Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, perhaps I might just interject here. One of the things about home education is that the education of the child should come first. That education should allow them to function independently as an adult afterwards. If we do not lose sight of that, we stand a chance of some common sense emerging on this.
When somebody mentions “special educational needs”, I do not know whether it is me rising like a trout to a fly or running like a bull at a red flag, but I always look at this. The first people I ever experienced dealing with home education were doing so because special educational needs were not being met. The system is probably better than it was when they started, but we still know that there are a great many problems with it. If, for instance, you do not have the right teachers in a school or you cannot find the right school or one that you think has an acceptable plan, home education would certainly become more attractive. But do not forget that you still need a parent who is trained well enough to deliver that education. It is not an easy option. The fact is that some parents might think that they are well enough trained, but they get it wrong.
I do not think that anybody here or who works in education has lacked for people who have a miracle cure—dyslexia is the one I am most familiar with—and say, “I can teach anybody to read by picturing the word and associating it”. This totally misunderstands that short-term memory is one of the primary problems. The last time somebody said that to me, I said, “Inconsequential: give me a mental image for that”. It was about the politest way I could tell them, when expletives came more readily to mind, but schemes like this are going through.
I hope that we can get something here that says that education is the most important factor, because what happens to that child and the rights of the child must come first. If the state can find a way of delivering that, fine, because it has a duty to make sure that, after their education, that person can function as independently as possible, as an adult in the real world. I hope that we never lose sight of that.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, at this stage, at the beginning of the many amendments on home-schooling stretching ahead, I would like to thank the Minister for her opening remarks. They were very helpful and, as a consequence, I will not speak on all the amendments to which I have put my name, even though a lot of scrutiny is required to make sure that we get this right.
School Libraries
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. It is part of the role of reading to challenge us and broaden our horizons, as I have said, and it is part of the skill of teaching for teachers to support, through the way they teach about reading and books, the ability for students to be able to critically assess what they are reading. Those are really important parts of our schools and something we should be proud of and defend.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, although I am completely opposed to book banning, does the Minister agree that it is not censorship when parents raise safeguarding concerns about age-inappropriate books that tell children that, for example, there are 100 genders, or they are born in the wrong body, or books featuring double-mastectomy scars positively, or a book for three to seven year-olds entitled She’s My Dad? Conversely, will the Minister agree to read the new report by SEEN in Publishing and Sex Matters, Everyday Cancellation in Publishing, which features the censorship of gender-critical children’s writers such as the award-winning poet Rachel Rooney, who lost her career when her picture book My Body is Me! was smeared as transphobic?
Relationship, Sex and Health Education
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We will hear first from my noble friend and then from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.
Higher Education Regulatory Approach
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my interests in the register and warmly welcome the proportionate way in which the Government are acting and my noble friend’s Statement. Free speech is the lifeblood of a university. This reconsideration of the Act certainly recognises that, but all universities also recognise that they have a duty to instil a culture in which free speech flourishes.
I have two swift questions. First, on the OfS power to consider complaints, how will it ensure that its actions are proportionate? Secondly, on the conditions of regulation, the Statement says:
“The OfS should have room to determine the best way to regulate on a case-by-case basis”.
Will Parliament be consulted in any way on how it regulates?
Finally, I say to the noble Baroness opposite that universities are already putting in place codes of conduct—for example, on freedom of speech—so they are acting already.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The Minister has to answer the question.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his advice at the point at which we were making the decision and for his ongoing commitment to ensuring we are tackling anti-Semitism widely in higher education. I undertake to consider the use of that element of the £7 million of funding that the Government have made available on anti-Semitism for precisely that purpose.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome back the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act; I never wanted it to go away. I will push the Minister further on one of the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Can the Minister address those worried free speech societies, debating societies and ordinary students—not student bureaucrats—who feel that the removal of duties on student unions is like “a Machiavellian betrayal”, according to Student AFAF? This is because student unions are often at the vanguard of the really quite vicious hounding of student members; Jewish students have often made this point to me. The Charity Commission just does not cut it.
Finally, will the Minister put to bed this notion that the Act was ever part of a Trumpian war on woke or a hate speech charter? It was a good faith, genuine attempt at tackling spiralling attacks on free speech. We should all view it in that way, even if we disagree on the detail.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I hope that is the approach that I have tried to take. With that pragmatic approach, I reiterate that I expect student unions to behave in a way that safeguards and promotes speech and events with which they perhaps as a majority do not agree—that is an important part of the experience of being a student—but to impose on them the same level of burden imposed on the institution itself was unreasonable. That is why we took the decision that we did.
Higher Education Sector
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Well, I simply reiterate the point that it is important that this Government have gripped the issue of financial sustainability and have asked the OfS to focus on it. The OfS has made its decisions about where to focus its capacity to enable it to do that. I take seriously the point that the noble Lord made, but it is the role of the OfS as the regulator of the sector to regulate, to ensure that we have the sort of quality that—I disagree with the noble Lord—will continue to attract students, researchers and others into the UK.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, over the years, many international students, especially from less democratic countries, were attracted to UK universities because of their reputation as beacons of free speech. Tragically, more recently such students have complained that they find British campuses as censorious as at home. In this context, will the Government reinstate the shelved Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act? On a related point, will the Minister reassure us that this legislation was not withdrawn to appease repressive regimes that like the UK university brands but dislike legal commitment to academic freedom?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I can absolutely assure the noble Baroness that that was not the case, as I have said repeatedly in this House. But it is the case that the last Government’s freedom of speech legislation would have been overly burdensome on universities and would potentially have had unintended consequences. As I have also said, we will come back soon, following our pause of the legislation and our wide engagement with stakeholders, to spell out the next steps for this Government in protecting academic freedom and freedom of speech in our universities.
Sex and Gender: Official Data
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(8 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fox of Buckley
To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the downgrading of data gathered from the 2021 Census question on gender identity, what steps they are taking to ensure accurate and consistent data on sex and gender are collected to ensure robust official data.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government value the collection of high quality and robust data on this topic. The Government Statistical Service will publish a work plan for updated, harmonised standards and guidance on sex and gender in December this year. This will align with the Office for National Statistics regulation guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex and gender identity, which was published in February.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I thank the Minister for that reply. In the meantime, can she look closely at one worrying consequence? NHS data standards were updated to reflect those very same compromised gender identity questions used in the census. Genspect UK research shows that a significant number of GPs also use them, which in theory means that every time someone registers with a new doctor, patients could informally change the sex registered on their health records. Does the Minister agree that this is concerning because biological sex influences everything from diagnosis to treatment? Therefore, the recording of accurate sex data in NHS records is essential for safe and appropriate healthcare.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The reason why it is so important that we allow the independent statistical services to develop the question appropriately is precisely that it will be used more widely in other public services. Of course it is important that that has the confidence of those responding to the question and of the services being provided. To that extent, therefore, I share the noble Baroness’s concern to ensure that that statistical collection is robust and appropriate and is informing services, including the NHS, in a way that users need it to.
Higher Education Funding
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome this debate, but will perhaps challenge its focus. When the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson halted the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act only a week before its commencement, she insisted that the Office for Students should instead “be more sharply focused” on the financial stability of universities. To me, this rather implies knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. When we discuss the challenges of a sector struggling financially, it worries me if government or university senior management think that academic freedom is a dispensable lower priority and is valued less than propping up higher education institutions as businesses.
I rather regret the marketisation of education that we have seen over recent decades. It has long since caused problems, undermining the core role of universities in intellectual freedom, and academics are told to treat students as customers who need to be kept satisfied, rather than offended or challenged. Students are educated to see degrees as commodities that can be bought and assessed via value-for-money metrics. I regret such philistinism and its consequences.
I am heartbroken, for example, to see the closure of many arts and humanities courses and to see wonderful academics lose their jobs. They are often told that, because they do not tick the production of job-ready graduates box, they are not relevant for 2024. What is the good of all that useless knowledge associated with philosophy, classical music, medieval history and so on?
Realistically, I think that we need to ask whether we should keep universities, departments and courses open at any cost and have that conversation. The question has to be asked: what price academic freedom in that context? When vice-chancellors and higher education NGOs, which lobbied the Government to smother the free speech Act, said they were worried that the legislation could lead to universities being sued at a time when they were facing crippling costs, surely the Government’s reply should have been, “Well, you won’t get sued if you promote and protect free speech on campus stridently”. The Government should also say, “You aren’t a university worth its name if you don’t understand that free speech is a core value, more valuable than anything else, and totally valuable to your existence”.
When the Free Speech Union sent a pre-action protocol letter to Ms Phillipson threatening a judicial review for the failure to commence a free speech Act, it was shocking when we found out that government lawyers noted that concerns had been raised by university managers and senior managers about the consequences of the law on doing business with authoritarian countries that have restrictions on free speech. How grubby that, because some British universities operate overseas students and do not want to lose out on the money, they are prepared to compromise on free speech. The fact that English universities want to boost opportunities for lucrative research partnerships means that they do not want a piece of free speech legislation that might upset China, Dubai or Singapore.
As for attracting more international students, I do not, in any way, do anything other than endorse that. But the self-congratulatory tone that we have heard worries me, because, too often, international students are cynically treated as cash cows rather than welcomed here as some act of philanthropic generosity. Many of the overseas students I have worked with over recent years have noted that they came here imagining that they would find free speech on campus as a value, but actually, having left China, they found it even more restrictive to face some of the cancel culture on campus. I ask for a different set of priorities here.
Schools: Gender-questioning Children
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fox of Buckley
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they are planning to issue further guidance to ensure that schools support gender-questioning children.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, following calls from schools, teachers and parents to support schools and colleges in relation to children who are questioning their gender, on 19 December 2023 we published draft guidance for consultation. The consultation will close on 12 March. Relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance is also under review, and we will launch a consultation shortly. As part of this, we are looking to strengthen the guidance to schools on how to teach this sensitive topic.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I thank the Minister for her reply and the department for the clear guidance on working with gender-questioning children. Parents really were so relieved to hear that they should be fully involved if their own children decide they want to change gender, and it is so useful to have clarity that schools should not automatically socially transition pupils and that teachers and children should not be compelled to use opposite-sex pronouns. However, does the Minister find it troubling that, since publication, a variety of lobby groups and commercial providers are targeting school SLTs, advising them to ignore and even resist the guidance? Can the Minister assure us that the DfE will counter misinformation circulated by the likes of Mermaids, Just Like Us, Stonewall, The Key and even trade unions that wrongfully alleges the guidance is in breach of equality law, discriminatory and transphobic? Will she condemn attempts to scare teaching staff by suggesting that following the guidance puts them at risk of action by regulators and litigators?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Schools are expected to consider all the guidance from the department, and this is no exception: we would expect them to follow the final published guidance. As the noble Baroness says, the anecdotes we hear are that the guidance is already having an impact on parents, who feel able to ask schools to account for their decisions. Once the guidance is published, if individuals are worried, they should talk to their school about it. I looked at some of the campaigns being run and some of the templates that charities have published. Personally, I share the noble Baroness’s concern that they are quite oppositional in tone and are pitting parents against schools, which the guidance explicitly tries to avoid.
Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Barran (Con)
Absolutely. We focus on that and a sense of confidence in the fairness of the system is vital. However, I would underline universities are autonomous institutions, and we would encourage them to take the initiative to address the noble Lord’s concerns.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, we will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I fear the problem is that we have lost sight of what universities are for. Does the Minister agree that it is a con when new university degrees are created as a substitute for high-quality skills training—the latest being estate agents’ degrees—while academic study is suffering? For example, there is the tragic closure of the music department at Oxford Brookes. Is not this university growth propelled by credentialing schemes, leading to the exploitation of overseas students who are effectively buying visas/degrees to pay for this ridiculous, non-academic growth?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think the noble Baroness brings together a number of different issues. However, the essence is: do we need high-quality degrees in this country that are accessible, particularly to those from disadvantaged backgrounds? There are areas where we have clear concerns. We have already expressed our concerns publicly about foundation years and have reduced the funding for classroom-based subjects, as well as regarding franchise provision.
Religious Education in Schools
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, we live in a period in which Jewish schools have had to ramp up security to protect their pupils, and religious symbols of Judaism are being hidden by students in fear in non-Jewish schools. My question is: given that religion and politics have got very messy, who would be an RE teacher dealing with such fraught difficulties? Over the last few days, the front pages had the story of Michaela Community School, led by Katharine Birbalsingh, whom I admire but others do not—she is certainly controversial. Of all things, the school has been taken to court by a pupil for banning Muslim prayers. The head teacher had basically said, “We shouldn’t be divided by religion. We should have no prayers”. I was fascinated that one of the things the teacher said was that some pupils were being intimidated by their peers for not being religiously pious enough, and it was a kind of bullying.
There is a poisonous atmosphere out there. Even the question of whether we live in a Christian country is rather more awkward than one would think. I loved the explanation given by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, of religion as education and knowledge, and I totally agree with him on that, but many British institutions seem embarrassed by the western Judeo-Christian tradition. Its accomplishments are more likely to be labelled as white privilege than as the repository of positive values and virtues.
Instead, in recent years the new religion is diversity and inclusion, which has incentivised faith groups to adopt politicised cultural religious identities and has proved a recipe for stirring up divisive tensions and encouraging group grievance-mongering and offence-taking. We should not forget that a schoolteacher from Batley Grammar School is still in hiding, in fear for his life, for the blasphemy of showing pupils an image of Muhammad in a religious studies class. He had no support from politicians or trade unions, was labelled Islamophobic and was told he was making a fuss about nothing, although the Parisian teacher Samuel Paty was decapitated for a similar offence of showing cartoons of Muhammad. We have to admit that this is difficult.
I shall finish with the Reverend Bernard Randall, who lost his job at a Christian school—Trent College in Derbyshire—because he delivered a sermon expressing approval of mainstream Christian teaching on marriage, biological sex and gender, and the head teacher reported him to Prevent. That bodes badly for RE teachers. I would avoid it like the plague. We have to be honest that it is more difficult than it sounds by just paying bursaries.