Childcare Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I want to propose Amendment 11 on the definition of a working parent, which adds our suggested categories to the list proposed by other noble Lords. In his response to the Second Reading debate, the Minister said that “working”—and by this we assumed that he meant “working parent”—

“will be defined as the equivalent of eight hours per week, will include self-employed work, and that lone parents will be able to access the entitlement”.

He added that,

“more detailed criteria will be subject to consultation in due course”.—[Official Report, 16/6/15; col. 1128.]

As we have discussed, we have not yet seen the more detailed criteria that will be the subject of that consultation, so on this basis we are helping the noble Lord along in this process by making some more helpful suggestions.

We discussed the report of the Delegated Powers Committee earlier. I thought it made a telling comment, because the Government had stated that their intention in the Bill was to send,

“a clear message to parents and providers about the Government’s commitment”.—[Official Report, 16/6/15; col. 1130.]

In its response, the committee said that it did not feel that the purpose of an Act was to send a message. I do not think we are sending much of a message to parents anyway if they do not know what the qualification criteria will be for this free childcare. Our objective behind Amendment 11, which by its very nature is a probing amendment, is to make the eligibility as simple but also as widespread as possible. Through this amendment, we want childcare to be available, free of charge, for qualifying children for a period equivalent to 30 hours in each of 38 weeks in any year for parents who: are not in work but are receiving job training; are,

“the main carer for a family member”;

or are on zero-hours contracts. More than that, we want by this amendment to ensure that “working parents” includes parents who have had their contracts,

“unexpectedly ended through no fault of their own”.

This is a point well made by the Child Poverty Action Group, which argues that generous rules should be established for parents who place their children in childcare when in work but subsequently lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

The Government have so far reached a definition of working parents without conducting any consultation on or assessment of how many children would miss out on the Bill’s provisions. At Second Reading, the Minister stated that a working parent is a parent who works a minimum of eight hours per week. Then in the policy statement issued later, he added an important detail refining the definition of a working parent as one who works a minimum of eight hours per week earning the national minimum wage. That leaves even more questions to be answered. For example, what happens in the case of parents earning below the national minimum wage? Although that is illegal, as we know, employers in disadvantaged areas often practise this. The Government have been given plenty of evidence of this illegal practice for some years now and have done very little about it. If the aim of this policy is to get parents back into work, surely it should be extended to parents on jobseeker’s allowance who are receiving training to get back into work. Alternatively, parents may be engaging in regular voluntary work as a means to build experience and their CV while seeking paid employment. Has the Minister any thoughts on how these categories of parents can be supported with childcare?

Parents on zero-hours contracts do not have a set number of hours to work a week. There are some women and some men whose shifts are cancelled at short notice—that day, and there is no work and no pay. These parents would not meet the eight hours per week criteria. Will they be penalised by this measure? Would they become criminalised if they had already filled in a form expecting to work eight hours per week but, due to circumstances beyond their control, were unable to do so? We also have a growing number of carers, with more and more people giving up their jobs or cutting back on hours to care for a family member. Have the Government accounted for the care sector in the delivery of the additional hours of free childcare?

These questions and many more are being left unanswered, so I hope that the Minister can confirm that he is taking on board the many examples we are all giving this evening, and come back with some further examples which embrace many of these wider definitions that we have been spelling out.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 25. I support the amendments in this group, which look at what constitutes a working parent. Here, I would maintain that grandparents can fulfil that definition of a working parent if they are looking after a child or children, and they should get the same childcare opportunities as working parents. I will explain why in a moment. Grandparents are bringing up children because the parents of the child may be dead, in prison or addicted to alcohol or drugs. For grandparents, the welfare of the child is so paramount that many put their own lives on hold. They need and deserve support.

The issue of grandparent, or general kinship, care has been discussed in relation to many Bills over the past 10 years at least. I became aware of the issues facing kinship carers, particularly grandparents, when I chaired the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. I met many grandparents who were suffering hardship. It is estimated that 300,000 children are being raised by relatives and friends—and I mean raised full-time. They are doing a job: they are looking after and bringing up someone else’s child or children. An estimated 60,000 kinship carers have dropped out of the labour market to bring up children. Many have decreased their working hours or their income. One reason is the high cost of childcare. Other kinship carers, usually grandparents, have retired from work. They and their grandchildren would benefit from extra free childcare. I know what they are already entitled to, but if they are not working the new provisions in the Bill will not apply. Many kinship carers are under severe strain and could be helped, as could the children they are bringing up, by more hours of childcare.

I met a grandparent a couple of years ago who used to work but gave up when her daughter died of a drug overdose. She took over responsibility for three children, aged between one and four, left with her one midnight. She was exhausted and needed more space for herself, and the children needed more stimulation than she could give. She was not helped by the bureaucracy of her local authority, from which she had little help or support. In a recent survey, 95% of kinship carers said that they had experienced at least one unmet need for support. Kinship carers have few rights, few specific services and a complex and confusing system to negotiate. The woman I just spoke about said, “I ought to be reading to my grandson but I have to spend my time filling in forms”. According to a survey by Family Lives, most feel that parenting is more challenging than it was a generation ago.

I am talking about committed carers, devoted to their grandchildren or relatives, who have taken over in a family crisis. They save the taxpayer about £750 million a year. Surely, these carers should be given support. Being able to access free extra childcare would make a huge difference to their lives and the lives of the children in their care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Can I ask a very simple question? The Minister did not specifically refer to the very telling comments from the noble Lord, Lord True, that, if you have too complicated a system with all the bureaucratic checking that needs to take place, it is a burden on the public bodies that have to do it—but also there is a cost involved. Is the funding review or one of the other reviews that is taking place going to look at whether having a universal system would not be a whole lot simpler than some of the tiers that we are now trying to put into place? I am not expecting an answer now, but it would be useful to know at least that these factors are being considered again.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I apologise, because I know that everyone wants to get to supper, but I have a clarification point. In the Childcare Act 2006, which is quoted in the Bill, it says that,

‘“parent’ means a parent of a young child, and includes any individual who … has parental responsibility for a young child, or … has care of a young child”.

Did I understand the Minister to say that grandparents would still have to be working grandparents or that they would qualify because they would have parental responsibility or care for a child? Many of them are not working because they are too old or they have retired. Could he clarify that for me?

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, Amendment 84A has a simple but fundamental aim—that is, to ensure that all teachers practising in the classroom have qualified teacher status. Until recently this was the case in all state schools but the Government have decided that this will not be a requirement for teachers in free schools. This was debated at length in Grand Committee and the need for teachers to be qualified, as I recall, had virtually unanimous support. For many noble Lords it was what I would colloquially describe as a no-brainer. During the debate the Minister said that the Government’s reasoning for this was,

“simply intended to allow the possibility of greater innovation at the edges of the maintained sector”.—[Official Report, 14/9/11; col. GC 227.]

He repeated this argument in a letter to me of 25 October. I do not think that many of us were convinced by this argument at the time. It was, with respect, completely lacking in evidence or justification.

The Minister then went on to argue in his letter that a skill in measuring the progress of each pupil and the delivery of good-quality subject materials were important elements of teacher training but that he,

“believes it is possible for a teacher to be proficient in them without having attained Qualified teacher Status”.

My simple challenge back to him is: how would he know? How would parents or even head teachers know if these people were truly up to scratch?

This issue goes to the heart of the professional standing of the teaching profession. Whereas most sensible participants in this debate—including the teachers—would argue that the challenge is to drive up standards in the classroom and increase professionalism, the Government seem to be pulling in the opposite direction.

In our earlier debate, a number of noble Lords contrasted the status of teachers with other professions. For example, we wondered whether allowing doctors in certain hospitals not to be qualified would enable “greater innovation”. We wondered what concerns colleagues would have about the standard of patient care in those circumstances and what would be the impact on successful treatment rates. Of course, you can make a similar analogy with other professions.

It is difficult to see why positive innovation is more likely to come about where people are not trained to the required standards in their profession. It is all too easy to see, in the case of unqualified teachers at free schools, how cohorts of children could be failed by teaching quality below the expected level of a qualified teacher.

Our amendment in part is about the Government showing to the teaching profession that they value and want to build on the professionalism in the sector. More than that, it is about ensuring standards in what we believe is one of the most important jobs that it is possible to have. It is in the interests of us all that the next generation is taught to a high standard by trained professionals, and it will do us all a disservice if it is not.

As I mentioned in Grand Committee, the reasoning for the Government’s position is unclear. I noted that the Secretary of State had said of free schools:

“We want the dynamism that characterises the best independent schools to help drive up standards in the state sector … In that spirit, we will not be setting requirements in relation to qualifications”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/11/10; col. 623.]

I question the presumption that a highly performing independent school is the result of the fact that its teachers do not need to be qualified, although of course many already are. Surely the more significant factors are those such as selection processes and smaller class sizes.

If the Government are serious about building on the successes of the previous Government in raising standards of teaching; if the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are serious when they say in the White Paper that is indeed called The Importance of Teaching,

“no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers”;

and if the Government seriously want to learn from international best practice, about which the OECD says:

“many of the high performing countries share a commitment to professionalised teaching”,

how can the Government at the same time say that in some of our schools teachers do not need to be qualified to teach? As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, argued in Grand Committee, it is almost Dickensian.

As colleagues rightly said in Committee, we are not saying that everyone who stands in front of a class should be qualified. I recognise that, for example, trainee teachers are and should be permitted to teach as part of their training. I accept the points made that people without teaching qualifications, such as teaching assistants, add real value to the classroom and make a difference to children’s lives. What is important and what our amendment aims to achieve is that the progression of each pupil should be overseen by someone with a teaching qualification.

It is a basic right of pupils to be taught by a qualified teacher. Parents expect it and the teaching profession seeks it. There is no research or evidence to show that pupils will benefit from this change. I hope noble Lords will feel able to support our amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I am seriously concerned about the issue of having non-qualified teachers in a classroom. Qualifications for teaching are not just about being qualified to teach maths, science or languages; they are about having some knowledge of child development. It is crucial for teachers to learn about how children grow, how they learn to think and how they learn at different ages. It is different if a parent or grandparent goes into a classroom to hear children read or other such activities. Those people are under supervision and fit in with what the class is doing anyway. I would not like someone who was not qualified to be teaching chemistry or physics. It seems quite a dangerous thing to happen. I certainly would not allow into my house an electrician or a plumber who was not qualified. Why would we allow people who are not qualified to teach children? My young nephew recently trained to be a soccer coach for young people. He had to learn not only the skills of teaching soccer but various techniques of teaching as well as first aid. Having non-qualified people in classrooms could miss out all those extra things that teachers learn.

I have some questions for the Minister. How will these non-qualified teachers be recruited? Who will they be? Supposing that they were predominant in a school, what kind of education would those children receive? This is a very serious issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, our Amendment 17 mirrors much of what is in Amendment 16, but with slightly different wording in that it reinstates the protections that were introduced with very good reasons in the first place. They were to have a witness and for searches to be carried out by members of the same sex. I very much echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said in this regard. We have touched on these issues in previous debates—it has been a bit of a running thread—but it does not diminish the force of the argument or the need to firm up the checks and balances that we need when teachers are operating in day-to-day school life.

Head teachers already have the power to search pupils. The powers already give teachers and head teachers the power to search, to use reasonable force to control or restrain a pupil, to stop a pupil committing a criminal offence, to prevent injury or damage to property, and to maintain good order and discipline.

In the Commons stages, colleagues debated why these new powers were necessary in addition to the existing ones and when they would be used. The answers at that time from the Government were unclear, and the Minister, Nick Gibb, was unable to give a convincing example of when these new powers would be needed. For example, when would a teacher need to search a pupil’s possessions without a witness being present? Moreover, in the evidence-taking sessions in the Commons, Brian Lightman, the head of the ASCL, said:

“I have been a head for 15 years. I cannot imagine a situation where I would sanction any of my staff searching a member of the opposite sex without a witness present. In fact, I wouldn’t allow anyone to search a member of the opposite sex, full stop”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 1/3/11; col. 24.]

Similarly, the representation from the teaching unions made it clear that their members would be very wary of using these new powers.

Perhaps more importantly, children’s rights are paramount in this regard. Many of us will have received the mailing from an alliance of children’s charities raising concerns about the extended search powers. It rightly draws our attention to the protection of children’s privacy in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Act. It agrees with our position that the case for extended powers has not been made. Instead, it urges the Government to conduct a review of how the existing search powers have been implemented before commencing with any new powers. To me, that makes perfectly good sense.

In addition, these powers are so broad that they give teachers greater search powers than a police office would have under the stop and search provisions. For example, in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 the police powers to stop and search require,

“reasonable grounds for suspicion, before they may be exercised, that articles unlawfully obtained or possessed are being carried”.

Under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, stop and search must be based upon a reasonable belief,

“that incidents involving serious violence may take place”,

or that people are,

“carrying dangerous instruments or offensive weapons”.

We do not need to give teachers these additional powers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, if anything this will endanger the pupil/teacher relationship and put teachers at risk. In all these circumstances, we do not believe that the case has been made for opposite sex searches and searches without a witness. Therefore, we commend Amendment 17, as well as Amendment 28, which applies the same principles to FE colleges. I shall not rehearse the arguments, but we believe that the same ones apply.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I should like to know where the parents are in this. If I were the parent of a child who had been searched at school by a same or opposite sex—but particularly opposite sex—teacher, I think I would be mightily cross if I had not been informed. If I were a head teacher, I would hate to be on the receiving end of a parent’s anger at their child being searched. The witness should ideally be a parent. Has that been thought of in the Bill? Are parents excluded from this procedure? It is an issue that should be considered.