Children: Suicide and Self-harm

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate will be aware that the question of how one can reduce the incidence of alcohol consumption has been under discussion for some time in other departments. In almost any town or city centre these days one can see young people, particularly young girls, under the influence of alcohol. I would say that broadly it comes under the same scope of giving young people self-respect and trying to encourage a sense of their own worth through improved behaviours delivered by proper education and guidance.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Is my noble friend aware that the cluster of young suicides in Bridgend, south Wales, was no coincidence? It was preceded by the dissemination of very worrying images of suicide not just on internet sites but also in films and plays? What can the Government do to make theatre and film companies aware of the potential for damage to young, vulnerable and immature minds when these dark subjects are explored, so that it is done responsibly, if at all?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My noble friend raises wider issues in this debate, which are of course entirely relevant but must always be balanced with freedom of speech and of information. That is a delicate balance to strike. Ministers from three departments—the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education—are working with the media and with the internet industry, particularly through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, to try to find ways of keeping children safe online. The Department of Health is also involved in that. The broader debate about further media is one that could be very profitably taken up within that.

Social Networking Sites

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes, indeed; I entirely agree with what the noble Lord said. In July the Government published guidance to schools on behaviour and bullying that summarises legal obligations and encourages schools to identify the motivations behind bullying and encourage people to seek further help and advice as necessary. This is an issue that the Government take very seriously.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Is the Minister aware of the importance of stopping children wanting to bully in the first place? That is the best way of dealing with bullying. In the light of that, is she aware of the programme called Roots of Empathy, which has now been rolled out into two-thirds of the local authorities in Scotland? It is already very well evidenced. Will she undertake to look at the evidence of this programme in Scotland which is already reducing the incidence of bullying in schools, and see how the Government could encourage its rollout across the rest of the UK?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes, I do indeed undertake to my noble friend to look at that programme. She and others in this House have been very involved with encouraging programmes such as PSHE which teach children self-respect and respect for others and identify the motives behind bullying. Obviously, legislation can only go so far. We need a change in the culture so that bullying is an unacceptable activity.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

I agree with what has been said about the importance and value of support staff. There are several such people in my own family and I know what a good and important job they do. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will agree with that when he responds. I am a little surprised that the Government are ignoring the recommendation of the ASCL. That is rather unusual. I hope that my noble friend will explain how the proposed system will be better.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, as we said in Grand Committee, a debate about the value of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body should not be confused with a debate on the value of support staff themselves. We all agree that support staff have a vital part to play in the life of their schools. There is no disagreement on that score with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, or the noble Lord, Lord Knight. However, we do disagree, as my noble friend Lady Perry set out, over whether we should set up a new piece of control machinery to determine the pay and conditions of school support staff or whether we should stick with local decision-making by employers, local authorities and schools which best know local conditions.

Organisations representing employers of support staff, such as the Local Government Group, take the latter view. The group draws its members from across the political spectrum and is a firm supporter of the Government’s decision to abolish the SSSNB. If we retain the SSSNB and act on any agreements it reaches, schools would be required to review the pay and conditions of more than half a million support staff, requiring a massive investment of time by schools. The impact assessment that accompanied the ASCL Bill suggested that this might take more than 200,000 hours of head teacher or senior leadership time alone—time that we think could be better spent on pupils and their learning.

We should also remember that for the majority of support staff working in community and voluntary controlled schools, there is already a national pay and conditions framework in place, the Green Book. This long-standing voluntary agreement negotiated by the Local Government Employers, UNISON, GMB and Unite is already used for those staff in all but three local authorities. Of course, in all schools, existing employment law ensures that individuals are treated equally with regard to their terms and conditions when assessed against their colleagues.

In Committee my noble friend Lady Walmsley asked whether the SSSNB could be allowed time to complete part of its work, believing that the results of its work would be useful if made available for schools to choose to use. In response to that and to her other point, the SSSNB process is not that flexible. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 sets out the process that must be followed once the SSSNB has reached an agreement. That process can involve many twists and turns, allowing the Secretary of State to request the SSSNB to reconsider agreements that it has submitted to him. However, ultimately it requires the Secretary of State to make an order that is binding on schools and local authorities in respect of how they determine the pay and conditions of their support staff. It is that rigid legislation that this clause seeks to abolish.

However, we agree with my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Perry that some of the materials the SSSNB has begun to develop could be a useful optional reference tool. We also know that the trade union members of the SSSNB are keen to continue to work with support staff employer organisations independently of government to complete a set of job role profiles for support staff. That is why we have already agreed to arrange for the intellectual property rights—in other words, the copyright—of all materials that are owned by the Department for Education to be reassigned to Local Government Employers. This means the materials can then be used freely by the unions and employers that made up the membership of the SSSNB.

When the Secretary of State met the three unions that represent school support staff—UNISON, Unite and GMB—on 12 October, he was able to confirm that unions, together with the other SSSNB member organisations that represent employers, already own the materials developed during the final months of the SSSNB activity. This means that they are free to work with employer organisations to finalise the job role profiles. This is the piece of work that unions and employers agree will be of most use to schools. Abolishing the SSSNB will spare schools from the burden of a wholesale review of support staff pay and allow them to keep the level of freedom they currently have in relation to support staff pay. It is right that we do all that we can to ensure that the good work that SSSNB member organisations have done so far is not wasted. On that basis I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

These are draft guidance documents at the moment. We hear the strength of feeling that has been expressed around the House and would certainly welcome consultation to see if we can find a form of words that reassures noble Lords. We feel that all the measures are in place, but obviously some noble Lords feel that they are not strong enough, so we will be looking at the draft guidance to make quite sure the wording is appropriate.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply. We would all agree with some of her opening remarks that there is strong public support for good behaviour in schools. We all know that that helps children to learn. However, I do not accept there is strong public support for this particular measure and like the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I, too, did some research over the summer with some ordinary parents and I had exactly the same responses as the noble Baroness.

The Minister said that schools must do this in a way which is most appropriate for the pupils with whom they are dealing. Where does it say that? It certainly does not say it in the legislation. It must say it, or something like it, in the guidance. My noble friend carefully went through the other duties that schools have to safeguard children, which have been laid into other statutes. I accept all that. Punishments have to be proportionate and reasonable and travel arrangements have to be considered. They are already there, but the question for a teacher looking at the guidance is: where are they? The guidance needs to have these duties clearly spelt out on the same page where a teacher is being told what they can do under this new law. It needs to be very clear.

I often wonder where this idea came from. My noble friend the Minister has told us that it came from the ASCL. Why does the ASCL have such influence over this Government? The other head teachers’ union does not have the same influence and other ordinary teachers’ unions do not. I am afraid I have a nasty suspicion that this bit of the Bill seeks to enable legislation to catch up with practice, and that some schools are following this practice without giving 24 hours’ notice. I accept that notes in satchels do not always get to parents and that the current requirement for 24 hours’ written notice often does not reach the parent and the parent is not notified. We are asking for something better than that. We are suggesting a way of ensuring that the parent is informed to enable them to make other arrangements for the child to get home safely, if possible. If they are not able to do so, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, because they do not have a car and an alternative bus is not available, they can make the school aware that there could be a safeguarding problem if the child is kept in. It is then up to the school under the other duties that my noble friend has outlined to punish the child at a different time.

My noble friend suggested that some unco-operative parents may fail to answer the phone and let the message be recorded on the answerphone. I do not think that these parents have a crystal ball. When the phone rings, they cannot possibly know that it is the school ringing up to say that little Johnny will be kept in after school that day. That is stretching things beyond reality.

I am delighted that my noble friend has accepted that there is scope for strengthening the guidance. I was very pleased to hear that. She made it very clear on the record from the Dispatch Box that teachers should not do anything that compromises the safeguarding of the child. That gives me comfort. If we can work together to ensure that that is made crystal clear in the guidance, I will not feel that I need to return to this at a later stage. Can my noble friend nod and affirm that we can do that work and get the guidance to say something of that nature? It is vital that we help teachers to make good decisions about when to use this weapon in their armoury.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

Before the noble Baroness concludes, will she also reflect that essentially what we are setting in place is a two-tier style of punishment? If you think of it from the teacher’s point of view, what is underpinning this is that a detention on the same day as the crime that has been committed is more effective because it is closer in time to that crime. We will now have schools with two groups of pupils—those pupils who are eligible to receive that punishment and those who are not.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I apologise to the noble Baroness but I am double tasking as a government spokesman and a Whip today. The rules at Report state that a noble Lord may not come back after the Minister has spoken.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Perhaps I may complete my remarks. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. As I have said, rural schools will not be able to use this measure but some urban schools will. However, as my noble friend Lord Storey said, not all urban schools will be able to use it because there may well be safeguarding issues in urban schools as well. However, as I said, I am comforted by what my noble friend the Minister has said. I look forward to further discussions with officials on how we can produce guidance that really helps teachers to do what they need to do but at the same time not compromise the safeguarding of children. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, during the Recess I read a book about the lives of crofters in the Western Isles of Scotland during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Children had to leave the parental home in order to go to school with the result that families were broken up and teenagers were not supervised by their parents and received much less adequate care and supervision. For children in those situations this idea could have considerable value. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that there is no reason why this sort of service should not be provided by schools other than academies in appropriate situations. However, I understand why my noble friend Lord Lucas tabled the amendment to this Bill. I am not sure whether legislation is required. Perhaps the Minister will explain the situation in that regard. We must take advantage of what technology can offer to ensure that certain children can get as good an education as any other child—provided that the proper safeguards and protections are in place—without having to split up families.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas has spoken persuasively on this occasion of the merits of cyberlearning. We thank him for sharing that range of evidence and experience with the Committee. There is no doubt that this is an area of growing relevance, importance and potential. I am pleased to say that academies already have significant freedom about how they organise the education they deliver to best meet the needs of their students. This includes the use of distance and online learning where that is appropriate. Indeed, I understand that schools in this country increasingly provide services of this kind to deliver greater choice of subjects and teaching methods for pupils. That is clearly a good thing. It can also clearly be valuable for online teaching services to be available for pupils who are unable to attend school regularly, such as those groups which my noble friend Lord Lucas and Lady Walmsley have mentioned, which would, of course, include Gypsy and Traveller pupils, whom we discussed earlier this week, those who have been excluded or those in hospital, young offender institutions or prisons. Again, academies already have the freedom to provide such services for their pupils and maintained schools will have similar freedoms to do so. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that these freedoms will be available for maintained schools as well as academies.

We think that the noble Lord’s amendment goes a little too far in providing for the absence of a teacher. We think that the role of the teacher is crucial to the quality of provision to ensure coherence of the overall educational experience for the pupil. There remains an important role for an experienced professional and for a personal relationship between teacher and pupil. In the Government’s view, distance education of the kind described in the amendment, without the presence of a teacher at any time, represents a risk to pupil outcomes and educational experience.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Indeed we take that on board.

Amendments 118 and 120 seek to ensure that particular groups of pupils are considered as part of school inspections; namely, those benefiting from the pupil premium and those given specific reference in the Equality Act 2010. Clause 40 requires inspectors to consider the needs of the range of pupils at the school. This is a phrase lifted from the current inspection legislation. It is a useful catch-all that avoids the needs for lists in the primary legislation. Inspectors will pay particular attention to the extent to which gaps are narrowing between different groups of pupils in a school and compared to other schools. They will evaluate teaching with an eye to how well teachers engage, motivate and challenge the most able pupils.

In the case of protected groups, additional assurance is provided by the fact that Ofsted is subject to the public sector equality duty, which is provided for in the Equality Act 2010. This commits the inspectorate to playing its part in promoting equality and eliminating discrimination, including through its inspection activity. We do not therefore believe that it is necessary to replicate this within the clause. The best place for these references is not in the primary legislation, but in the framework and supplementary guidance—the detailed documents that determine how inspections are delivered on the ground—and that is where they will be found under the new system.

The last set of amendments in this group all seek to add to the inspection provisions explicit references to various subjects and aspects. Amendments 117 and 121 concern linguistic skills and modern foreign languages. I entirely endorse what was said by the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Neill and Lady Coussins. Here I would highlight the benefit of the new arrangements in giving inspectors more opportunity to focus on teaching and learning, observe lessons, listen to pupils read, and talk to individuals and groups of pupils. In terms of inspection of modern foreign languages, Ofsted conducts a rolling programme of subject surveys, and that will continue to be the way in which it assesses individual curriculum areas in future.

Moving to careers advice, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, spoke on this on behalf of our joint noble friend Lord Boswell of Aynho. This will be captured within the new inspection arrangements. Inspectors will consider, for example, the extent to which pupils have a well informed understanding of the options and challenges facing them as they move through school and on to the next stage of their education, training and employment.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, raised the matter of school buildings and design at the recent meeting hosted by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton. I am aware that we have discussed this before and, if she will forgive me, I will skip over a further to reply on that, but I assure her that what she says is being taken on board.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, pointed out during Second Reading,

“There are always perfectly good reasons to add to an inspector’s remit”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 737.]

However, we have a real opportunity here to start afresh, to streamline the requirements on inspectors, to provide more coherence to the arrangements, to clarify to schools what is expected of them and to provide parents with more meaningful assessments of their child’s school. It is vital that Ofsted is allowed to stay focused on the key aspects set out in Clause 40. This will not be the last time that we discuss these important issues, but I hope for the moment that the noble Baroness will support this important ambition by withdrawing her amendment.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for skating so very quickly through her response and yet managing to be so thorough. I shall be very brief. I thank her for her confirmation that well-being and community cohesion are within the scope of inspections as undertaken by Ofsted, that Ofsted will inspect how well schools narrow the gap, that the equality duty covers Ofsted and that all ranges of children within the school have to be considered by it. That will, I hope, include those schools that have the groups of children about whom I had some concerns.

On languages, I welcome her statement that there can be themed surveys. I think there is a danger that including languages will get us on to the slippery slope of including geography, physics, history and all the rest, which we do not want to do. Finally, I welcome the fact that, as my noble friend Lady Brinton and I have just noticed, lines 30 and 31 on page 36,

“the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils at the school”,

are lifted directly from Every Child Matters, which proves that this Government believe that every child does matter. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baroness Walmsley

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have my name to one of these amendments and should have it to the other one as well. I absolutely support what my noble friend has said. In relation to the first amendment in the group, if such a report were made by government, could the Minister look into the technology centres that are closing in a number of local authorities? They are centres of excellence and expertise and are of enormous value to schools that are trying to make the best use of technology not just for children who need assistive technology—that is a very important group—but for every child. Unfortunately, a lot of them are closing. That means that not only is the expertise going but the actual knowledge that helps schools to buy cost-effective equipment and have the technical support they need to ensure that the equipment works properly all the time. I would like to see that issue included in the report.

Amendment 107C concerns a subject which I am pleased to say my party will be discussing at our party conference in September. If the Government are set on reducing inequality and the achievement gap, making sure that every child from a deprived family has access to a computer and broadband is something that we should be prioritising. It is not a luxury. It is a tool for education and in this modern world it is an absolutely essential tool. It is very important for every child, not just, as my noble friend has said in his amendment, those from secondary age upwards, but going downwards as well. Knowing the sorts of deals that government can do with equipment suppliers and with the telecoms companies, I do not think that that would be anywhere near as expensive as it might at first seem given that you would be buying things in bulk. Not so long ago, there was talk of providing children with little laptops for £50. I reckon that you could probably get very basic ones for less than that now. Broadband should be able to be provided very cost effectively given the quantity that government would be interested in. This is an important measure. It is achievable and is absolutely in line with the coalition agreement and this Government’s stated aims in regard to education.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on Amendment 83ZA be adjourned.