Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly in overall support of Amendment 427C, which has just been so well moved and spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman. I support the thrust of the Bill and what the Government are doing in these sections. I suppose, in a way, my remarks are directed not just towards the Minister but to her officials who will be listening. I would encourage them to engage with the thrust of this clause: if this is not necessarily the right wording, then something along these lines.

Those of us who have had the privilege of serving as Ministers in the Department for Education—I was going to say “served time”, but I do not quite mean that—know that these are difficult issues and have become more complicated. While we have heard a particular focus on a particular religious group, I know from previous conversations, in relation to both yeshivas and other religious institutions, that there is always a reason why there should be an exception, yet we also know that there will be those who seek to subvert any exception for the wrong reasons and it is the young people who will lose out.

What attracts me to this particular amendment is the fact that the local authority would be involved in terms not only of registration but of safeguarding assurance. I have some concern: we do not want to go back to 1944, when the world was very different—we are in 2025 and we know a lot more about different institutions—but, overall, as we know and have heard set out so powerfully, there are many communities who want both to comply with the law and to have their practices and customs respected. I hope that, even if it is not with this amendment, discussions behind the scenes before we get to the next stage of the Bill can find a way through so that these provisions are able to go through with the support of the whole House.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose Amendment 427C and the gist of the speeches and comments that we have heard so far. In doing so, I tread with great care, because I realise the history, the sensitivities, and the passion and commitment of those people whose lives would be involved. I do not pretend to be part of that community or to criticise it in any way. I am very proud that our country welcomes people of all faiths. I have always been a defender of faith schools and served for a while on the board of Church of England schools. As a Minister, I argued—sometimes with great difficulty within my own party—for continuing with faith schools. That is the background I come from, but I cannot support this amendment.

Over the past 12 months, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I have had the privilege of meeting young adults, some up to the age of 30 and some in their late teens, who have been students at yeshivas and educated within the system, living within the community. To be honest, they would not recognise the description that the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, has just given. They would not describe their own education and their own lives in that way. So I think our starting point should be that, as with any school or any community, there is a risk to children if we do not protect them in an orderly way and in the way that we should.

I am not opposed to this community being able to continue to educate in its own faith. Why would we not wish it to do that when we allow every other faith to do the same? But that is possible already. There are Haredi-registered schools where parents can send their children. It is not the case that if you close down the yeshivas, no one can have a school based on this faith. They can—and it is in the registered sector. What I have a problem with is the yeshiva. This is where I oppose Amendment 427C. My argument for doing so is very straightforward: if you are there at 8 am and you leave at 6 pm, it is a school. Whatever you do at home afterwards is not full-time education. If you are there at 8 am and leave at 6 pm, it does not in any way have that balance of education that I think we want for everyone.

I understand that it is difficult to get the balance right and decide where to draw the dividing lines. It is not easy and there is an element of compromise, but what I have heard from the people who have spoken so far is that we all welcome the Bill and we all want things to be regulated to protect children—but not this religion, not this faith, not this group. I cannot buy into that. Every child, including children in this community, deserves to be safeguarded and to have a broad and balanced education, which we are all signed up to. Unless you register it, I cannot see how this will happen.

Where I think the debate comes in is the nature of the registration and the consultation with the community. I urge the Minister, as I know she will— I suspect the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, spoke with her already on this—to try to get an understanding and, where possible, to fit our wish to regulate to protect children with the rights of the community to continue to educate its children in its faith. I would not want to stop that, but I would not want to support anything that excluded children from this community from being safeguarded in the way that children from other communities are.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley has just said. Perhaps I can say to my noble friend Lord Glasman that I am Lady Blackstone of Stoke Newington, so we share part of our region in our titles. I am familiar with the Haredi community and have been for very many years, and I admire a great deal of what they do, but I am concerned about what is happening to some of the boys in this community. I share the concern based not only on the meetings that I have had, with my noble friend Lady Morris, with some of the young men who have been through these institutions, but also on the very good charity Nahamu, which is concerned about the abuses of children that are taking place in these yeshivas in north London and, I think, Manchester as well. The trustees of Nahamu are proud members of the Orthodox Jewish community and they are concerned about what is happening to fellow Jewish young men and boys. I think that we should respect that concern in considering how we approach the whole issue of these yeshivas. I will speak at greater length in the next group about what I and my noble friend Lady Morris think we should do to make sure that these young men get the education they deserve, which they are not at the moment, and that their experience is properly safeguarded.

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[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My amendments are different from those of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and narrow in scope. I refer to my Amendments 429 and 433, which relate to independent schools and which I have brought forward in close association with my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood, who is, like me, a strong champion of independent schools.

I declare my interest as a former general secretary of the Independent Schools Council, which gives expression at national level for the collective views of its 1,423 member schools, where around 80% of the pupils in the independent sector are educated. Indeed, I have a double interest to declare, since I am the current president of the Independent Schools Association, which is one of the council’s constituent bodies and has nearly 800 members, many of them small in size and cherished by the local communities they serve so well—particularly by making provision for a wide range of special needs.

It is no secret that independent schools have their differences—deep differences—with the current Government, principally because of the imposition of VAT on school fees. However, I am glad to say that this Bill does not arouse deep anxiety among members of the Independent Schools Council. There is no clash of fundamentally opposed principles as over VAT. My two amendments seek to explore the possibilities of adjusting and modifying the Government’s proposals in a number of respects, rather than taking serious issue with them.

I should add that the points in question have been the subject of careful discussion between Department for Education officials and senior staff of the Independent Schools Council. The essential aim of my probing amendments is to secure on the public record a firm indication of the Government’s response to issues that have been raised in those discussions without seeking to contest overall policy.

Amendment 429, for example, accepts that the Secretary of State should have a power to require independent schools to “have regard”—the phrase used in the Bill—to guidance issued from time to time by the Department for Education. That is entirely appropriate in order to ensure, for example, that all children have equal safeguarding protection and equal education in moral and cultural development. The amendment recognises that, in such areas, it is reasonable for a Secretary of State to place duties on independent schools by way of guidance. However, would it not also be appropriate to ensure that a Secretary of State would not seek to limit a school’s independence, in the words of the amendment,

“with respect to admissions, the curriculum, or examinations”?

Those are the three vital components of independence in education, subject to qualifications specified in the amendment. It would surely not be unreasonable to expect that a Secretary of State who prescribes a new standard that independent schools must meet would lay before Parliament a statement asserting that those three vital components of independence would not be compromised. A similar statement would also be appropriate when subsequent guidance is issued.

As it stands, the Bill provides that any new standard to which independent schools would be required to adhere would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Thereafter, though, guidance issued under that standard would be legally binding on independent schools without any defined role for Parliament. My amendment would give Parliament a role. Members in both Houses would be able to bring forward motions on individual documents and pieces of guidance if they wished to do so. Effective power for Ministers needs to be balanced with effective protection for independent schools. Above all, no future Government should be able to limit their operational independence by expanding the purposes for which guidance can be used; that is what Amendment 429 would achieve.

Amendment 433 would address a single, specific problem that independent special schools frequently encounter. There are 128 such schools within the membership of the Independent Schools Council and another 600 that are not council members. Children admitted to these schools to receive support for one or more special needs are often found to have other needs as well—a point on which my noble friend Lady Barran touched. A child admitted to a school specialising in dyslexia, for example, may be found to have trouble learning to read as part of a wider disorder such as ADHD. Under the Bill, a special school that responds to these circumstances by making provision for additional need or needs will be required to make what is known as a material change application. It is that to which my noble friend Lady Barran made specific allusion.

The trouble is that, under Clause 39, such applications will need to be made before action is taken to meet a child’s extra needs. This is obviously impractical. A school that is deeply concerned to assist such pupils fully will want to make immediate arrangements to cover all of their needs. Amendment 433 would provide a simple remedy and set at rest the concern of schools finding themselves in these circumstances that they may be in breach of the law. It would give such schools two academic terms to make a material change application. This is a common-sense proposal that I hope the Government will consider. Plainly, some change to the Bill seems to be needed in order to avoid inflicting difficulty on independent special schools.

A misunderstanding could perhaps have arisen here. In some places, the Bill gives the impression that a school will need to make an application for material change only if it wishes to alter its main purpose. The Explanatory Notes accompanying the Bill refer to schools that are

“specially organised to make special educational provision”.

Does this mean that an independent special school will need to make a material change application only if it changes the type of SEND provision that it is specially organised to make? Perhaps the Minister could clarify this point when she responds to the issues that my two probing amendments have raised.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 432A and 434. I spoke about this issue in our debate on the previous set of amendments; I do not wish to rehearse that but, briefly, I wish to link to what the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, said in her contribution to the previous debate. She described a situation in which people are not co-operating with Ofsted and the inspectorate to make sure that unregulated schools can be regulated. Amendment 432A would, as my noble friend Lady Blackstone said, mean that action can be taken in relation to the people who own the building, which is usually clear, rather than the people who run the building, as you can see how that might be evaded.

Secondly, the other amendment would give Ofsted the power to search premises when it goes there, rather than being sent away and, presumably, having to get a warrant in order to go back and look round. I very much support those amendments and tag my comments on to those made in the previous debate.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, it is approaching 2 pm. I suggest that, unless the next speaker can finish his or her contribution by then, we take a short break to allow the House to prepare for Oral Questions; and that the debate on this amendment be adjourned until after Questions.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also support this group of amendments, particularly Amendment 435. I am delighted to hear the support for inspection of multi-academy trusts across the Committee. I have never understood a single argument against it; we have been discussing this, probably, for five to 10 years now, and I never been even a bit persuaded by any of the arguments against it. If we have got to the point where there is cross-party agreement on this—that it needs to be done—that is to be welcomed.

They are a very important part of our school system. We have tried, over 30 years of reform, to give freedoms to schools but hold them accountable through results, inspection and regulation. There is just no argument for leaving a multi-academy trust out of that picture. So, this is good.

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[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 436A. I declare an interest as a governor of King’s College London Mathematics School.

Clause 46 is intended to have important consequences for the staffing of schools. As it stands, it certainly will, but I am not sure that they will be the ones that the Government expected and intended. My concern here is with the likely impact of the Bill on the teaching of vocational and technical subjects in schools and in sixth form colleges that are academies.

I believe the current Government recognise vocational and technical subjects, which of course include computer science and engineering, as central to its skills agenda, and I am absolutely sure that the Minister does. However, this Bill threatens to undermine them, because it will make it far more difficult and far rarer for schools and many sixth form colleges to provide high-quality teaching by subject specialists in these disciplines.

Clause 46 seeks to ensure that teaching in all schools is carried out by qualified staff, meaning staff with a teaching qualification. If you ask the general public whether they think it is a good idea for teachers to be qualified, they will, obviously enough, be inclined to say yes. However, if you ask them whether they would prefer subjects to be taught by subject specialists, they will also say yes. If you tell them that quite often this is not the case, especially in maths and science, they are rightly pretty horrified. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who thinks that a PGCE is a great substitute for having a trained chef teach catering or an IT expert deliver computer science. In an ideal world this would not be an either/or, but that is not the world we live in.

It is quite often, fortunately, possible to find highly qualified professionals who are willing and interested in part-time teaching and happy to undertake some practical, classroom-related training. But these people are mostly not interested in becoming full-time, school-based teachers, or, therefore, in undertaking an extensive teacher-training programme to gain certification that simply does not make sense for them in terms of time, cost or their future careers. The more in demand their expertise is in the labour market, and therefore the higher its priority in any skills agenda, the more this is the case. For example, finding good people to teach computer science is a nightmare, with huge gaps in availability across the country. Do we really want to make it more so?

Back in 2011, I undertook a review of vocational education for the Government, and at that time, the school system was infested with a large number of low-level supposedly vocational qualifications that were very easy to pass and counted as GCSE equivalents. These have now gone, but the relevant point here is how they were taught. Not only was their content often minimal and bizarrely paper-based, but in schools they were being taught to an overwhelming extent by people with no expertise or experience whatever in the area supposedly covered. Schools just drafted in whichever teacher had some spare time in their timetable or was volunteered for the job by their head of department, so you really might find a games teacher in front of a tourism class or an English teacher delivering health and social care. In fact, you very often did. When I asked why they could not at least bring in a vocational expert, the schools would explain to me that they could not, because there had to be a qualified teacher in the classroom all the time, at double the cost. That was not 100% true even then, but schools were just not going to take the risk.

Many noble Lords have argued strongly in the recent past for the pre-16 school curriculum to become less academically focused, and government policy for 16 to 19 year-olds includes a strong focus on T-levels. I am very aware of the controversy surrounding the delisting of some existing qualifications, including some BTECs, but I do not think I have heard a single person in this House, or indeed anywhere, argue that there should not be any post-16 courses that are technical and vocational in focus. But what is the point in spending huge amounts developing qualifications with employer input and then making it hugely unlikely that, in large numbers of our schools, anyone with direct experience of the occupations involved will be able to teach the students?

FE colleges are, and for the foreseeable future will remain, the most important providers of vocational and technical courses. This clause does not apply to them, but they are not and should not be the only providers in this area, not least because FE colleges have been financially squeezed and penalised compared with schools for many years and are finding it very hard to pay competitive salaries. I am particularly concerned about sixth-form colleges which are also academies. These institutions are often really excellent, the main destination for all 16 to 19 year-olds in their area, and offer a wide range of vocational and technical options.

When this Bill was first published, I tabled a couple of Written Questions trying to clarify the exact position of 16 to 19 academies, including such sixth-form colleges. I cannot say I was terribly reassured by the answers, which seemed to have been drafted in order to avoid giving me any very clear reply. The Minister at the Department for Education informed me that QTS

“has never been a requirement for further education”,

which I already knew and had not actually asked about. She said that Clause 46

“will apply to primary and secondary state funded schools”,

but I am afraid that the explanation of what was a school carefully said that the schools included various types of institutions and did not refer to the 16 to 19 group at all. Critically, she also said that there would be some limited exemptions set out in regulations to provide

“flexibility to employ individuals with the specialist skills and experience to support the needs of their pupils”.

That last bit sounds very encouraging and very nice but, as far as I know, we have not been given any clear indication of what those exemptions are going to be.

My experience—this is why I wanted to give some history from the vocational education review—is that schools, very reasonably and very sensibly, play safe. They are pretty paranoid, they do not have the time and energy to engage with detailed and opaque regulations, and they are really not going to take the risk that their interpretation of regulations is different from the one that DfE civil servants or Ofsted inspectors will adopt.

At Second Reading, there was some indication that university technical colleges and studio schools might be treated differently, recognising their specialist nature, but there is only a limited number of these and they are each, by design, focused and specialised. So I am worried that the current provision in the Bill will drive technical and vocational expertise out of a large section of our education system and I cannot find any evidence to suggest that this price is worth paying for the supposed defect of unqualified teachers in these classrooms.

I fully recognise that the change in QTS requirements is something to which the Government are fully committed and my amendment is therefore a probing amendment. It focuses the new requirements on national curriculum subjects. That includes any national curriculum subject being taught post 16, not just in classrooms pre 16. National curriculum subjects will normally be taught by full-time staff who are making teaching their career. My amendment would free up the vocational and technical curriculum, and also music and sport, in a way that is very simple and easy for institutions to understand and act on.

I am confident that the Government recognise the need for some flexibilities, so that schools can hire individuals with specialist skills, and it must surely be preferable to organise these flexibilities in a way that does not have DfE spending months and months drawing up and tabling complex regulations. I hope that I might be able to discuss with the Minister whether and how such flexibility might be protected. In the meantime, I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to intervene in this debate, because I find it quite difficult. I have some sympathy with the amendment that has just been moved, but my position is that teachers should have qualified teacher status. I have not got involved in the fringes of the debate because I think it is genuinely difficult to draw dividing lines. If I have to come down on one side or the other, I come down on the side of people having qualified teacher status. I strongly disapproved of the actions of the previous Government in taking away that requirement for either teachers in academies or for all teachers, I cannot recall.

I have always had sympathy with that range of subjects where, in my heart, I know that many people without QTS—instructor status or whatever—but with that practical experience could motivate children and deliver the curriculum, possibly to a higher standard and more effectively than other teachers. I know from experience as a teacher that very often what happens is that the teacher who is not a teacher of those subjects but who has qualified teacher status ends up teaching. I have sympathy with that and very much hope that, in the understanding that I think the Government have expressed, and in their promise to bring forward further information, some flexibility can be brought back around this arrangement of subjects. I am not talking about exceptions, because I do not want to go down that route; I am talking about an acknowledgement that we do not want to waste the talents of people who have got something to offer to our children. It would be a move that I would very much welcome.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendments 436B, 436C, 437 and 437A. Before I became a union leader, doing the work of the devil, according to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I was a teacher. I worked in university departments of education for over 10 years in York, Liverpool and London, and a big part of that job was to give teachers initial teacher training at MA level and at PhD and research level. I know that no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers and that the value of that training was essential.

It is not enough that teachers just have very good subject knowledge. They also need to understand professional concerns such as effective pedagogy. They need to learn about behaviour and safeguarding. In fact, initial teacher training is now completely transformed. The majority of it takes place in schools. There are various routes into QTS. It is much easier to work towards QTS while you are training or while you are a classroom assistant. Various Governments over a period of years have made the routes into initial teacher training and qualified teacher status much better. It is an important professional qualification which underpins not only the status of the profession but the quality of the education which children are getting.

I would also add that this is a social justice issue, I think, because the fact is that the children who most need teachers who are qualified in the subjects they are teaching are, at the moment, the least likely to get them. DfE evidence to the STRB in 2025 shows clearly that pupils in schools with the highest percentage of pupil premium are more likely than other pupils to be taught by unqualified teachers and non-specialists. They receive a narrower curriculum than other pupils, are less likely to be offered physics as a subject option, and are more likely to be taught by unqualified teachers and teachers teaching outside of their subject area. That is why, over the course of last year, I established and chaired the independent Teaching Commission, whose report, Shaping the Future of Teaching, examines the causes of the teacher supply crisis, which has been two decades in the making—in particular, its effects on pupils whose start in life is disadvantaged, who most need qualified teachers to compensate for the 40% disadvantage gap that is created by poverty before they start school.