Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to ask a question on this set of amendments on registers. I have not spoken before, but I am absolutely supportive of the Bill; it is long overdue and I very much welcome it. But in the spirit of wanting to do this as practicably as possible, we need to make sure that we are not being too onerous on parents and local authorities in this area, and that what we do makes sense. In respect of what has just been said, if I am right, parents just have to provide information under new Section 436C(1), not new Section 436C(2), which is a much longer list. In fairness, it says:
“To the extent that the local authority has the information or can reasonably obtain it”,
so I am not overly worried about that.
I do not think that the questions being asked are unreasonable, as long as the list does not grow and we are firm with local authorities about not sneaking in extra questions that are not required, but—I am not sure where this is in the Bill—how often does this have to be updated by parents? When educating your child, if for some reason you wish to do an area of learning next month and you approach somebody new to do that—maybe for one hour a week—would you have to notify in advance, would you do an annual review or whatever? We need to be really clear around that area, as a sign of good faith that we are not deliberately trying to make this onerous. There should not be some kind of checking that means you can never make a mistake. I am just using this as an example for the Minister because, if we are not careful, the rules could be misinterpreted and this could get more cumbersome than we intended. Other than that, I do not think that new Section 436C(1) is unreasonable or time consuming, as long as it is interpreted in the way that was intended.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend was a most distinguished Secretary of State for Education, and I am very grateful to her for intervening in this debate. To answer her questions directly, she said that she was focusing only on new Section 436C(1), which is indeed the subsection that I particularly drew to your Lordships’ attention in covering paragraph (e). I have to disagree with my noble friend saying that it is okay; I do not think it is okay at all.
My noble friend asked what the onward obligation is to provide further information when, let us say, an extra teacher or the like is brought in. The answer according to the Bill is that there is a duty to inform the register every time, within 15 days, so that is the onward responsibility.
My noble friend is quite right that new Section 436C(2) refers to the local authority, not the parents. I pointed it out because there is an enormous number of requirements on the local authority in the registration process; they actually number 27. That is an illustration of how complicated the Bill has become and how unworkable it is in its present state.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken in Committee, so I declare my interest as chair of and adviser to the Birmingham Education Partnership.
It is 25 years ago, when the Minister and I were in the Department for Education, that we were discussing the rollout of technology in early years. It just was not part of school life; it was not an implement that was used. The thing we were most worried about then, which underpinned every speech I made, was that it should be an innovation that became available to all and was not limited by social class, the family you are born into or how much money you had in your pocket. I never thought that, a quarter of a century later, the debate would be about the damage that that area of technology development has brought to schools, but we must remember that that does not take away from the vision, the hope and the aspiration we saw in this technology a quarter of a century ago.
However, we are clearly not in a place where we want to be. I cannot say anything to counter the evidence that the noble Lord, Lord Nash—indeed, everybody who has spoken—gave about the impact of social media on young minds. It is just terrible. As an adult, I feel responsibility that it has happened and that we moved too slowly to do anything about it. If some of us come to the conclusion that we do not want to ban smartphones in schools, it should not be a political dividing line; we are actually all on the same side. We have at least got to that point, but there is a genuine debate to be had about how we take it forward to protect our children so that they have the advantages that technology can bring while saving them from the risks and the bad things that it can do.
I think that there is a difference between smartphones and social media that has not been clear in this debate, and I am not sure about the definition of smartphones at the end of the proposed new clause. It says that a smartphone is something
“whose main purpose is not the support of learning or study”;
I do not know what that means. A smartphone enables learning and study and good things in life, and it allows social media to reach people that it should not be reaching. The definition is quite difficult to follow.
My main problem is that the smartphone is a bit like the atom bomb; you cannot uninvent it. It is entrenched in our society. There are things that as adults we cannot now do unless we have a smartphone, and every single week, month and year, government and everybody else push us as adults to use smartphones. That is what AI is about. All the advantages that are going to come through AI are connected to smartphones, so whether we like it or not, we have gone too far down the road. For adults, smartphones are here to stay. I do not see how abolishing them in schools allows teachers and educationists in wider civic society to train and help young people come to terms with the adult world in which they are going to live. If smartphones are banned in schools, if they cannot be used, how can we expect young people to be competent and confident adult users of smartphones and to cope with social media? It would be like saying, “We’re not going to teach you to swim, but by the time you get to an adult, we’re going to let you live by the side of a lake”. It is just nonsense. We have got to help children to come to terms with smartphones, and that is why I thought that the speech made by my noble friend Lord Knight was powerful.
I describe myself as being on a bit of a journey. I am a bit of a floating voter on smartphones in schools, but when I am honest with myself, I know that the reason that I nearly come down on the side of banning them in schools is that I am panicking that we are not doing anything else. I almost reach out for anything—at least we could ban them in schools; at least we could protect children between 9 am and 4 pm; at least we could protect them between five and 18. To be honest, that is not enough. If there is this problem, and we all seem to have signed up to the idea that it is a problem, it needs more from us as policymakers than to, yet again, say it is the responsibility of schools. Reducing teenage pregnancy was the responsibility of schools. Healthy eating was the responsibility of schools. Being better citizens was the responsibility of schools. Every time we have a problem that goes through society and we are not quite sure how to deal with it, we put it on the curriculum—it is the responsibility of schools.
I do not say that schools have not got a responsibility—they hold the major responsibility because they are going to be teaching media literacy—but they are not the only ones who have it. If we are serious, adults, parents, government and civic society need to get together with schools and educators to try to solve this problem. It is not sensible to say that all we can do in this Bill is go for schools. That would make a bad policy. When it does not work, we cannot say, “Yes, that’s all we could do in that Bill”. That would be poor policymaking. I hesitate to say that government has got to look at it in the round and do something more than it has, because that is just time, and we have known about this problem for 10 years at least and we have not moved fast enough. I end up probably coming down on the side of my noble friend Lord Knight and saying that there are things that need to be done in schools that mean we ought to keep smartphones in schools.
I have some specific questions on that. The proposed new clause in Amendment 458 would ban smartphones, except in two or three circumstances. My noble friend Lord Knight then puts down an amendment, which is great, excepting another circumstance. We know what is going to happen: people will be putting forward amendments as to why, in a particular case, smartphones should not be banned in schools, and eventually it will all be a muddle and we will have to start again. In truth, you cannot ban smartphones in schools. There will always be reasons why you will need to use them, so you end up coming down on the side of saying that we have got to use them well and we have got to support young people.
My last point is, how do you enforce it? It is in the law. If the governing body—that is the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to tell the truth—permits smartphones in schools, who enforces it? Do you get the police in? Do you get parents to report it? Do you get kids to report that they have been allowed to have a smartphone in school? At the moment, it is heads who choose, along with their governing body and staff and the wider school community, not to have smartphones in schools. They own that. It is their law. They have gone through the preparation, talked it through and arrived at a decision, and that makes sense. I may just not be seeing the rationale, but I worry that enforcement, when it is in primary legislation, will be not a great thing for schools. I am coming down on the side of not banning them, but my great worry is that it is just another couple of months passed where the real dangers that were outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and others have not been addressed in this House or elsewhere.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I think she spoke for many of us on the challenge of edtech: how our hopes that this would be a transformational technology have now changed emphatically, and how we now find ourselves in a place we really did not intend to be.
I would like to say a word about Amendment 183CA, from my noble friend Lady Penn, the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Cass. My noble friend Lady Shephard put it well: our children do need respite, and a school is a wonderful place to be spared that kind of respite. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, spoke well about the harsh impact on education.
However, it is Amendment 177 that I primarily want to address. For that reason, I see Amendment 183CA as a stepping stone to getting rid of mobile phones from the lives of under-16s altogether at some stage; that is what I will address my comments to. I do this as a former Health Minister and I declare my interest as a trustee of the Royal Society for Public Health.
The neurobiological evidence of the harms of social media on children is not ambiguous any more. It is irrefutable, as it is, for instance, for tobacco. We can see the causes and the correlations. One three-year longitudinal study published two years ago found that adolescents who habitually checked social media showed “distinct neurodevelopmental trajectories” in brain regions governing social reward and punishment, such as the amygdala, the ventral striatum, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In other words, social media exploits the dopamine pathways involved in addiction, creating cycles that exploit the neurochemical pathways that determine their actions.
I personally struggle with addiction. I find it extremely tough. Our children’s plastic brains are just not in a shape to be able to survive that struggle. This challenge is not a teenage rebellion or some kind of moral panic. It is a systematic neurological manipulation by megacompanies that know exactly what they are doing.
Social media is a major driver of the mental health crisis that this country faces, and the consequences are contributing to the overwhelming of our NHS. In 2024-25, NHS mental health services supported 800,012 under-18s, an increase of nearly 300,000 since the NHS long-term plan first started. I will not go into the figures in detail, but I assure the Chamber that this is not a question of “snowflakery” or wokery; it is a genuine public health emergency, and the problem is not going away.
I say this with some delicacy. I am one of the few Peers in this House who has children of this age. Mine are 18, 15, 13 and 10. In answer to my noble friend Lady Shephard, they are all at different schools, which is a logistical problem for me. None of the schools is winning this battle. In fact, I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that, each year, I have seen this problem get worse. You can feel the algorithms getting more effective and having more of a grip on your children’s lives.
Each year, children spend more hours on the phone. The communal social pressure each year is more intense. Mental health, and self-harming among friends in schools, gets worse. There is more and more disgusting pornographic filth available to young children. Statistically, there are more predators, activated by the addictive escalator of increasingly violent porn, seeking meet-ups with my children. There are more frustrated parents each year watching their children’s attention and well-being deteriorate. The kids simply are not mature enough to handle these toxic tools and this content—and this is even before AI gets to work on their brains with superpowered social algorithms that screw with their heads. It is going to get worse and worse.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have had the privilege this afternoon of listening to some very powerful and well-informed speeches, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I shall speak to Amendment 458 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and to Amendment 177, which I was very pleased to co-sign with my noble friend Lord Nash. I note the widespread support evidenced by the popularity of my noble friend Lady Penn’s Amendments 183CA and 183CB, which prevented me from adding my name to those as well, which is testament to the cross-party recognition of this important issue.
Noble Lords across the House have witnessed first-hand the dedication of teachers, parents and school leaders, who work tirelessly to create environments where our children can thrive. Today, I speak to an issue that threatens to undermine their best efforts. Amendment 458 would require schools to implement comprehensive smartphone bans during the school day, with carefully considered practical flexibilities for children who need smartphones to access their medical devices—for example, for diabetes—for boarding or residential schools and for sixth forms. This is not about a blanket prohibition without thought; it is about creating the conditions that are necessary for our children to succeed academically, socially and emotionally.
I note Amendment 458A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, and would be delighted to talk to him after this debate in a bit more detail, but I also note the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Spielman about the benefits of using a school-owned device in these cases, and actually did not hear any examples that could not be done on a desktop or a tablet.
There is genuine urgency to address the profound impacts of smartphones on the health and well-being of our children. I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the evidence is mixed. I think one needs to look very carefully, and I thank my noble friend Lady Jenkin for this advice when I sent her an article suggesting that the evidence was mixed. She pointed out who had funded the researchers who were writing the article. We have to be scrupulously careful about both the scale of the sample size in some of these studies and who is funding them.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, it is crucial to take both the personal and professional experience into account when designing policy. The desire for change, including, perhaps most importantly, as we have heard this afternoon, from children themselves, is very clear. We have to reset the social norms around smartphone use among young people before we lose another generation to screens.
The Government have argued that existing guidance on phone use in schools is sufficient, pointing to the fact that every school has a policy. But speaking as someone who was part of the previous Government that created many drafts of that guidance—as the Minister can imagine—perhaps we are uniquely positioned to acknowledge that, while it may have been the right place to start, it has proven insufficient. Good intentions without enforcement mechanisms do not protect our children from the sophisticated algorithms designed to capture their attention. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, we need to move with speed and clarity. Some have questioned—
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
That point has been raised by a number of Members, so perhaps I might ask the Minister, because I am genuinely unclear what the thinking is. I know it is not that no harm happens to children using smartphones outside of school. You do not know who is in the bedroom with them; you do not know who they are talking to. I think that is our starting point. I am not clear from those who are supporting this amendment whether they are saying at least they will have those hours a day when they will not be subject to smartphones or social media. I do not know whether that is sufficient, or whether there are further plans in those Members’ minds as to how to cope with the rest of the week. My view is that that is where most of the damage happens: outside school, not inside school.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness is right that a smartphone amendment on its own is not sufficient. As the Minister said a couple of times on previous days in Committee, I will be coming to that later. I will try to address the noble Baroness’s points. If I have not done so by the end of my speech, I ask her to please intervene again.
Some have questioned why we favour freedom and discretion for school leaders in areas such as curriculum and staffing yet seek to mandate action on smartphones. The answer lies in a couple of areas. The first is about accountability. When school leaders make decisions about teacher pay, qualifications or curriculum, they are held accountable through Ofsted inspections, public examination results and parental choice. The consequences of their decisions are measurable and visible. Smartphone policies operate in an entirely different landscape. Here, schools face external actors: powerful social media companies with business models that are predicated on capturing and monetising our children’s attention. These companies employ teams of neuroscientists and behavioural psychologists to create algorithms designed specifically to keep our children scrolling, clicking and consuming content that ranges from the merely distracting to the genuinely harmful. We can all think of cases that, tragically, have been fatal.
The facts surrounding smartphone usage among children paint a sobering picture. A quarter of the UK’s three and four year-olds now own a smartphone—these are toddlers whose cognitive development is being shaped by screens before they can properly read. This figure rises to four in five children by the end of primary school. We are witnessing the digitisation of childhood itself. The emerging evidence linking smartphones and social media to the explosion in mental health problems among young people cannot be ignored. Research demonstrates that the average 12 year-old spends 21 hours a week on their smartphone, which is equivalent to a part-time job. One in four children and young people uses their devices in ways that are consistent with behavioural addiction.
Beyond mere time-wasting, smartphones fundamentally disrupt sleep patterns and concentration, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords. Applications are deliberately designed for addiction, through sophisticated dopamine triggers, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. This pattern appears consistently across western nations, with research showing that earlier smartphone acquisition correlates strongly with poorer adult mental health outcomes, particularly affecting girls.
The academic evidence is equally compelling. The OECD data reveals that two-thirds of 15 year-olds, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, report phone distractions during their mathematics lessons, with distracted students performing three-quarters of a year behind their peers. Even brief non-academic phone use can require 20 minutes for students to refocus on learning. We are not talking about minor inconveniences. We are witnessing a systematic undermining of educational achievement.
Experimental research has moved beyond correlation to establish causation. Studies where students are randomly assigned different conditions—one of which I will send to my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Knight—prove that simply having a smartphone in one’s bag, jacket or desk reduces attention capacity and cognitive performance. Students with device access during lessons achieve measurably poorer results because the very presence of these devices is profoundly distracting.
Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness asks precisely some of the questions that the early adopter scheme will enable us to consider. I agree that teachers should not be extending their day to do this. Schools will find different ways to think about the staffing of these clubs, which we can look at in the early adopter scheme, and the accommodation in which to do it. I do not necessarily agree that it would not be appropriate to use a classroom; some schools might think that is the best way of doing it. There is the flexibility, if necessary, to use premises close to the school if that is more appropriate. However, those are very legitimate questions. The early adopter scheme will help us iron them out and find the best practice that I am sure schools will develop.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
I want to follow up one of the questions that has already been put to my noble friend. I was very pleased to hear the number of SEN schools that are part of the project. Has the Minister had talks with transport authorities about getting children with SEN to their school earlier, in time to have the meal? We all know that those transport arrangements can go awry for all sorts of reasons; if talks are not being held, this might add extra complexity that could jeopardise the system.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point, which links to the point about children with turbulent lifestyles and how they can get to school on time. I will certainly take it back to my honourable friend Minister Morgan, to think about in the development of this. As he is very good at this sort of stuff, I am sure he has already thought about it, but I will make sure that he has.
Qualifications Reform Review
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
I also welcome the Statement and thank the Minister for the way in which she has carried out this review. It has been open- minded and consultative, and I know that not only colleagues in the House but, beyond that, those across the sector have appreciated it. That gives us a very good foundation on which to work, so I thank her for that.
I take the point about the 2027 date, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised. I absolutely see the rationale for rolling it into the curriculum review, so that they are not seen as separate and competing but part of a whole. That is just one of those things, and it is manageable.
I want to raise two points, if the Minister could respond to them. First, of course, we are talking about qualifications and learning in an area that is never set in stone. I seek some reassurance that, as we move forward and review the qualifications, we do not slip into looking only at content but that we always bear in mind that we are looking for a variety of teaching and learning styles to give children real choice over what they want to do.
The second point is about work experience. I take the point about the importance of work experience for T-levels, but they are not the only qualification for which it is important. It is important for BTECs, and, as the Government said, they hope it will be important for key stage 4 as well. Does the Minister have any reflections, or might she be able to come back to us in the future to let us know how we can manage that interface between the world of work and the world of education, so that all children get equal access and opportunities to do work experience where it is appropriate?
Higher Education Reform
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, it is difficult to be pleased that fees will have to be raised, but I acknowledge the parlous state that HE finds itself in, and I welcome that the Government have taken as much early action as they can to try to make the situation better.
I will put just two points to the Minister. First, can she clarify what I think I just heard in response to a previous question, that for students who are already at university—that is, not becoming first-year students from the start of the next academic year—whether they are charged the increased fees may vary from university to university depending on the contract? If I heard that correctly, when might that be announced, so that we have certainty as to what will happen for the majority of students in September?
Secondly, I very much welcome what the Minister said about looking to do more to widen participation. In the work that she and the department carry out on that, will she have a look at the statistics for students from less advantaged backgrounds who are already at university to see what the dropout rate is? I know that it has been higher than for other groups. One challenge is getting those young people to university, but if they then drop out, we have not achieved a great deal. I would be grateful if she could confirm that that could be part of the considerations.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank my noble friend and wholly agree with her. It has been a difficult decision to ask students to pay more to safeguard the future of higher education, but I think it was the right decision. On the point about students who are already there, yes, it is the case that the increase in tuition fees will cover students who are already studying. In some ways it is not for the Government to clarify the position. Higher education institutions are autonomous and will need to be clear with their students about the impact on them of the increase in fees. I will correct myself if I am wrong but for most, the assumption would be that the increase in tuition fees will go ahead in the way we have described. My noble friend is right that there is a big differential in those who drop out of university, with more disadvantaged students being more likely to drop out, less likely to continue and less likely to have good outcomes at the end of their time at university. As well as widening access, that is another area where we want to make progress with the sector.
Special Needs Schools
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, on bringing this topic to our attention and on her speech. I was lucky enough to hear her maiden speech some weeks ago, when she addressed this issue. There is no better advocate for not just speaking about this issue but actually doing something about it, which is quite an important extra. I am grateful that we have had the opportunity to discuss this today. I say to my noble friend the Minister that I hope the Government may provide time, during the department’s consideration of the future of SEN policy, for us to have further debates and make further contributions.
The noble Baroness talked a lot about specialist colleges. They are important, because she is absolutely right that the alternative to that is staying at home. It is not a poor or inadequate school that gets you out of the house. We have let down younger adults with disabilities for many years. It is as though we assume that life stops when they reach the end of compulsory schooling, so I appreciate that point.
However, I want to start on two more positive points. There has been a transformation in special schools over the past 20 to 30 years. It is worth making note of that because it shows that progress can be made. In my lifetime, the law described this group of people as ineducable; that is what it said in the Education Act. Now, when we go to special schools or specialist colleges, we see young boys and girls and young men and women doing what anybody in any school does: working hard, hoping for better things, playing with their friends, sharing things with their teachers and family, and wanting to get on and be part of society. We have made improvements. What has changed most of all is our understanding of what can be achieved. It is society; it is education; it is politicians; it is all of us who have put the lid on the achievements of this group in the past. At least now when we see some excellent special schools and specialist colleges, we see that there can be change, but there is a lot more to be done as well.
There is a second area where I want to point out good things that I have always taken from this sector. When you go into a special school, you try to work out what is different from a mainstream school. To me, it is something like this: the teachers are very well trained in their specialism; they know what they are talking about and are practised in delivering that. When you look around the staff, you see that it is not just teachers but physiotherapists, play leaders and assistants; it is people with a range of professional skills trying to meet the needs of the child. They invariably have close links with parents. Special schools are interesting in that social class does not matter; social class does not choose the children who attend, so you often get socially mixed schools. Each child has a programme tailored to meet their needs, and there are partnerships beyond the school. Teachers who know their subject and can deliver it, working with a range of other professionals so that a range of needs can be met; precious and close links with parents; and working with a community that wants to provide support—that it is a definition of what we should have in every school, special or mainstream.
When I was a Minister in the education department, a lot of the work we did on classroom assistance, extra administrative help for schools and using the school as a location for people with other skills was modelled on the best of special schools, so they have a lot to teach all the other schools in mainstream education.
However, there is no doubt that these are troubled times for the whole SEN sector, and there will be opportunities to discuss that. There are a number of policy challenges in respect of special schools which I ask the Minister to reflect on. First, I welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement at the Labour Party conference about level 2 apprenticeships—that will help this group—but for all the good that goes on in special schools, the assessment and qualifications framework in which they are asked to work does not meet their needs. I chair the Public Services Committee, which has recently produced a report on the transition from education to work for young people with disabilities. The story is one of doing well in schools and being blocked from thereon in. Part of that is expectations, but a lot of it is the qualifications for which they are encouraged to study not being fit for purpose in moving them on to the next stage of their lives.
I have two more points to make. I have met a lot of people with special needs children who think we ought not to have special schools at all and that the inclusion debate ought to be such that every child’s needs can be met in mainstream community schools. It is not a view I take, but we should acknowledge that that debate across the sector about where all children with special needs are taught is a live one, and we have to work it out. To my mind, the easy decisions are that those with needs that cannot be met in mainstream schools should be in special schools and that if they can be included in mainstream schools and their parents want it, every effort ought to be made to remove any barriers that may exist, and that may be something as little as physical obstacles.
It is the ones in between who are at the borders, where there is no agreement on whether special schools or mainstream schools would be appropriate. That is where the debate is difficult—it is about the numbers of people with EHC plans who are trying to get to special schools, when the authorities think that their needs might be met in mainstream education; that is where the difficulties lie, and where we let down a lot of children. What I am absolutely sure about is that no one should have to want a special school because of a poor mainstream school that they are trying to turn their back on. It should be because the child needs the special school, not because we have no mainstream schools that are catering as well as they can for special needs children.
We have not got this right, and it is not easy. If you look across the 24,000 schools making up our school system, we have a very small number of special schools. Most of them are mainstream schools. We have never been sure what the role of the special schools should be in the whole education system—but all the talent, all the highly qualified teachers and all the experience are in the special schools. What we have always tried to do is to find a way of using their expertise across all schools to benefit all children with special needs. Of all the solutions that we have come up with over the years, whether it be collocating special schools on the same campus as mainstream schools, having units in mainstream schools without specialism or having teachers who move from one school to another, I have seen excellent examples. But nowhere do I see a cohesive and coherent plan about how the offer from special schools sits easily in the whole education system so that we can meet the needs of those who have needs that can be met in special schools and those who do not, as well as the many in between who just want the best of both.
King’s Speech
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to welcome my noble friend Lady Smith to our Bench and to say how pleased I am that I will be working with her again. It is more years than I would like to count since that last happened, but I am very pleased with the skills and experience she brings with her and optimistic about what she will contribute. I have got to know the Minister sitting next to her, my noble friend Lady Merron, better almost in the Lords than in the Commons. I congratulate her on her appointment and look forward to hearing about the changes that she is going to make.
I want to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I feel that I have spent a lot of my life over the last few years debating education with her in this Chamber on our opposite Benches. We have agreed quite a bit but when we have not, I have never doubted the noble Baroness’s commitment to children or their education for a better future. I thank her for the way in which she conducted herself in the role and look forward to further debates. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, as well and give my best wishes to her for her future.
This is a huge debate today and it is a huge King’s Speech, so I want to make a few comments on the schools aspect of this work. Two weeks in, I have nothing to complain about yet, so this is very good. I am very used to making speeches criticising Governments, so I am at a bit of a loss as to what to say. By way of transition, I want to welcome some things but ask some questions about what we might expect in future.
It seems to me that the early announcements fall into two groups. One is about trying to deal quickly with the immediate challenges facing schools; the second is to sow some seeds for more substantial change in the future. One of the main points I want to make is that there is a contradiction in describing what is happening in schools at the moment. I worry that there is a feeling within government broadly, and among society, that all is quite well in schools and not much needs to be done. If that is true, they will go to the bottom of the Government’s list of priorities and I do not want that to happen.
I do not think there is a crisis in schools; I think that schools are doing well and are better than they have ever been, partly because there have been 30 years of continuity in pedagogy and policy on the key issues of literacy and numeracy. When I go into schools, they are safe places. Children seem happy and many of them do well, although we are all aware of the gaps. But I am very conscious that the social context in which schools are working means that there is paddling below the surface.
Although children are doing well, there is a price to be paid in the system. That price is being paid by some vulnerable children who are pushed in the wrong direction, and by the workforce, to whom we owe a great deal because they keep the system going. If we are not careful, they will not be able to do that for much longer. I never want to use the language of “schools in crisis”, because I do not believe that is the case. They need attention, resources and ministerial interest, just as much as some of our public services that have been described as being in crisis. I am sure the Minister will appreciate that, and I would welcome some comments. So I welcome breakfast clubs, mental health checks and the 6,500 extra teachers as things that can happen now.
Will the Minister say something about special educational needs and disabilities—on both the immediate action needed, because it is difficult, and sowing seeds for long-term change? I have not heard a great deal yet on how we can support local authorities and schools to deal with the immediate problems of SEND. Some words on that might be welcome.
I want to raise a couple of issues on the seeds that have been sown for long-term change. I very much welcome the curriculum review announced today. My worry is that we have to decide whether we want a big or a little curriculum change. If we say that we just want more arts, creativity and life skills, I cannot see how that fits in to the existing curriculum model.
We also talk about evolution, not revolution. Our politics have never been revolutionary; they have always been evolutionary. But I worry that we will say to teachers, “You have to do art; you have to do this, that and the other”, without fundamentally looking at the curriculum model we have and seeing if that needs to be changed. I hope that the review has permission to say what it thinks needs doing and is not limited by the phrase “evolutionary, not revolutionary”.
My last point is on assessment. If I heard it right—I heard it this morning and have not read it, so I may be wrong—assurances have been given about the future of GCSEs, A-levels and T-levels. I wonder how that can happen when we have not done the curriculum review, because assessment follows curriculum. However, no comparable assurance has been given about BTECs. If we go into this review with a cast-iron guarantee that nothing will happen to T-levels, GCSEs and A-levels, but BTECs are still floating around, we will not solve the assessment problem we face. Maybe some assurances could be given on that.
On the whole, I am very excited about the optimism and energy, and I look forward to working with the team in the future.