Children: Looked-after Children

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for tabling this debate today and add my tribute to his tenacity and effectiveness in pursuing the interests of vulnerable and looked-after children. As it happens, regrettably, child protection issues have been highlighted in the media again recently, but the noble Earl’s strength is that he has continued to champion these issues consistently, long after the media circus has moved on. I also thank all the other noble Lords who have contributed to this thoughtful and challenging debate.

Although we will have differences with the party opposite on some issues, this is not primarily a party-political debate. There is no monopoly of wisdom when it comes to managing the damaging fallout that can occur from family breakdown. There have been child protection failures under both Labour and Conservative Governments. While we remain proud of the progress that the previous Government made on child safeguarding, clearly more needs to be done.

Many of the issues raised in the debate today go to the heart of good parenting. Good parents struggle to balance their children’s welfare with their freedoms. The rules and expectations change from generation to generation, complicated by the fact that new models of family unit are becoming more common. Meanwhile, we know that children are reaching puberty at an earlier age. The sexualisation of young girls through media and celebrity is heightening the pressures upon them. Personal, social and sexual education is being marginalised in the curriculum, leaving children without the tools to spot and avoid exploitation. For example, at its very simplest level, teenagers need help in differentiating between lust and love. They need to identify what is a real boyfriend, as a number of people have mentioned in the debate this afternoon.

For good, committed parents, guiding their children’s growth and development in this minefield is a challenge. When the state has to step in as a substitute parent, the dilemmas quickly multiply. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, rightly emphasised that there is a moral duty on the state as well as a statutory responsibility to step up to the plate in the role of a good parent. He has talked about how challenging that can be.

I am not saying the care system cannot get things right. Of course it can. As we have heard, there are wonderful success stories of transformative fostering, adoption and residential home placements. We need to learn from these examples and celebrate them, but the reality is that they are still not getting it right in sufficient numbers enough of the time.

We are all too aware of harrowing stories of care system failures and we are rightly shocked and angry that this can be allowed to happen. However, regrettably, behind the headlines are everyday stories of parental neglect and abuse with which the care system is struggling to cope. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, gave a moving example of the potential personality disorders that can be faced by children who feel at a young age rejected and unable to be loved and respond to love. What is the fate of those children? We know, for example that the number of children in local authority care is rising from a number of statistics mentioned this afternoon. The research that I have uncovered talks about the number reaching over 67,000 last year. The prime cause of those children being taken into care is to protect them from neglect or abuse.

Unfortunately, however, we also know that the subsequent life chances for those young people are not good. For example, the gap between the educational achievements of looked-after children compared with their peers is actually growing, with just 13% of children in care achieving 5 GCSEs A to C grades last year, compared with 57% of all children. We also know that looked-after children are three times more likely to end up unemployed than their peers. These failings in the care system are not headline grabbing, but they still stand as a reminder of how we are failing these young people on a day-to-day basis.

What needs to be done? One of the things that became clear when I was researching material for this debate was the wealth of independent analysis and advice on child protection issues which has been commissioned in recent years, including Select Committee reports, all-party parliamentary group reports and the excellent reports from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and Professor Munro. All have provided wise and thoughtful counsel on this issue, and contain good, practical advice on assessing and managing the complex issues involved. I also pay tribute to the work of the all-party group on children who go missing in care, and that of the deputy children’s commissioner into child sexual exploitation. Both reports contain far-reaching recommendations on the training of staff, the location of residential homes, the role of safety risk assessments, the need for better liaison with the police and the responsibilities of local authorities and Ofsted to drive up standards.

Their recommendations are urgent and compelling, and I join other noble Lords in hoping that the Minister will be able to update us this afternoon on the progress being made, for example, to improve the data on children missing from care; on clarifying the responsibility of Ofsted to share locations of children’s homes with the police; and on the steps being taken to prevent the scandal of out-of-borough placements being made for economic reasons rather than in the interests of the child.

Beyond that, there are three more fundamental themes that I would like to highlight today. First, improving the quality of relationships between the child and those charged with protecting them is crucial. Children have to have adults in their lives who they absolutely trust. The adults have to understand the children’s lives and have high expectations and aspirations for them. Continuity and the provision of long-term support from a caring and loving adult should be at the heart of our care provision. As we have heard, the more that placements break down, the less likely it is that a subsequent placement will be a success. It becomes a downward spiral. Even though we know that, more than 10% of children in care are being moved more than three times a year. As the noble Lord, Lord Laming, quite rightly expressed it, they simply become lost in the system.

I agree with the previous Children’s Minister, who argued that the possibility of a placement breakdown should be treated with as much concern as a child being removed from its birth family. Therefore, will the Minister update the House on the steps being taken by the Government to minimise these multiple placements? Decent relationships cannot be formed if front-line professionals do not have the time, resources and training they need to support the child. Social worker caseloads are on the increase, with one in six social workers having more than 40 cases and more than half believing that their caseload is unmanageable.

The sector continues to suffer a crisis in morale and there is a worrying lack of experienced social workers staying in the system, with many quoting burnout as a key reason for the high turnover. That is why we support initiatives to raise the professional standing of social work, including raising the status of the College of Social Work, the appointment of a chief social worker and a fast-track system similar to Teach First in education which would train top graduates and guarantee employment, provided they commit to a minimum of two years working with disadvantaged children. As we have heard today, we also need to address the particular skills gap and the undervaluing of the work of those in the residential care sector, as has been effectively highlighted by a number of noble Lords.

However, regrettably, the situation on the ground is destined to worsen as the huge cuts in the early intervention grant, youth services and local authority children’s services feed through the system. The Children Act 2004, quite rightly, made it a statutory duty for the police, health and children’s agencies to work together on child protection but the funding for all those sectors is under attack and they are retreating back to their core functions rather than prioritising co-operation. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, both gave very moving examples of what can happen when you do not have joined-up working and, conversely, the advantages that can occur when this is addressed effectively.

Meanwhile, there are now more than twice as many staff employed in the education department’s free school unit as there are in the safeguarding unit. So while we all understand that there is pressure on budgets, it does also come down to government priorities. Will the Minister agree to look again at what more can be done to ensure that agencies involved in child protection are obliged to work collaboratively with adequate, and ring-fenced, funding?

Finally, it is absolutely paramount that we continue to put the needs of children and young people before their parents or any other adults, and that they are given a strong voice in decisions that affect them. They have a right to be heard, and systems have to be in place to ensure this is a reality. As we have heard, running away from care or befriending potential exploiters is a graphic way of children asserting some control over their own lives, however misplaced that can be. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, rightly said, the solution cannot simply be to lock them up as a result of that. I echo the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others, in supporting the case for an independent advocate who can form a lasting, and I hope trusted, relationship as a vital first step in strengthening children’s voices. I hope that the Minister can confirm that that will be actioned.

Sadly, we cannot guarantee that there will be no further child protection failures, but we already know many of the steps that are needed to minimise such tragedies in future, including those proposed by Professor Munro and the deputy children’s commissioner. The very least that we can do is to ensure that their recommendations are implemented speedily and in full. I look forward to hearing that the Minister concurs with this view and that the Government are now ready to act.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, we expect that everyone who now sits a GCSE should be able to sit the new English baccalaureate certificate. Although it will be more challenging than the current GCSEs, we believe that all children with a good education should be able to achieve it. We have also moved to strengthen vocational qualifications, increase the number of UTCs and studio schools and set an expectation that young people who are not secure in English or maths at the age of 16 will continue to study towards that qualification post-16.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he understand the concerns of many academics and parents that the new qualification will narrow the definition of educational success and excellence? Is it not inevitable that the teaching time for many other crucial subjects, such as art, music, religion, computing and technology, will be squeezed out by the emphasis on the core subjects in the EBacc? Does he recognise that the Government’s obsession with academic subjects offers little comfort to the forgotten 50% who will never go to university but who want an alternative, gold-standard vocational qualification, such as the technical baccalaureate proposed by the leader of the Opposition?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I do not accept the basic premise that the Government are concerned only about academic qualifications to the exclusion of all else. I agree with the noble Baroness, and with the party opposite, on the importance of vocational and technical qualifications. One of the very first things that the Government did when coming into office was to commission the Wolf review into vocational qualifications. However, with regard to the EBC, the amount of time that is likely to be taken to teach those core subjects will still leave plenty of time for the important subjects that she mentions, such as art, music or design, which I agree one would want to continue to be taught. I do not think it is a narrowing of the definition of excellence to want to set a higher bar for more children from a whole range of backgrounds, particularly the most disadvantaged, to get good academic qualifications that will get them into further or higher education, apprenticeships or work.

Adoption Agencies (Panel and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2012

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 25th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I will follow the same theme but I hope that I will not be repetitive. A great deal is going on in the area of adoption, whether it is the Norgrove review, the March action plan or the existence of the Select Committee on which I am very pleased to serve.

I want to draw attention to paragraph 78, which records the decision and has already been quoted by the chairman, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It ends with the sentence she has already quoted:

“We believe that the court’s detailed scrutiny of these cases should be sufficient”.

It does not say “is sufficient” or “is known to be sufficient”: it says “should be sufficient”. It is quite important that that sentence is conditioned. Indeed, the Explanatory Memorandum should have quoted paragraph 78 in full and not selected the middle sentence. In my view, the Explanatory Memorandum to this instrument has a tendency to short-cut.

Let us take the words “should be” and look at what this enormously comprehensive report, with more than 100 recommendations, said on the relationship between courts and local authorities in paragraphs 3.45 and 3.46. It is worth reading this into the record:

“Our recommendations are intended to restore the respective responsibilities of courts and local authorities”.

If I may interpose, the word “restore” is a quite strong use of language. It implies that something is not as it used to be, even if not quite that it has broken down. The report continues:

“But to change the law does not tackle the root cause of the difficulties. This stems we believe from a deep-rooted distrust of local authorities … This in turn fuels dissatisfaction on the part of local authorities with the courts, further damaging relationships.”

Paragraph 3.46 states:

“The result is that the relationship between local authorities and courts can verge on the dysfunctional. For the system to work better it is not acceptable for each group to sit on the sidelines and criticise the other.”

It may be right to have taken away one of the responsibilities of panels. It could be right to remove the second opinion which may be provided very helpfully either to local authorities or to courts which might need it. It may be right to make them face up to the need to work successfully together. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that that is the Norgrove motivation. But it seems very risky.

We know that the performance of local authorities is uneven, for some quite good reasons such as the size of the authority or the ethnic mix in the authority. Political persuasion may have entered into it at some stage. We also know that the performance of the courts is very uneven. Our committee has not yet received as much evidence on that as we will have done when we come back in the autumn. Indeed, the government literature—the action plan in March or the Explanatory Memorandum—is quite cautious about criticising the courts. It is perhaps overcautious in the balance between its opinions on local authorities and the courts.

However, Norgrove is very clear. I think that he is saying that the front-line troops—the local authorities, the IROs and the social workers, and the courts with the judges—need to be in the front line. They need to get together and to perform without being intervened upon by outside experts and interests, which may be right as a long-term objective. Certainly, one would hope to find relationships between local authorities and courts in general becoming much better than they apparently are if this review is to be believed—and I see no reason to doubt it.

However, the Government will have to watch what happens very carefully, because it is not self-evident that removing this second opinion, this ability to put things together to the benefit of both the local authority and the court, will enhance the process of adoption. Delay has been mentioned as a reason. The evidence for it does not stand up. The evidence for duplication is dependent on there being confidence that the ability to perform exists both in the local authorities and the courts. If it does not, the duplication argument does not stand up either.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for putting down this Motion today. She has enormous expertise in this area and, as I had anticipated, it has been very instructive listening to her speak not only about her past experience but about the work of the scrutiny committee. It has been interesting also to hear the details of the ongoing work of that committee that other noble Lords have been able to share.

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if other people in the Room have more expertise in this area than me; I see myself as being on a learning curve. However, I believe that we have so far failed to get the balance right between scrutiny and decision-making in adoption procedure, leading to unacceptable delays in the processing of applications for children to be adopted. As has been said today, this matter has been debated on many occasions over many years. It is also addressed in detail in the Family Justice Review report. As we have heard, the amended regulations before us today implement one small change in a much bigger set of recommendations contained in that report.

Having looked at those recommendations, we are persuaded that a one-stage process of scrutiny by either an adoption panel or the courts through a placement order should be sufficient to protect the interests of children and parents, with the emphasis being clearly on the primary interests of the child. However, the questions posed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, chime with several of our concerns.

The Explanatory Notes accompanying the regulations make it clear that this change is part of a larger package of legislative reform affecting adoption practices and that the Government will consult on these wider proposed changes. We look forward to participating in the consultation, and I would be grateful if the Minister could take this opportunity to update us on the timetable and scope of the planned consultation. Is it the intention, for example, that the outstanding recommendations from the Family Justice Review relating to adoption and the conclusions from the adoption scrutiny committee will be incorporated in the consultation?

This leads to the fundamental question, which the noble Baroness raised, of the timing of the proposals. We wonder at the wisdom of introducing this change to such an important piece of public policy on a seemingly piecemeal basis. Perhaps the Minister could clarify why the changes are being introduced now, when the scrutiny committee’s work is ongoing and when more radical issues relating to the role of local authorities and adoption panels are on the cards. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked powerfully why the scrutiny committee’s work was commissioned if it was to be pre-empted in this way as it now appears to be.

Given the sensitivities involved in dealing with adoption issues and the need to ensure that safeguarding the interests of the child is built into everything that we do, can the Minister confirm whether the changes, if introduced, will be monitored and reassessed over time? It is vital to ensure that child protection at this fundamental level is not being compromised. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

Schools: Children in Care

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with both parts of the noble Lord’s point. It is a gloomy tale, and therefore it is incumbent on us to look at everything that can make a contribution to making it better.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that although, as has been said, boarding schools may be the answer for the minority of pupils in care, the much bigger challenge is to address the disproportionate number of children in care who attend failing schools? What action are the Government prepared to take to ensure that these children are given greater access to schools rated as outstanding by Ofsted?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the noble Baroness’s basic point—that the contribution that independent or maintained boarding schools are likely to make will, proportionately, be a relatively modest one; and that, therefore, the Government’s reforms to try to improve educational performance will play an important part. It is the case that looked-after children, obviously, have priority for admissions, and that includes admission to the kinds of schools the noble Baroness described. I hope that other initiatives that we are taking—such as bursary support after the age of 16, the pupil premium and so on—will help. However, the key challenge for us in all schools is to raise those standards, bearing in mind that we need to focus on the particular group she described and shine a spotlight on their educational achievement and the gaps that there are.

Schools: Primary School Places

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to create 450,000 additional primary school places across England before the next general election.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, while it is the responsibility of local authorities to manage the supply of primary places, we have doubled the rate of spending on primary school places from the levels we inherited. In addition, we have allocated a further £1.1 billion over the past year, bringing to £2.7 billion the total we have given to local authorities so far to support additional places. We are working closely with local authorities and will work to reduce costs so that every pound spent goes as far as possible.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Can he assure parents that sufficient, properly designed classrooms will be provided to meet all this extra demand? Does he agree that it is unacceptable for teaching to take place in temporary buildings that are not designed for this purpose, as increasingly seems to be the case currently? Do the Government now accept the folly of cancelling the Building Schools for the Future project without having a comparative school-building programme in place? Why are they continuing to give priority to funding new free schools when are not necessarily sited in places of greatest demand and there still remains a shortfall in funding for the more urgently needed extra primary places?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, trying to work backwards, first, so far as free schools are concerned, of the primary schools that we announced on Friday with proposals to come forward for 2013, nearly 90% of those are in areas of basic need where there is a shortage of places. I agree that good design is important but do not accept that temporary buildings cannot be part of a solution. Local authorities need to be free to make the judgments that they think are best to respond to the pressures that they have locally. Generally, as I said with the figures that I have set out, we have doubled the funding we are putting into primary school places. The birth rate started to rise in 2002; it peaked in 2008; so the Government are trying to address a serious challenge in the problem of the growing numbers that we have inherited.

Education and Training: People with Hidden Disabilities

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for initiating this debate today. He has an impressive track record of campaigning on these issues and both he and a number of noble Lords have given some very well informed and passionate contributions this afternoon. I really appreciated the opportunity to listen and learn. I would also like to place on record my thanks to all the people—both the individuals and the organisations—who wrote to us with some very constructive solutions for the way forward, but also with some harrowing accounts of some of the problems we face with these issues.

I begin by reiterating the point acknowledged by my noble friend Lord Morris, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and others in the debate, that while dyslexia and autism represent a proportion of the problem, there is a bigger challenge of hidden disabilities. For example, to give some other statistics, more than 3 million people have asthma in the UK, one in 200 people had epilepsy and one in four people will experience mental health problems—or should I say mental well-being problems—with an increasing number of young people in this category. Overall, it is estimated that around 70% of people with a disability in this country have a hidden disability. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, rightly suggested, there is much to commend a united strategy to tackle these issues although there are individual elements to each of the disability issues, as we know and as we have rehearsed this afternoon.

The truth is that we have improved our medical skills in diagnosis and treatment, but these have not been matched by the ongoing learning and support guarantees necessary to enable young people to lead enriched lives and fulfil their potential or—as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, put it—to enable us to find the treasure within them. Despite the progress resulting from the Equality Act, we are still confronting levels of both overt and covert prejudice, institutionally and socially. These are lifelong challenges with very different solutions needed at every stage.

As we have heard, for young people with hidden disabilities in particular, even once a diagnosis has been made there is a subsequent fear of being adversely judged and labelled, or alternatively being disbelieved. At the same time, young people do not want to draw attention to their disability and appear to be different, either because they are embarrassed or, as we have heard this afternoon, because they fear bullying in a school or social environment. As a result they do not always access the funding and resources to which they are entitled.

While the original SEN programme played an important part in moving disability and special needs towards centre stage in the design and provision of local authority, school and personalised support—I thank the noble Lords who paid tribute to the previous Government’s efforts in this regard—it had undoubtedly become too bureaucratic and formulaic in its execution. There were too many agencies involved, no incentives for joined-up services and a degree of piecemeal funding.

Therefore, we welcome many of the aspirations in the Government’s special educational needs Green Paper and their response to the consultation. We support the concept of a single, simpler birth-to-age-25 assessment process and care plan with the right to a personalised budget for parents and young people to buy in support services. Parents tell us that these proposals match their aspirations for their children’s ongoing care. We welcome the requirement for earlier testing and intervention—another point made by noble Lords this afternoon.

We welcome the emphasis on providing an education that will help young people with disabilities into meaningful employment. But given the complexities of the new arrangements, and the need for parents to be reassured that there will be an improvement in the support given to their children, we would caution against rushing into legislation before the outcome of the 20 pilots, which are currently experimenting with the new proposals, have been properly evaluated.

The Minister will know that the interim report on the pathfinder pilots published this week is already flagging up some worrying concerns. For example, it is proving difficult to get agencies to work effectively together; assessments are being duplicated, not streamlined, as was the original intention; and the higher costs are judged not to be sustainable. More importantly, there are increasing criticisms that, contrary to their stated and well received objectives, the pathfinders are failing to involve young people themselves in the shaping of the new services. I raised this matter in Questions earlier in the week, and I once again urge the Minister to confirm that the full conclusions of the pathfinders will be evaluated before the Children and Families Bill is published. I would be grateful for his comments on this.

We would also expect the Government to set out clearly how the funding for these new, improved services will be guaranteed at a time when specialist posts are being lost due to deep cuts to council budgets and to health and welfare budgets. Could the Minister explain how the transition from separate budget heads in education, health and social care to an integrated, personalised provision will work in practice? Will they be expected at a local level to transfer funds into a separate pot, and it will it be ring-fenced?

As the Green Paper acknowledges, and a number of noble Lords around the Chamber this afternoon have said, education and training are central to addressing the needs of young people with hidden disabilities. As has been mentioned, it starts with initial teacher training courses and the need for compulsory modules on identifying, understanding and providing for children across the full spectrum of disabilities. It needs to be supplemented by specialist teachers trained in supporting young people in the classroom. It also requires sufficient teaching assistants, properly funded and trained to support the individual learning needs of specific children in the classroom. Those points were echoed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Browning and Lady Walmsley.

It also requires top-class careers provision in schools, which can give disabled young people specific advice about further and higher education courses and the employment options available to them. The Minister knows our continued concern about the quality of advice being provided by the new schools-based careers service, and we have a specific worry that children with specialist support needs will not get individual face-to-face advice to aim their skills at achievable ambitions. Perhaps the Minister could comment on this. Surely it should be a fundamental right of all children throughout the education system to have the same rights. Can the Minister clarify the legal position with regard to SEN children having access to academy places, and their rights once admitted? Would he agree to review the legislation if it is found to discriminate against statemented or SEN children?

While no one would pretend that the provision in schools is perfect, the message from many disability groups and individuals is that it is the transition from school to higher or further education and ultimately into meaningful employment that remains the biggest challenge. Parents who have seen their child have good support at school can be shocked when they view the adult options available when their child reaches the age of 16 or 18, with specialist adult facilities dominated by much older attendees, often with complex needs, or when they are faced with an FE syllabus that does not provide courses on a full-time basis, leaving parents struggling to provide home care at other times of the week when courses are not being provided. This is why FE colleges need to be centrally involved in pathfinders and why it is essential that they have a statutory duty to be involved in the transition planning for individual young people at a very early stage in their education so that appropriate provision can be laid on in the FE colleges to meet their needs sufficiently in advance.

Finally, as several noble Lords have highlighted, the real challenge highlighted in this debate is about those with hidden disabilities finding and keeping meaningful work. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, identified, the statistics are, quite frankly, depressing. Disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-disabled people. Some 22% of young people with a disability were not in any form of education, employment or training when they reached the age of 18—twice the level of their peers. The Labour Force Survey showed that, in 2011, 41 per cent of men and 43 per cent of women designated longer-term disabled were also unemployed. The result, as we have heard, is too many young, capable people trapped at home with increasingly elderly parents.

The Sayce report for the Department for Work and Pensions identified a number of solutions with which we concur, particularly the personalised approach and the expansion of the Access to Work scheme, which they describe as the Government’s best kept secret. This helped 37,000 disabled people into work in 2009-10. However, it needs to be better funded and more focused on helping those with hidden disabilities into work. The Government also need to focus on those with mental disabilities rather than seeing their role as just providing practical adaptations and support. Much greater emphasis should be placed on helping people access mainstream apprenticeships rather than separate, short-term internships, as seems to be the trend at the moment.

These are challenging issues—particularly challenging against a backdrop of central and local government cuts and welfare reform—that might face any Government. This Government have set out ambitious solutions for helping those with disabilities access quality education and jobs. However, with reducing budgets, the practical implementation may well elude them, leaving parents and young people frustrated and disappointed. In this context, I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response to this debate to reassure us.

Education: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Yes, my Lords. I know that that is a subject that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, feels very strongly about. He and I have had the chance to discuss that issue, and we need to do what we can to address those needs. It is obviously the case that special educational needs and behavioural issues often lie behind the reason why those young people are in those institutions in the first place.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, we very much support the principle in the SEN Green Paper that a simplified plan involving social care, education, health and benefit providers would make it easier for young people to access the support they need to flourish in the employment market. But given the complexities involved in these proposals, can the Minister confirm that the current pathfinder pilots, which are only just getting under way, will be completed and evaluated before introducing the very radical changes in primary legislation that will be needed to make the proposals happen?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the support that she has given to the idea that lies behind our SEN reforms, which is to try to bring these services more closely together. As regards the evaluation of the pathfinder pilots, 20 are under way and we will be publishing regular quarterly reports. I think that the first one is out today and I will make sure that the noble Baroness has a copy. A more formal interim report will be published in the autumn, which will help shape the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill that is also scheduled for the autumn. The lessons that we learn from the pathfinders will help shape that legislation. We will all need to scrutinise that very carefully.

Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Determination of Turnover for Monetary Penalties) Order 2012

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Lingfield]

As noble Lords will remember, I brought up this issue during the passage of the Education Bill, so I shall not rehearse the list of difficulties that we all saw in the newspapers during 2011 and in previous years—the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, told us a lot about those, too. The principle of giving Ofqual powers to fine awarding bodies that have been in dereliction of their duty seems entirely proper and necessary, which is why I support the Government. Their proposals seem entirely fair. The awarding bodies are a disparate group and it was always going to be difficult to devise a scheme that coped with all the differences, but the decision to limit turnover for the purposes of Ofqual regulation to all activity within the UK seems appropriate. Sufficient safeguards are built in: there will be an appeal mechanism; Ofqual will be required to state its reasons for using its powers, as the Minister has told us; and there will be a review of the order and Ofqual’s activities. Those are enough. A great deal of needless distress was caused to pupils and their parents, and a lot of difficulties were created for colleges, schools and universities. I hope that the order will be used to alleviate those problems. We shall see whether it does, because it can be reviewed.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the reasoning behind the order and for his earlier letter to the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, providing an update on the steps taken since we last discussed this matter during scrutiny of the Education Bill.

We share the Government’s determination to drive up standards in the conduct of examinations and to ensure that Ofqual has the suite of tools necessary to hold awarding organisations to account for any mistakes made, particularly if they have a wider impact on overall public confidence in the exam system. We therefore approach scrutiny of this order with the positive view that it is in our interests for Ofqual to demand, and ensure, the highest possible standards in the administration of the exam system.

I could of course begin by questioning whether this order is already out of date given the Secretary of State’s apparent decision, leaked last week, that from autumn 2014 O-levels will be revived and the current exam board free-for-all replaced by a single exam board for each subject. Yet I realise that however short-lived this order turns out to be, we have a responsibility to deal with it as best we can. However, in one sense the Secretary of State’s announcement has a common cause with the order here today because the fact that there are so many different awarding organisations of every shape, size and constitution, as we have heard, is the central cause of the headache for Ofqual about how to regulate them fairly and consistently. I suppose that it begs the question as to whether we have allowed too many bodies to spring up to enable consistent marking and proper qualification comparisons to be achieved. In this context, however, I have a few specific questions.

Schools: Curriculum

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will publish the names and qualifications of all those who advised the Secretary of State for Education on the content of the recent curriculum review proposals for the teaching of primary school mathematics, science and English; and what international comparisons were used to inform the proposals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government are happy to publish a list of those who were consulted to inform the development of the draft curriculum documents published on 11 June, and we will do so shortly. The review has drawn on a wide evidence base, including an analysis of the English, mathematics and science curricula of high-performing education jurisdictions, which was published on 19 December 2011. I will send the noble Baroness copies of both documents.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that reply, particularly for offering to send me the specifics of the international comparisons on which the proposals have been made. However, is he concerned that three of the four members of the expert panel set up to advise the Government on the curriculum review are reported to be deeply unhappy with the proposals now announced by Michael Gove, which they describe as too narrow and overprescriptive? Is he also concerned about their allegation that the proposals are not drawn from the best available international evidence? Does not Michael Gove’s throw-away response to these concerns in the Commons on Monday, when he said that,

“advisers advise but Ministers decide”,—[Official Report, Commons, 18/6/12; col. 603.]

give weight to the view that the expert panel’s evidence has been disregarded in favour of a small Gove clique of advisers in his own department?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

First, a number of recommendations made by the expert panel were accepted by the Secretary of State. Secondly, although it is true that there were differences of opinion between some members of the expert panel, and between some of them and Ministers, a difference of opinion between Ministers and expert advisers is scarcely unheard of. However, Ministers ultimately have to take responsibility for their decisions. I think most of us in this House think that that is the way it should be. However, the key point of the proposals that the Government have brought forward is that we are trying to raise ambition and standards in our primary curriculum, particularly as a gap in attainment has opened up between the UK and other international jurisdictions and we are keen to try to narrow it.

Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

That this House takes note of the contribution of schools to the well-being and personal and social needs of children and young people.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to introduce this important debate, and I do so in the knowledge that there are a number of noble Lords on all sides of the House with very impressive records of campaigning on these issues. A number of them are here today and I look forward to learning from their contributions in due course.

I also approach this debate with a sense of sadness, because I genuinely feel that the Government opposite have lost their way on this agenda. Their concentration on education structures and exam results has overshadowed the wider contribution that schools make to producing well rounded, confident and thoughtful young people. As a result, the post-war consensus about the wider purpose of education is unravelling.

The White Paper that preceded the Education Act 1944 stated:

“The government’s purpose is to ensure for children a happier childhood and a better start in life and to provide means for all of developing the various talents with which they are endowed”.

Over the decades, through many iterations, these same principles have underpinned the provision of education in this country. However, if we judge the current Government by what they do rather than by what they say, the wider social, personal and health issues of children are no longer a priority. I would go so far as to say that, rather than our education policy being determined by the ideology of one man, there needs to be a national debate about the purpose of education to allow parents, teachers and young people themselves to raise their concerns and to seek to develop a 21st century consensus about the role of education.

While I would be the first to acknowledge that the previous Government did not get everything right, I am proud of our educational achievements. There was a sustained period of improvement in education outcomes in the UK from 1997 to 2010. At the same time, we recognised that pupils’ low achievement was only partly determined by their education. Factors such as levels of poverty, parental support, a stable home life and a lack of community aspiration all played their part. That is why we developed the Every Child Matters strategy. This sought to integrate children’s services so that every child had the right to be happy, safe, achieve economic well-being, enjoy life and make a positive contribution. This vision achieved impressive outcomes in tackling poverty, providing early intervention for Sure Start, improving nutrition and exercise in schools, providing programmes to tackle bullying and low self-esteem and providing improved sex education, to give just a few examples.

We took the view then, as now, that you cannot expect schools to do everything. To be successful there needs to be a comprehensive approach to children with schools and communities working together. Unfortunately this is not a philosophy that is shared by the current Government. As a result, many of the successful initiatives have now been undermined. In his speeches and his policy initiatives, Michael Gove has made it clear that the No.1 and only purpose of schools is to drive up performance in exam results. In fact he has gone as far as to admit that he can be criticised for having too strong a focus on testing. His view is that asking schools to play their part in addressing the wider social problems of their pupils gets in the way of rigorous educational achievement. As a result, policies that were proven to be working and have a positive effect on the well-being and learning capacity of young people have been dismantled, or become optional extras to be implemented when money and time allows. The starkest example of this is the Government’s decision to remove the ring-fenced funding for Sure Start centres, which has resulted in hundreds up and down the country being closed or merged.

However, the changes to the curriculum and school environment are equally far reaching. Let me give an example. Yesterday I tabled an Oral Question on nutritional standards in school food. Following the turkey twizzler scandal and Jamie Oliver’s excellent exposé of the poor quality of school food, the School Food Trust was set up to prepare nutritional standards that would underpin provision in all schools. The outcome was a great success. School food was transformed. There was increasing evidence that it was improving concentration and behaviour, and uptake increased. This Government, in their wisdom, decided that academies and free schools would not be obliged to adopt the nutritional standards. Now, not surprisingly, there is evidence that these schools are selling chocolates, crisps and snacks rather than healthy food; so all the health benefits of eating quality food will be undermined as more and more schools opt to become academies.

What about another example? The previous Government sought to tackle the growing rise of obesity and lack of exercise by setting up a comprehensive network of school sports partnerships, with a requirement for young people to have two, rising to five, hours of exercise a week. All the reports were that the partnerships were a great success, and that a generation of young people were now being given the opportunity to have regular exercise. The first thing this Government did was cut the funding for the sports partnerships, and although some funding has now been returned after a national outcry the current provision is a shadow of its former self, with many posts lost and many of the initiatives gone.

We believe that schools have an important role to play in tackling poor physical health and in supporting those with behavioural difficulties or mental health problems in school. We believe that by addressing these issues we will improve the capacity of children to study and learn. It is not either/or; the two things must go together. Similarly, there is a growing weight of evidence that many young children start school without the basic skills to learn. Poor parenting means that they do not have the vocabulary to take part in lessons and they do not know how to dress themselves or to hold a pencil. Schools have no choice but to deal with these issues before they can progress with the formal stages of learning. Assuming, for example, that every child is sufficiently school-ready that they can start to learn a poem by heart at age five just adds to the list of impossible demands with which teachers struggle daily.

Incidentally, do I detect something of a schism between David Cameron and his Education Ministers? The Prime Minister has been very vocal in identifying that children’s well-being is a key priority. It is a commitment shared by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund. Since we are languishing somewhere near the bottom of UNICEF’s list of 21 developed countries with regard to children’s well-being, he seems to be on the right track. Yet Ofsted is no longer required to measure it, and both Michael Gove and Nick Gibb have described it as peripheral or a distraction from the core purpose of academic education, rather than recognising it as a foundation on which to build achievement. I look forward to hearing from the Minister whether he shares the views of his colleagues in the department or whether he agrees with the Prime Minister that schools should play an important role in contributing to children’s well-being.

I also want to say something about the fate of the specific PSHE courses which my noble friend Lady Massey has championed for so long. There are key elements of PSHE which it is vital for young people to learn about and discuss to prepare themselves for adult life. Learning about issues such as relationships, self-esteem, how to counteract bullying, personal health and finance, parenting skills and sex education should not be optional add-ons to the curriculum; they are essential life skills. I know that these have also been pursued by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on the Lib Dem Benches, which is why we were so disappointed that she felt unable to support my noble friend Lady Massey’s amendment to make PSHE compulsory during the passage of the Academies Bill.

Since that time, my noble friend Lady Massey and the Minister have had a well rehearsed stand-off on the lack of progress in the review of PSHE education. I have to say to the noble Lord that this is not good enough. Most parents expect and want these sensitive issues to be covered in a systematic way within the school curriculum, so perhaps he will be able to give us some good news on this score if nothing else when he responds to the debate today.

We all want young people to achieve their maximum academic potential, and in the future a Labour Government will create an office of educational achievement that will provide a genuinely independent clearing house for research to learn from international comparisons and share best practice among teachers. We also believe that there are wider and softer social skills which young people should learn in school that do not have to be measured by exam results. It is a view shared in a recent Work Foundation report, which identified that the number of young people not in employment, education or training continues to rise with 954,000, or one in six now falling into this category. Its report identifies a lack of soft skills such as communication or customer service being increasingly quoted as a reason why these young people are unable to find work. These views are also echoed by employers who despair that young people are so ill prepared for the world of work. John Cridland, the CBI director-general, has criticised the Government’s obsession with GCSE grades, arguing that it encourages short-term cramming and frustrates teachers because it stops them delivering an inspirational classroom experience.

We share the view that good teaching by enthusiastic, motivated teachers lies at the heart of effective learning. In the end it is the teachers not the lessons that people remember most about their schooldays. That is why it is important to value the workforce in a way that is often overlooked by this Government and to empower it to be more creative in the way lessons are taught. Creativity should be at the centre of school life for teachers and young people, but increasingly schools are failing to nurture the creative talents of young people and we are losing global market share in the crucial creative industry sector as a result. As Steve Jobs of Apple said so eloquently:

“The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists”.

Not all creativity can be measured by exams and not every child wants to sit an exam in a creative subject that they enjoy. There has to be space within the school timetable for children to pursue wider interests such as music, drama and art. However, the reality is that these subjects are being squeezed from the curriculum. We believe that our approach to joined-up children’s services, including schools, was the right approach in the past and our childcare commission, bringing together shadow Cabinet members from across the departments, will explore how we can learn from the past and provide even more effective integrated children’s services for the future.

In this context, we will continue to make the case for a wider role for education in contributing to the well-being, personal and social needs of young people, and for nurturing their creativity, confidence and life skills. We believe that this is what parents, children and employers want, and it is what educationists tell us is the bedrock of effective learning. If Michael Gove would join us in a national debate about the purpose of education, perhaps in time we would persuade him, too.

In the mean time, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to share our concerns and to give the Minister the opportunity to distance himself from the hard line of some of his departmental colleagues and to endorse our perspective of the importance of a wider well-being, social and personal role for schools. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House much further. As has been said, we have had excellent contributions from around the Chamber, although I am sorry that the Minister was so unsupported by contributions from his own Back Benches.

As expected, the Minister has made a sterling effort to defend the Government’s record and intent. However, I fundamentally agree with my noble friend Lady Morris, who argued very wisely that it is easy to make reassuring noises about the Government’s intent but the lack of structure on which to hang the policies, and the lack of Ministers vocally championing some of these issues, is sending signals to schools that some of these issues are not really valued. Perhaps the Minister could take that message back.

Ultimately, we are arguing about the balance between well-being and educational attainment. We have a slightly different sense of that balance from the Government; we disagree on it and over the months to come we will continue to try to persuade the Government that they have got that wrong.

In a more positive spirit of cross-party co-operation, I will very happily volunteer to join forces with the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, to campaign for free school meals for all primary schoolchildren, and I can see a campaign developing from that.

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions from around the Chamber. This debate will be ongoing.

Motion agreed.