable childhood. It does not rid them of the unhappy early part of their lives. Some of these children present major problems for their new, adoptive families and both the children and their new parents often need a great deal of practical help, counselling and therapeutic help. It is much to the credit of the Government that they now recognise the importance of post-adoption support. The adoption passport will be available online to be accessed by potential adopters and sets out the help which may be available to them.
The committee recommended that there should be a statutory duty on local authorities and other service-commissioning bodies to co-operate, to ensure the provision of post-adoption support. The Government have not responded directly to that recommendation—it would be fair to say that they avoided doing so—and I hope that it will be seriously considered when the Children and Families Bill reaches this House.
We invited adopted and looked-after children to come and talk to some of the members of the committee; we are indebted to the Children’s Rights Director, Roger Morgan, for arranging for these children to come. Both groups ranged in age from about 17 down to eight and were most informative, particularly the younger children when they developed sufficient confidence to tell us what they really thought. The two points I pick out today were said by both groups of children. First, they were not consulted. They did not expect that their views would be accepted, but at least they might be asked. Most of them were very critical of independent reviewing officers whom they had not met or who were not helpful to them; to the contrary were one or two children whose independent reviewing officers had done a very good job with them. Some children were critical of their guardians, who neither spoke nor listened to them. I am disappointed that the Government have rejected our recommendation that IROs should be genuinely independent—it is an important issue—but I hope that something effective will be done about the IRO case overload.
The second point the children raised concerned the training in schools of other pupils about the meaning of adoption and the meaning of being “in care”. Much more importantly, however, they focused on the training needed by teachers. Two adopted children told us that they were criticised by their teachers for being unable to complete a family tree. They were actually put in front of the class and told that they were being unhelpful. I cannot believe any teacher could be so insensitive as to tell an adopted child that he or she was not supportive of the class when they were unable to produce a family tree of their new family. I am glad that the Government are looking at this important issue of teachers.
I turn briefly to outcomes and data. The Government have rightly concentrated on the importance of improving processes, but there has not yet been sufficient focus on outcomes. Some adoptions fail, with disastrous results for the child and for the adopters and with considerable additional cost to the state in taking a seriously damaged child back into care. We need much more data and research on breakdown and how it can be avoided. The Government say that they are looking at it. I hope very much that they take some effective steps to find out what lies behind these breakdowns.
It would also be helpful if a child’s passage from the moment of going into care to being placed in adoption, and thereafter, was monitored so that one has a graph of what happened to that particular child, which might also help with the issue of breakdown. We need much more data and research on breakdown and how it can be avoided, and I do not apologise for saying that again.
The other recommendations the Government have rejected are likely to figure in amendments to the Children and Families Bill when it comes to this House. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I thank all those who have contributed to the debate for the absolutely fascinating speeches that we have heard this afternoon. They have ranged widely over all sorts of areas of child need and welfare.
I say to the Minister that I personally accept the very good work that is already being done by the Government on adoption and, indeed, fostering, as well as in dealing with children’s homes, as my noble friend Lord Listowel said. However, will the Minister, and particularly his officials, look at the very cogent evidence that we received on the danger of entirely excluding ethnicity from the legislation? We got that evidence from people whom we thought were worthy of listening to and whom we would have thought the Government would think were worthy of listening to. My recollection is that Coram and BAAF were among them. As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, there is a danger that social workers who make ethnicity too important a consideration will say, “Well, now it’s gone, we have to ignore it”. That is what the people on the ground who know about it were telling us. Therefore, I should be grateful if the Minister’s officials would have a look at the evidence that we received. They have all that evidence and it is well worth looking at.
In this debate there have been some preliminary shots across the bow concerning what is likely to be coming in the Children and Families Bill. As we heard from the Minister, that is now likely to be in July—and, I assume, well beyond July. The Minister is likely to be challenged by me, among others, over several issues to which I have not yet referred. I look forward to those opportunities and hope that the Government will be a listening Government on matters which we will press and on which the Government might be well advised to listen carefully.
Adoption Agencies (Panel and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2012
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Adoption Agencies (Panel and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1410).
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, in putting my name to this Motion, I should like to make clear that it is not in any way a Motion of Regret, nor indeed any intention to criticise the government policy on adoption. As chairman of the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, I feel that I should highlight possible implications in relation to the statutory instrument that comes into force on 1 September. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and Tim Loughton MP for seeing the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Howarth, and me last week. We had a most constructive discussion on the statutory instrument and other aspects of the work of our committee.
To start with, I was rather taken aback by the statutory instrument being laid and coming into force so quickly, when we are actually hearing evidence about the duty of adoption panels to recommend whether a child should be placed for adoption. I should correct an error on my part during our evidence-taking, when I suggested that the Government were saying that panels were to be abolished. I was wrong and apologise for saying it. I now understand that the statutory instrument we are discussing today was already in the pipeline while our committee was being set up. However, it raises a rather more important issue in that it will come into effect while we are hearing conflicting evidence about the benefits as well as the disadvantages of this part of the work of the panels. This is evidence that the committee of which I am chairman believes should be brought to the attention both of the department and of all those who are engaged in the adoption process.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Before I continue, I should, with a further apology, make a correction: I went to see the two Ministers with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—not the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I apologise to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Howarth.
As a former judge, I have my doubts whether the adoption judge hearing a placement application would be able to carry out a task similar to the panel, and whether they would have the evidence and the opportunity to carry out the detailed scrutiny expected by the Norgrove committee. I have some questions for the Government. On the assumption that the Government go ahead with removing this duty from panels, what will be put in its place? Will an independent person other than the decision-maker pull together all the relevant evidence about the child at an early stage and advise, or will there be a gap, with the potential for drift? Will the whole burden be placed on the decision-maker alone?
Is the department looking at active involvement of the IRO and, if so, recognising that the IRO would have to have a much reduced current case load? The adoption committee has not yet—and I emphasis this—formulated any conclusions on any of the issues that I have raised. However, we are concerned that there is a conflict of evidence and consequently some degree of confusion over the removal of the panel from this task. When the statutory instrument comes into effect on 1 September, the committee is concerned about this degree of conflict and confusion and what advice the department is going to give, particularly to local authorities, to resolve these issues and to avoid drift, lack of momentum and possible delay, with the case not being in order for the judge. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Baroness very much for bringing this matter to the Committee, and for her quite splendid chairmanship of our committee. I thank the Minister and Tim Loughton for the meeting last week. I am very flattered to have been confused with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I must say. The meeting was extremely useful and I hope that we made it clear that members of the Select Committee share with the Government the objective of the best possible outcome. We have received powerful evidence about the impact of lack of permanence, particularly in the early years.
Given the jigsaw of interlocking procedures, it is important for the Government to explain why they are taking one step of several steps that may be available, and which I suspect will be taken quite soon, when a number have been identified. It is not always entirely clear why one step should be taken in isolation. I appreciate that one can argue it the other way—that if you have identified a step you should get on and do it—but this is quite a complex area.
The Explanatory Memorandum says that the objective of the regulations is to remove both delay and duplication. Delay is, of course, a loaded term. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has experienced, as I have, that when one is arguing planning applications in local government, delay does not actually go to quality. She is agreeing with me. Taking time may sometimes be necessary. Taking time unnecessarily is a bad thing, of course. The duplication that the Explanatory Memorandum refers to, as the Norgrove report did, is between the panel and the court. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, will know how long a judge is typically given to read the papers—I suspect less time than a panel is, although I am always amazed at how quickly panels assimilate information.
The Government are not pointing to duplication between the panel and the decision-maker, who does not need the prior work of the panel, in the view of the Government. It seems to me that the decision-maker must need the same information as the panel, and Coram, to which the noble and learned Baroness has referred, regards the panel as providing quality assurance. Coram has given us some very helpful evidence, and the noble and learned Baroness has referred to the possible slippage in quality because of the loss of the independent element.
Coram also talks about adoption decision-making being delegated to less senior staff or the creation of a dedicated role that would not be integrated in the same way that the current post is. It also talks about the removal of independent panel chairs, and we have heard some very forceful evidence, particularly from BAAF, about the contribution made by independent members. The expertise from outside the authority brought to panels is really quite important. Alongside that, we are hearing quite a lot of concern about the lack of experience of adoption work among social workers. We asked the Local Government Association for its comments on these regulations, and, after a moment’s thought, one of the councillors who was at our session more or less said that authorities would invent a structure to replace panels. Admittedly, she might have been thinking about the abolition of panels as a whole, but it was a very practical response. If an authority sees a need to bring in outside expertise, it will find a way to do so.
The Government say that panels add no value, but I wonder whether the converse of that is the risk of abolishing what is excellent practice. We have heard that, in practice, panels meet frequently—weekly if necessary. If they do not meet often enough and are causing delay, their practice needs to be improved. I also wonder whether, if a panel is retained for matching a child with a family, that panel would not need to cover much of the groundwork that would have been covered by the panel dealing with placement.
When we met the Minister, Mr Loughton, he told us about the visits that he has made to sit in on and observe panels. He commented on the amount of material that panel members are expected to absorb, but he did not seem to say that they are failing. There are professionals, sometimes from different professions, who become skilled through the job that they are doing. I have to say that, as a society, we are very lucky that there are people who are prepared to do this job. I am not convinced that they should lose this role.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I thank all the speakers. I am particularly grateful to my fellow members of the adoption committee for having come this afternoon on the last day of term, and to all those who have spoken. I am also very grateful to the Minister for his thoughtful response. I do not at all doubt the commitment of the Minister in the other place to adoption. I very much admire his commitment. I am just not entirely sure that he and the noble Lord the Minister have totally taken on board my major concern, which is about independent scrutiny of the work of the decision-maker. I am not certain that the decision-maker will, pulling everything in together, have quite the same opportunities as somebody else who can advise, assess and monitor. Will the team behind the Minister look at whether they accept that there is a potential gap, and how they might give advice to the local authority on that potential gap, which may not be entirely met by the decision-maker, who will end up with a greater burden?
The points made by Coram, in particular, about the task of the decision-maker—the Minister will see this when he gets the Coram written evidence—are very interesting. I would be grateful if he would reflect, with those behind him, on whether the removal of this particular work of the panel will leave something that will need to be filled at some stage. The inspection by Ofsted will be absolutely crucial. I hope any inspection by Ofsted will move into that area and not simply look at issues of delay, but look more keenly. If not Ofsted, somebody will have to look at it because something is being lost, although I understand the reasons why the Government are doing it. Having thanked everybody very much, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Young People: Parenthood
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
We should say many things to young children in schools. For all education, my starting point would be the importance of English and maths. A decent grounding in those matters is most likely to lead children to have successful lives, and many of the desirable outcomes that we all want from education are more likely to appear.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, while I accept that English and maths are extremely important, does the Minister accept that the public have an interest in the upbringing of children, because if children are not well brought up we pay for it in all sorts of ways? Consequently, in so far as citizenship or anything akin to citizenship is taught in schools, will the Minister not consider whether parenting should be part of citizenship?
Lord Hill of Oareford
Certainly, I agree with the noble and learned Baroness’s underlying point that we all have a shared interest in making sure that children are brought up as well as possible. It is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made as well, so we have a common interest. On the specific point about citizenship and the content of that within the curriculum, as the noble and learned Baroness will know we are looking at the whole question of the national curriculum. I will relay her point to my honourable friend Mr Gibb for him to reflect on.
Disabled People: Access to School Examination System
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the point about the Sunday Times article, which my noble friend has discussed with me, is that it created the impression that there have been big changes to the system of reasonable adjustments to allow pupils with disabilities to have extra time. In fact, the article was misleading in that regard, in that what the JCQ has been changing is the need for evidence that pupils satisfy the requirement. The reason for that is to make sure that the extra time made available and other reasonable adjustments help those who most need it and to make sure that the system has integrity.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, is the Minister aware that there are genuinely disabled students who have great difficulties with the examination boards, which will not take account of medical evidence? I know of an example of a girl who cannot see properly but the exam board is not providing the exam papers in such a way that she can read them and will not accept her very distinguished medical evidence. It is an extremely serious situation.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, if the noble and learned Baroness would like to speak or write to me about that example, I shall see if there is anything that we can do to follow it up with the individual examination board. These are matters for the individual boards but I should be happy to pursue them.
Education and Skills Act 2008
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(12 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
In all these things, one needs to strike a balance between seeking to move in the direction of involving children and being overly prescriptive in the ways one goes about doing it. We think the balance is about right in terms of the degree of guidance that we give and the way that schools are responding. One of the other developments, which will probably not be welcomed by my noble friend Lord Tebbit, is that the Government have said that they are looking at ways of strengthening the role of the office of the Children's Commissioner, and are thereby looking at making sure that children’s rights as set out under the UN convention would be enforced.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on saying that the Children's Commissioner is going to be given greater powers. That is an extremely important advance, of which many Members of this House would very much approve. Taking up what the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said, would the Minister agree that for children to have their views heard does not mean that children are giving orders?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am afraid that I got lost as to whether I am supposed to give a negative or positive reply to the question. It is absolutely the case that for children’s views to be heard we need to have orderly and disciplined environments in schools. It is extremely important to emphasise that point; it is the case, over quite a long period of time, that there has been a balance towards treating adults more like children and children more like adults. I would quite like the balance to shift back towards treating adults more like adults and looking after children and treating children like children, to give them the care and support they need. Then they can grow up and flourish.
Education Bill
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I will say one thing briefly. It is important that we all remember that the Church of England is the established church of this country. That is why we have the Prayers that we have every day. It is appropriate that that should be recognised in schools.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, surely those who regard religion as an infectious and dangerous condition should, in the modern idiom, wish to immunise their children with the mildest possible form of the disease.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I very strongly support this amendment. I have a six year-old American grandson, and I have read his kindergarten report. He was making good progress with the computer and the iPad when he was not yet six. We have to keep in touch, and we have to be there. It is very important that this amendment should be supported.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I support this amendment. In doing so, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests, as I have a number of clients who work in this area.
We are world leaders in this country in the use of technology in education. That is why more than 70 education Ministers from around the world come to the largest conference of education Ministers that happens annually anywhere in the world, held in London, alongside the BETT fair. It is hugely important that we sustain that position, as others are catching up, and are catching up very fast.
I welcome some of the comments made recently by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, around technology, in particular what he said about iTunes U and the Khan Academy and how they are, in his words, transforming what is going on in the classroom. That is welcome because over the past year or so, those working in the field of technology in education have been worried that the Government have taken their eye off the ball and want to see some leadership. What this amendment is calling for in respect of a plan from the Secretary of State will give, not a formal direction but a lead, to schools about how they use the money that has now devolved to them in this area.
As we have heard, ICT is hugely important. We managed to justify the £300 million the Treasury needed to part with on the country’s behalf for programmes such as the Home Access Programme that I was responsible for in government by using data from, for example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That showed that access to a computer at home increases performance in science GCSEs by two grades. PISA did some analysis on the use of technology which shows that over time it has increased maths scores in countries around the world. As a result of the Home Access Programme and the evaluation that the department quietly published a few months ago, we have seen the impact in terms of extended learning at home. By having access to technology at home, people are spending longer on their homework and find doing their homework more engaging. I would point noble Lords who are interested in this towards the example of the Essa Academy in Bolton, which has now got every child an iPod Touch and is rolling out more iPads. The learning that is going on in that academy has led to its results over the two years it has been in place for five GCSEs at A* to C rise from around 40 per cent to 100 per cent, and if you include English and Maths, from 28 per cent to 56 per cent. So some significant gains have been delivered in part thanks to technology. The academy certainly attributes technology to its success.
It is important that the Government should continue to extend their activities around the training of teachers and leaders because we know that if they are not in place, any investment in technology does not get you anywhere. You absolutely have to have them in place. The development of resources, home access and how best practice and next practice are spread are also important. Currently, we have a vacuum. Very early on, Michael Gove decided to abolish Becta, the agenda that provided a lead in this area in securing significant savings. That is his prerogative and fine if he wants to do it. But it meant that there was a hiatus in which people felt that there was no leadership in the area, although we may be beginning to see it now. At the same time, the role of local authorities has diminished and their funding to provide a lead on this locally has also fallen. Authorities have largely let all their IT specialists go, which means that they have now all become self-employed IT consultants. A profusion of people are knocking on headteachers’ doors offering advice, but often with vested interests around particular technology solutions. It is difficult for heads to get through the confusion that follows, and certainly to secure the procurement savings that Becta was able to deliver.
A plan is also necessary not just to fill that vacuum, but to point us towards the potential new ways of working which technology has delivered efficiently in so many different industries. In a challenging fiscal environment, if we can deliver more efficiencies in education, I am sure that that is to be welcomed. Assessment takes up a significant part of any school’s budget, and all sorts of innovations in this area can be secured through technology. As I mentioned, in procurement we are seeing the expansion of digital educational publishing. That can be encouraged or not, depending on whether we see some leadership. My noble friend Lord Puttnam talked about resources that are freely available through the TSL Education site, and there are other sources too. A rapid explosion is taking place that is rooted in this country. We are exporting our education around the world, but we really need to take advantage of it here.
There are all sorts of things that can be done in terms of school system improvement on the supply side, and that is what the Government feel comfortable with because that is what they control, but we can also stimulate much more self-sustaining school improvement through a demand-side set of reforms. It is not just about choice and the decision about which school your child will go to, made once or twice in their school career, it is also about giving parents a voice. You do that by giving them information and data that keep them in touch in real time with what is going on in the school. That can only be done on a viable basis using technology, and if that technology is fairly distributed with inclusion across the range of homes.
In respect of new ways of working, we are at the tipping point on this in schools. We can move away from IT suites and trolleys of laptops and towards people bringing in personal devices that their parents are already buying them. A recent Ofcom study showed that 100 per cent of teenagers, who they defined as 12 to 15 year-olds, had access to a computer somewhere, although as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, told us, many do not have access at home. We are also seeing a rapid rise in the ownership of smartphones, while 10 per cent have tablets, and those figures are changing all the time. There will come a point when we embrace these personal devices, even if it means mobile phones with rules about how they are used. That is because in children’s hands, they are very powerful computers which can aid learning. In turn, it means that schools will spend less on IT, less on recharging devices overnight, less on paper and less on textbooks. They can deliver an educational case around the use of data for performance and differentiation of learning, delivering more learning at home, delivering the softer skills of collaboration and communication that employers need, and the pupil engagement between home and school that we know is so important.
I strongly endorse what my noble friend Lord Puttnam said in respect of the economic case. If noble Lords are interested in how it might work, I recommend that they look at Apps for Good that CDI Europe has been delivering in schools and which young people find hugely engaging. That engages them in the world of work as well as in the world of technology. I also endorse what my noble friend said about coding and the need for more programming being learnt earlier on in school. I tried that, against a lot of push from officials. I even had to write it into the galley proofs before they were sent to the printers and they were not looking. I tried to get ICT as a basic skill at the primary level so that we could make sure that children were plug-in-and-play ready when they started secondary school. They should be able to use technology across the curriculum. Unfortunately, while the Rose review did deliver on what that might look like, it was pulled during the wash-up between Administrations. We never managed to get that shift of IT learning into the primary sector, which I think would have been extremely valuable. There are challenges in this. It will need an evolving pedagogy. It will need someone, ideally the Government, to offer guidance around the interoperability of devices in classrooms, along with procurement advice and possibly the curriculum changes that I have talked about. But the prize is a great one.
The noble Lord, Lord Willis, mentioned the death of Steve Jobs. I ask noble Lords to think about what a Steve Jobs school would have looked like. For the staff, certainly it would have been one with a hero head model, someone solidly leading the school and delivering not what the children wanted, but what they needed. There would probably be a fairly flat staffing structure, but to the world outside it would not be the Steve Jobs school, it would be an Apple school: beautifully designed and one in which people just wanted to learn. It probably would not even have school rules, just as the iPad does not have any instructions, because it would be so engaging. That is what technology can give us: really engaging education that sucks learners in and makes them want to find out more and educate themselves more rather than just the flat, didactic one-way learning that is the tradition which some would like to see revived. I think it belongs in the Dark Ages.
Children: Commercialisation
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with my noble friend in that regard. There is also the point in all this that government can play a role but that parents can also play an extremely important role. It is important that parents themselves assert the boundaries within which they want their own children to grow up. We had a very good debate last week, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about parenting and early years. One theme that emerged from that was the obvious importance not only of parents demonstrating love towards their children but of boundaries, authority and the framework within which they can grow up.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, following what the Minister has said about boundaries, should the Government perhaps highlight the importance of some degree of control by parents over what children watch on the internet, particularly with chatrooms? There is a particular danger in allowing children to have a computer with internet access in their bedrooms, so that no one can see what they are actually watching. As the Minister will know, the real danger is of grooming in chatrooms.
Children: Adoption
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Lord for that point, which is well made. It seems to me that one of the issues we have with adoption generally is the great disparity in England between different local authority areas. We know that some local authorities are able to place 100 per cent of children within 12 months. Another local authority that I am aware of can place 38 per cent within that period. There are huge differences, and I think that extending the principle on a broader level, which the noble Lord argues for, is certainly worth reflecting on.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former judge who tried adoption cases over many years. I expect that the Minister is aware of the importance in contested adoption cases—which nearly all these cases are—of having social workers and CAFCASS welfare officers as guardians. What will the Government do to ensure that there is a sufficient supply of experienced social workers, and CAFCASS officers in particular, to look after children who are placed for adoption?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with the noble and learned Baroness about the importance of having a sufficiency of well-trained social workers. In an earlier discussion in this House, there was broad agreement on the importance of making sure that there is a good supply. The crucial role that they play in this process is not always fully appreciated. More generally, in terms of the court system, in parallel with the other initiatives that my honourable friend is taking, a review of the family justice system is under way that must also look into these important issues and get the balance right—I know that this is a concern of my noble friend Lady Knight—between privacy and transparency, so that we know what is going on.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, on this group of amendments, the issue about whether these free schools will be academies could be a trifle academic if the Government are saying that the point of the future trajectory is that all schools should at least have the opportunity to be academies. We need to see this debate within that context.
Much more seriously, I endorse the recommendations that the security of those with special educational needs be affirmed in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to the avoidance of doubt, and bishops are always up for the avoidance of doubt. There are some issues where it is too risky to leave matters simply to good will or mutual understanding, and special educational needs is one of them. We need to ask the Minister if he will look at ways in which that dimension of academy life can be secured clearly in the Bill.
My third point is to do with governance—not with who can be a governor, but with the purpose of school governors in this brave new world. Many of us have lived through various recensions of governance. I go back to when I was first ordained in the early 1970s and I was a governor of a school. It seemed that the main purpose of the governors was to meet quarterly, hear the head teacher tell us how good the school was, and to pat the head teacher on the head saying, “Jolly good. Keep it up”. It was not long before we saw the development of teacher governors and parent governors. Governing bodies became representative bodies that articulated the range of interests of those with any connection with the school. The role of governors changed quite significantly. Then the most recent Bill of the last Government, just before the election, looked dangerously as though it was tipping towards having governors acting as the Government’s narks. There were going to be requirements for governors to be able to spill the beans and blow the whistle when they thought the head teacher or someone else was not quite up to it. I am sure it will be said that that was not the intention, but that was how it looked. Certainly there was a shift going on in our understanding of governance.
What I ask the Minister is this. Before we even start nailing down categories of people who should be governors, what will we be asking them to do? What will be the role of governors in this new world of academies that is now emerging on the back of the primary wave? I cannot make a decision about the issue of who until I have some understanding of what it is that the governance of academies will entail. What will be the function of the governors? What gifts and qualities will be required of them? We will then be able to answer the question of who might be the most competent people to fulfil that vital role.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I support, first, the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low. It is important that special needs are recognised. I also support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I have been a governor of a girls’ school and am now a governor of a boys’ school. As a governor of the school to which my daughter went, I was not actually asked to take on the role until she had left. That seems to be the ideal situation because you then have a parent with a real interest in the school but without the rather special interest which is local and time-limited. To have a predominance of parent governors while their own children are in the school would be a retrograde step, so I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lord Northbourne’s amendment. I emphasise that there is much to do. Some children need smaller schools and special teachers to work with them, but others do not, even though they may face serious challenges at home. Good support can be offered in schools to include these children to the benefit of all. I give one example: the charity Voluntary Reading Help, which works in over 1,000 schools. It recruits volunteers to work for one or two lunch hours a week with particularly difficult or challenging children. I have seen for myself in a primary school nearby how the volunteer will sit down and read with a child for half an hour and then play a little game. The child chooses the book and they enjoy their time together. A significant number of these volunteers are men, which is particularly valuable given that we have so many young boys growing up without fathers. These are important relationships that can be built up over the course of a year, which is the minimum commitment. This is the sort of thing that helps to include children who might otherwise be challenging. It is important to consider who should make up the governing body and what its function is. It should take a strategic view and be able to adopt sensible approaches like the one I have outlined.
I was encouraged when Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said last week that he intended to recruit more men into early years childcare. I hope that he will also look at primary schools and how initiatives like Voluntary Reading Help might be developed. The charity is keen to expand in order to be able to help more children.