Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In relation to the noble Baroness’s question about free school meals, children who are eligible for free school meals will continue to receive free school meals in the setting that they attend, if it is not their normal school, and my understanding is that they will get a voucher or equivalent in the event that they have any days at home. The noble Baroness raised the issue of making sure that there is an adequate safeguarding assessment of any alternative sites. Our experience from the first 52 schools where this has happened is that, in the vast majority of cases, alternative sites have been other schools, which obviously makes that much more straightforward. However, the noble Baroness raises a good point in relation to that, and obviously we are particularly concerned about vulnerable children and children with special educational needs.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister points out the responsibility of the responsible bodies with respect to the buildings but also says how difficult this is for some responsible bodies. Some are as small as three schools in one multi-academy trust. Can the Minister be clear about the expectations on these responsible bodies for the monitoring as well as the maintenance of buildings, particularly at the strategic level? The Minister has just referred to a survey that the department itself carries out over a number of years, and I am now left unclear as to who is responsible for the long-term monitoring of potentially serious defects in school property.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On the first part of the noble Baroness’s question, we set out the expectations for responsible bodies. I think it is safe to say that the local authorities are pretty clear what their responsibilities are. In relation to academy trusts, those responsibilities are set out in the Academy Trust Handbook. We actually strengthened, clarified and reinforced the language around that before we knew about the three schools; we did that earlier in the summer with a new updated version. This was just to make sure—reflecting the noble Baroness’s point—that there was absolutely no doubt about the practical steps that should reasonably be expected for responsible bodies to take.

I am glad of the opportunity to say that our condition data collection survey, which I referred to, is not in any way a blurring of the lines of responsibility between responsible bodies and the department. However, it allows us both to plan the quantum of funding that we need to give to those responsible bodies to maintain their buildings and to identify areas where there is greater deterioration or less. So we have a broad overview of the school estate, but that should not blur any lines in relation to responsibility.

Water Safety (Curriculum) Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I congratulate him not only on bringing the Bill forward but on his long history of work in this field. This comes as yet another attempt to improve our performance in this area, and it is very welcome.

I also agree with everything the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said; I will emphasise some of the points she raised. This is one of the issues that, strangely, we all agree on; I suspect that no one will say that children do not need to swim or to know about water safety. We all want to do better, and we all know that we are not doing as well as we can. Those of us in the Chamber today very often find ourselves in other education debates where there is a difference of opinion on pedagogy, philosophy or perception, but that does not exist here; we are all on the same side. Given that, you would think that we would solve the problem collectively. It is one of those strange cases where, although we are all on the same side, and Governments of all persuasions, I think, have tried to do things, there is still a problem.

I pay tribute to what the Government have done, having looked at the action they have taken in recent years. They have made a good attempt to solve the problem, but it is no good rehearsing that if, as the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said, the figures show that one in four children cannot swim when they leave key stage 1 in primary school—and that figure is worse for children from some ethnic groups. When looked at the data, I could not see the figures on gender as well as ethnicity, but I suspect that, within some ethnic groups, the gender difference is even greater.

It is also one of those things that, I suspect, we are not better at than when I was a child—I have no evidence for that but the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, referred to it. I too remember the pyjamas and trying to inflate them to save your life in difficult circumstances. My memory—this is instinctive—is that, when I was a child at a council estate primary school, we went to the swimming baths. We went once a week—it took half a day—and most of us could swim. We did not go for one term only but went throughout our time at primary school. It is hard to understand why we have not made progress in this area, when we have progress in every other educational area, and even though we all agree on it. It is a mystery. I hope that the Minister will be able to make some comments, not so much on what we have done—that is great—but on the reality that we have not done enough. It is a matter of life and death.

Although we have the national curriculum and the PE and sport premium, what is true and evidenced is that some schools are not following the national curriculum but there are no consequences. Some schools are not publishing the statistics on whether they are supporting swimming through the PE and sport premium fund, but there are no consequences. I always like to look at the subjects or aspects of our work that we prioritise and then shift the argument. If that were true of teaching children to learn to read and write—or of their development in not being able to walk, talk or socialise—we would do something about it. People across the board, over 20 years, have thought they have done enough but the statistics show that that is not the case. Why is what we have done not good enough, and what else can be done?

Although I am not putting this forward as a serious suggestion, it is worth thinking about whether this is a child safety issue rather than a curriculum issue. If we think of it in that light, as a safeguarding issue—because it saves lives—and if we compare what we do with schools on safeguarding issues with what we are doing with swimming, we will see that there is a huge disparity. As the Minister will know, if a school does not have its paperwork in order on safeguarding or does not have a safeguarding register of sixth-form students off site at lunchtime, it would fail its Ofsted inspection. However, we do not even know whether a school teaches the part of the national curriculum on swimming, or whether any of its PE and sport premium finance is going towards swimming. If we started looking at it as a child safeguarding issue because it saves lives, I wonder whether we might find some different answers and make progress.

I am grateful to Swim England for its briefing, which I found very helpful. What it really impressed upon me, which I had not given much thought to, is that this is about both swimming ability and water safety knowledge. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, spoke about people who can swim and still drown. So, understanding the tides and knowing what to do in different situations in water is very important.

When I look at the national curriculum and the three things that children have to be able to do, I am not sure that they cover water safety knowledge. Two definitely do not, and the only one that could possibly cover it is:

“Perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations”.


But that is more about swimming than not going into the water because you understand about tides. Does the Minister accept that this is about both swimming ability and water safety knowledge? Could she give us her view as to whether she considers water safety knowledge to be included in the national curriculum?

I have a few more points that I would be grateful for answers to. It does not make sense not to collect the data. It is no good knowing that one in four children leaves primary school not being able to swim if we do not know who they are and which schools they attend. That is what we do in other areas; we know which schools are underperforming in reading and numeracy. If I was to ask the Department for Education whether it could tell me, of the schools in Birmingham—where I did some education work—which ones are not performing well at swimming, and what the backgrounds of the children who cannot swim are, I am not convinced that it could offer an answer. Collecting that data would mean that the interventions we then make can actually be targeted.

As a necessary first step, that just makes sense. If a child cannot read and write by the end of key stage 2, we would not say, “That’s fine; you don’t have to do any learning about it in key stages 3 and 4”. We would say, “You’re going to have to continue with this, because it’s a very important skill that you’ve not yet mastered”. In that way, the Bill is very necessary and can provide a structure for the next stage of the work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for your Lordships’ hugely important contributions. I thank the Minister for her, as usual, very detailed reply. It was very strong on swimming but less strong on water safety itself. She said that schools “can” use PSHE, but it is a “can” and it is not happening. The Bill tries to say that every child, irrespective of the school they go to, should have lessons on water safety.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, rightly pointed to the issues facing black and Asian swimmers—the poor levels of the ability to swim. I remember the pyjamas and paddling in the water, but I also remember the hot mug of Bovril after taking part.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, raised two important issues. The first was the low figures on ethnicity. She suspected, as do I, that it will be an even lower number for women; I think she is going to look to see whether that is the case. Secondly, it had never occurred to me that we should bring the issue of safeguarding, which is so important to all of us, to swimming and water safety as well.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

May I intrude for 20 seconds to clarify the record? I thank the noble Lord very much and it is good that he is looking at that. I was clumsy in implying that I would want schools to fail their Ofsted inspection if a child could not swim. I would not want anyone to read that and think that that is what I said. I apologise if that was the impression I gave.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I do not think that we thought that even for one moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sater, rightly raised the issue of costs, which have soared and made it difficult for schools to find suitable swimming venues.

As usual, my noble friend Lord Addington brought a new dimension. I had not thought about hypothermia, but of course if you teach water safety, hypothermia and cold water shock, which the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, raised, are hugely important. Again, we should consider local awareness.

One of the things that stands out from the figures is university students, who are away from home and excited, particularly in the summer. The number of young men in particular at university who get into difficulty in water is quite alarming. Sadly, some of them drown. So maybe universities need to give some advice.

The Minister mentioned that the all-party parliamentary group is meeting the Minister next week. That will be an opportunity to understand some of the issues.

I perhaps need to say that the Bill will run out of time; it will not go through the process, sadly. However, to reflect on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and my noble friend Lord Addington made, we are all agreed on this, so why can we not just make it happen, for all the reasons we have said? All right, there might be some little differences between us, but this is hugely important. It is not my Bill in that sense; it is our Bill. We should do everything we can to achieve this. I beg to move.

The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century Follow-Up Report

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to speak at this stage of the consideration of our report. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for his leadership. I think he said in his opening remarks that this is the bit where we tie the pink ribbon around the report, giving the impression that it is our last go at it, but I give the Minister a friendly warning that I do not think for a minute that the noble Lord will give up, and I am sure he will find another way of getting back—as he should do, because this is an important issue. It is a very good report, and hardly any of the recommendations have been accepted, and that is a problem. That is not Parliament doing well, and it is not the Government taking the right decisions.

I want to spend most of my time of the education part of the recommendations, but I shall briefly talk about the first area of cross-government co-ordination and strategy. This is a debate about whether it is better to have a Minister responsible for citizenship and civic engagement or an interministerial group. We have had these debates about a range of issues. My experience, personally and from observing Governments, is that interministerial groups do not have a record for delivering radical change. They are rarely successful. I am hard put to think of a major initiative that has achieved a great deal that has been brought about by an interministerial group. There are changes in the structure of government, Ministers change, and usually the only Minister thinking about it is the chair, and not the other Ministers who have been told to go along to represent their department. It is better to have a Minister who is charged with and accountable for this area. The Government know that—because, if we look down the list of Ministers in this Government, we find that there are Ministers responsible for net zero, veterans, artificial intelligence, building safety, social mobility and well-being, and we all know the circumstances that have brought those ministerial posts about. Those subjects are important; people worry about them. We want to do them better, and the Government’s response has been to put a Minister in charge. That was the right decision, and they should do that with citizenship, because citizenship is as important as those other areas.

I want to talk mainly about citizenship education. There is a huge dilemma in the Government having mixed up PSHE and citizenship education. They are not the same, but there is a bit of history to this. I am not critical of this but, when the Minister’s predecessors in the coalition Government came to power, they really pushed resilience, perseverance, personal fulfilment and doing your best. I agree with all that, I think it is great, but it overtook citizenship and pushed it out. No one during that time was advocating for citizenship—but we and the Government should be able to do more than one thing at once. Over that period, the two things got conflated, because no one was flying the banner for citizenship.

I am in favour of teaching pupils about keeping healthy, keeping themselves safe, online safety, good relationships, being resilient, being a volunteer and all of that, but it is not citizenship. That is not what citizenship is in the national curriculum. It says in our national curriculum that citizenship is about acquiring

“a sound knowledge and understanding of how the United Kingdom is governed, its political system and how citizens participate actively in its democratic systems of government”.

It teaches

“skills to think critically and debate political questions”.

It is totally different, and the two have been confused. Of course, one can contribute to the other, but at the moment everything is secondary to a heading of PSHE. No one is flying the flag, and it gets left out. There is a problem to be solved.

James Weinberg—I hope I have pronounced his name correctly—in our report said that

“those in the top quintile for household income are five times more likely to participate in political activities than those in the lowest”.

This is a bigger gap than in any other area of our activities in school. If we had that gap in teaching literacy, numeracy or science, in getting kids to university, in running, skipping, painting, drawing or doing sculpture—in whatever—we would be worried, and we would have a strategy to overcome it. It would be top of our agenda. However, we do not seem to know about it in this case; it is not talked about, and we do not do anything about it.

There is no one in this building who does not believe that democracy is important, has to be preserved, cherished and that we have to work hard to keep it going because there are threats to it. But when we look at what we are doing in schools, we can see that we are not giving our children the best chance of growing up to be fulfilled citizens who can take part in democracy. We cannot expect them to vote and be politically engaged as adults if we do not give them skills, opportunities and experiences when they are children. The school system just does not do that.

Citizenship is optional in primary schools; you do not have to do it. It is taught badly, if it is taught at all, in secondary schools where they are meant to do it. The primary school curriculum has not been reviewed since 2001, when it was introduced. There is no incentive for recruitment of citizenship teachers and no ambition that I know of to build and develop leadership in citizenship education. As far as I can see, there is little engagement with the profession about citizenship. All of that is a problem.

The consequences of this can be seen in what is happening in schools. It is second best and slips by. Schools have not got the message that it is important and that they need to address it, nor have they had help to do that. Both previous speakers have said that Ofsted is a problem here. Whatever noble Lords feel about Ofsted, they should put it to one side for a minute. We all know that its behaviour and words have an impact on schools and, if it does not know the difference between PSHE and citizenship education, we have a problem, and it is a huge blockage.

I was not able to attend the meeting at which Ofsted gave evidence, which I was quite cross about, but I read what was said, and that was not its glory day. As far as I could see, it did not shine on that occasion. The evidence of that is the criteria it uses. Its own report has two sets of criteria: one for national curriculum subjects and the other for personal development. I will not read them out because we all have them in front of us to read if we want to, but it does not assess impact. It says of its personal development criteria, “We know that we can’t assess impact because the impact will be later on in life”. As a teacher, you always hope that the results will be there in later life, but it does not stop you looking at the results—the impact of what has happened.

The fact that Ofsted used the wrong set of criteria to evaluate a national curriculum subject is a problem. Is there any other subject on the national curriculum that is assessed by Ofsted using the personal development criteria, rather than the quality of education criteria? If there is, I do not know about it; I have never heard it mentioned.

That is a problem but, to tell the truth, what is more of a problem—and no one is perfect—is that, having had the time to engage with the Liaison Committee and to read the evidence and what good citizenship teachers said, Ofsted has made no change. It has given not an inch. No wonder people get fed up with Ofsted; not an inch has it given towards that strong bank of evidence. That is the problem: it is not necessarily that we do not always agree on the way forward but that nothing has been done to look at these recommendations. We know that things are not well, and when things are not well and there are some good recommendations, I cannot for the life of me see why you would reject them all.

Lastly, the Government have promised not to review the national curriculum until the next general election. I am really glad that our debate is taking place on the day the Prime Minister announced his review of mathematics. If you want an example of how best to get a subject to the top of the agenda, we have seen it today in the Prime Minister’s words on mathematics.

Oak National Academy

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and thank him for bringing this to our attention. We should have had a longer and deeper debate on Oak National Academy before this point and the Government should have brought it before us, as this important initiative could change the education landscape. I agree with every word my noble friend Lord Knight said, and am probably going to say similar things—only not as well.

I want to make two points. The first is about the motivation for this. The impact assessment says that it wants to save teachers’ time and reduce the workload. One of the reasons given is that the 2014 national curriculum changes took away the framework of support for teachers, which now has to be replaced. That was eight years of things going wrong because of the inadequacy of the 2014 curriculum reforms and this is about trying to put that back in place.

What worries me most and what I just cannot get my head around is this. If you went to teachers and said, “We are the Government and we have millions of pounds; what do you most want us to do to take workload off your shoulders?”, none of them would say, “Give a pile of money to the Oak National Academy and let it produce off-the-shelf lesson plans and curriculum packages.” The irony is that the DfE and Ofsted have argued for this. If you asked teachers who they would most cite as putting pressure on them, they would say the DfE and Ofsted.

I just cannot think through the fact that we seem to be creating a system in which it is easier for teachers to use off-the-shelf lesson plans, as that would give them time to fill in returns for Ofsted and the DfE. I taught for 18 years and the thing I most wanted to do was a lesson plan. That is what I went into the job to do. It was my skill and my training. If teachers spend half an hour a day looking for information on the internet, then thank goodness; they are professionals. That is what they are meant to be doing. Why would you put in place something that meant that a science teacher or similar was not spending half an hour a day looking for up-to-date information on the internet? If the Government want to reduce workload, I suggest that they are going about it the wrong way.

I think this is about control. The evidence for that is in the impact statement. The summary asks why Oak was chosen. It could not be the DfE, because the teachers would not trust it. It could not be private sector procurement, because it would not be “aligned with government policy”. Think about that: the Government are not doing it themselves, because they know that teachers do not trust them, and they are not putting it out to tender, because they do not trust private sector publishers to align with government policy, so they have set up an arm’s-length body to—as the impact statement says time and again—align with government strategy. That is the giveaway.

I have a great deal of time for the person who runs Oak. He is a star. He is a young educationalist who I hope has more and more influence on our education system in years to come, but this has not done Oak any favours.

My second point is to reiterate the point that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, made about the BBC. It is the reason; it is the whole rationale. If you need one argument against this, it is: use the BBC. I tried a digital curriculum from the BBC prior to this, and what we were going to do was wonderful. We lost in the courts and some people’s professional careers were damaged because of that. It would have been good, and it would have had all the accountability, visibility and openness that the BBC would have brought to the process. I justified that because it is a public sector broadcaster, but Oak has none of that: it is not a public sector broadcaster, it does not have a public sector remit and it does not have that accountability. There are a number of reasons why we should ask the Government to reconsider.

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking and congratulating my noble friend Lord Watson for bringing this debate to the House. It is a crucial area and one we should discuss more frequently about a group who so often do not have a voice of their own.

I congratulate Josh MacAlister and his team on the report. It is very thorough and challenging. I would not say I have read every dot and comma; I no doubt do not agree with every dot and comma. However, it really makes us think and gives us some very good pointers on what we should be doing. My biggest fear is that it will lie on the shelves like every other review of social care for children and somebody in five or 10 years will be talking about it again. I want to concentrate on why that is the case.

Very often in debates in this House, we do not agree to begin with; we come with different ideologies, viewpoints, hopes and aspirations. But on this, everybody agrees: these are important people; we owe it to them to get it right; and we are not doing well enough. I think we all agree that things are going wrong because there is a lack of a co-ordinated approach, the early intervention is too little and too late and we do not tackle underperformance quickly enough when we see it. We undervalue and undersupport the workforce and there is a lack of consistency and stability for children. All of that is not surprising because we also all bemoan the progression route and the attainment these young children have.

My noble friend Lord Watson pointed to the gap in the number of 19 and 20 year-olds not in education or employment, but that is not surprising when you see the attainment gap at key stage 2, which is 28% between the two groups and widens by the time they get to the key indicators at key stage 4. So it is not surprising that care leavers make up 24% of the prison population. So there you have it—we all agree that it is important and that something should be done, and we all say what is working well and know that the results are awful.

The challenge now is: why does policy fail in this area in a way that it does not in many others? We would worry if there were any other policy area in the Minister’s department—my former department—where, despite the money that we put in and what we hoped to achieve, it went backwards. It would be a topic of national conversation. If we spent all the money on phonics, literacy and numeracy, and it went backwards, we would do something. But one of the things that came out of this report for me is that we are not standing still but going backwards. If we do not change tack, 30,000 more children will be in care in 10 years’ time. So the problem is that we have a policy in a key area that we all say is important, but it is not working.

Another thing that struck me about the report is that the language is really strong. It talks about a “dramatic whole system reset” being needed, about a “fundamental shift” and about a “complete rebalancing of spending” and a “radically new offer”. My worry is that we are getting a bit more of the same, and I do not think that that is what the report is asking for or recommends. That is the big worry, and it is what we have got wrong in the past.

I spent some time looking through the Government’s response so far in Parliamentary Questions and debates in the House of Commons. I was surprised that they will develop a framework, that they have set up a pathfinder and that they have a national practice group and a new fund. There were four months in between the first and second meetings on their implementation plan—and, blow me down, Ministers are “engaged” and will agree the implementation strategy “in due course”. That is an absolutely standard set of government responses to any report that comes their way: get a small fund, get a committee together, make a few speeches, think about it and hope that, by then, people will have forgotten the urgency of what the report was saying in the first place. That is why we have a choice. My worry is that more of the same will not work, because it never has.

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who has a strong and long-lasting interest in this area, talked about pilot programmes that are successful but never get rolled out. That is an absolute mystery, but government does this all the time: we are not good at implementing best practice. I am not sure what the answers are; if I knew the government answers for all this, I probably would have done a bit of it when I was in the department—but that was 20 years ago.

One thing in the report that struck me and made me think was the powerful phrase about putting

“lifelong loving relationships at the heart of the care system”.

As a human being, that makes sense to me, but as a politician I do not think that it would ever have come my way. Government and politics are not good at putting “loving relationships” at the heart of a system—and, in truth, it is not their job. But part of the success of good schools is lifelong loving relationships with the children. If you look at a doctor’s practice or a hospital that works well, you will find that there is a loving relationship—some respect, kindness and understanding. Government cannot mandate that to happen, but it can put things in place to make it more, rather than less, possible. Therefore, the answer to this is in people, not structures—so I have just picked out some of the things that I would pick out if I were in the Minister’s position now.

The people who are most likely to give a lifelong loving relationship are actually the family—the parents, brothers and sisters—if you can make it work for them. That is the value of early intervention. If that does not work, other members of the extended family, which my noble friend will no doubt talk about later, are also good. And if that does not work, and it comes to the state, we have to think really hard about how we can make it possible for social workers to focus on lifelong loving relationships. If we ask them to deal with people only when the child has reached the end of the road, everyone has already let them down, they do not think that anyone cares and nothing has ever worked, we just make it too difficult for social workers to do much good. That is the job we are asking of them, and it is too tough a job to ask any sector of the workforce to do.

My last plea is that we really think about what we do to support the workforce and let them do what they want to do, which is to build relationships with children and families. They do not want to be always in crisis mode, yet if you ask them how they spend most of their time, they will say that it is in crisis mode. I know as a teacher that, if I had spent all my time in crisis mode, I would not have done well with the kids I did well with. You need a gap and a space to build things—that is what matters. I know that the Minister genuinely cares about this, and I hope that she can persuade her department really to make it a priority this time around.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

That said, I look forward to hearing in due course what my noble friend has to say.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment just spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, to which my name has been added. I thank the Minister for the meetings we have had; I think we have made real progress. She completely understands the issue and is doing what she can within the constraints she has to try to move this forward, and progress has been made, but there are still things to do. That is why it is worth this debate and worth hearing further words from her from the Dispatch Box.

I was first drawn to this issue because I thought it was merely an issue of copyright. The example that had been brought to my attention was materials not shown to a parent because of copyright; the education curriculum was being delivered by a third party which had copyrighted the materials. I thought it was as simple as that. The Minister has now made sure that, legally, you can do that, and all heads will be told—and a lot of work will have to be done to make sure that all heads realise that and act on it. But the more I look at the issue, the more difficult it appears.

Where we have curriculum content over which there is very little disagreement, the issue almost never arises because parents do not particularly want to see curriculum content all the time. It is in these tricky areas, particularly in PSHE, where there is no national curriculum content, that the real problems arise. There is no doubt that some of the issues which have since been brought to my attention and I have had the opportunity to look at have arisen from real differences of opinion and breakdown of relationships between the head teacher and the parent.

That is the problem at the core of this. If it gets to the point where there is an argument between the parent and the head teacher, and the head teacher is saying that the parents cannot look at the materials, that relationship stands little chance of being mended. That is the real risk. It happens only where content is contested, which makes the problem even worse. That is why it is important to sort this out.

I hope the Minister will agree that the contention has to be taken out of some of the curriculum content. The issue that I was interested in, as was the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, is the teaching of sex, which I believe is biologically based. Some of the materials that I saw that were being withheld from parents were hugely contentious, and many parents—quite reasonably, to my mind—would not have wanted them to be taught to their children. It is a complicated issue, and there are three main issues. First, parents should have the right to see the materials; secondly, copyright is irrelevant as a barrier to them doing so; and, thirdly, we are looking to the Government to offer some very clear guidance on subject content as far as these contentious issues are concerned.

I completely understand that we do not want to get to a position where parents demand to have the right to see every note that a teacher is going to use in a lesson. When I was a teacher, I would have been horrified if I had had to show my lesson notes to the parents. That is not where we want to be. We are talking about a broad understanding of the curriculum content so that parents and teachers can be the joint educators of children, especially in these important areas. I reassure the Minister that I completely understand the need to draw professional boundaries, but at the moment parents are being pushed into challenging those professional boundaries because they cannot have access to the materials at the first ask. I am grateful to the Minister for what she has said so far in the letters to us, and I hope she can go further.

I support the amendment by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. The argument has been forcefully made today, and I think it is unanswerable. We are all in favour of the values of British citizenship being taught. We know it is not being done well, and I genuinely think that the way forward that he points to would offer a better chance of getting everyone on the same side for a common goal.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have also put my name to Amendment 105. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on their work on this issue, which has been very important, and the Minister on listening and moving forward.

I start off with a bit of a caveat, because a lot of good things have been said: as an ex-teacher, I too am only too aware of the dread of pushy parents intervening in the minutiae of school, turning up and demanding to see this, that or the other. More seriously, we know what happened when a group of activist parents gathered outside Batley Grammar School and demanded to dictate what the curriculum was. That is not what this is about at all.

The context for the Government, which is very important, is that at the moment, because parents cannot see this material, it has been left in an informal morass of people hearing stories and getting particularly worried. Parents have had to resort to freedom of information requests to see third-party materials, and that really is not helpful. There is a rather excellent exposé by Milli Hill entitled “Worrying truth of what children are REALLY learning in Sex Education”. We are leaving it up to journalists to do these exposés. That just worries parents, so we have to grab this back.

Most parents think that, when their children are being taught about pronouns, that is helping with their English grammar, but then, when they read in the newspaper that it has something to do with policing language and gender ideology, they understandably worry. They worry when they hear about the affirmation of radical medical interventions, such as the amputation of sexual organs. These things are really scary. I urge the Government to grab hold of these horror stories and deal with them. I would like to see them acting on this very important issue.

There are matters that go beyond the scope of Amendment 105. The issue of parental access and teaching materials talks to a problem of parents feeling that the curriculum on contentious issues is being politicised. There is an excellent new report from Don’t Divide Us called Who’s in Charge? A Report on Councils’ Anti-racist Policies for Schools, which I will pass on to the Minister and I hope she will even meet the authors. The reason why I refer to it is that I do not want people to think this is just about the gender ideology issue. It is a sort of broader feeling that many parents have that there are third-party providers creating a political atmosphere in school, and that even schools themselves are doing the same. That raises problems of parents’ trust in what is being taught to their children.

I therefore query Amendment 101, on British values, despite the brilliant speeches we have heard in support of it. I was initially attracted to this amendment. After all, it mentions

“freedom of thought, conscience and religion … freedom of expression, and … freedom of assembly and association.”

These are my passions; I go on about them all the time. I thought, “Great—can we get them into schools?”. But when I talk about freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, these days I am often written off as some sort of alt-right lunatic who—

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Our Amendment 171H would require the Government to ask local authorities to work with schools in their area to establish an education partnership organisation. I want to say a little about why that is a good idea in the context of all our schools becoming academies. Partnerships are an excellent way to support schools and to tackle some of the area-wide issues that are difficult for schools to address by themselves. This could include music, theatre or sport; brokering support with external providers; sharing facilities; or, in the spirit of the Bill, doing anything else they can come up with when they get around to thinking about it. Our amendment is very similar to that tabled by my noble friend Lady Morris. I am sure she will share her experience with the Birmingham Education Partnership and the benefits that has brought to children in Birmingham.

The thinking behind this approach is that it takes a village—or a town or a city—to raise a child. The whole community has a stake in making sure that we do the best job possible to support and encourage our young people. My experience of this approach comes from chairing the Darlington Children’s Trust, where we were very keen on partnerships to tackle the trickiest issues. We would apply this approach to just about anything, including long-term health concerns, growing older, anti-social behaviour and school exclusions. We think that anything that needs a joined-up, place-based approach is best tackled with multidisciplinary partnership thinking.

Now that local authorities have a much-diminished role in education, with youth services and early intervention and prevention unrecognisably altered for the worse, we need an approach that encourages public services and schools to pull together—to agree priorities, share strategies and even pool budgets to support children and young people. All the secondary schools in Darlington are academies and, although they no longer have to do it, there is definitely a culture of collaboration. However, that is being increasingly tested the more time moves on and as some join MATs based in other parts of the country.

My amendment and that tabled by my noble friend Lady Morris would be a helpful step in the right direction. Her amendment would enable partnerships to bid for resources and be part of the school system, which is an incredibly good idea and something that we would like to see encouraged in other areas of the country. If the Government take the view that these partnerships should be a coming together of the willing, as opposed to compelling organisations to work together—I can kind of see an argument for that—they could at least be more proactive in encouraging them to work more closely together. It might be that we want to discuss ways that this could be achieved.

The noble Lords, Lord Davies of Brixton and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, have tabled amendments to extend the role of the Local Government Ombudsman. We particularly support this in relation to admissions, where parents are relatively powerless to challenge in any meaningful way. We think that there should be an independent process; that would be incredibly helpful.

I do not have a strong view whether that should be through the Local Government Ombudsman: there might be other locally based, more user-friendly ways to approach it, but I absolutely agree with my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord Davies that with so many schools now academies, it is not fair to deny parents the ability to challenge decisions through an independent process. I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

I shall speak to Amendment 171U in my name in this group. I support the other three amendments, but I shall not comment on those that have not yet been moved. I declare my interest as the chair and a trustee of the Birmingham Education Partnership and a member of the Association of Education Partnerships. I also acknowledge that the Minister has already given me and my colleagues some time to discuss this issue, for which we are grateful, but I have come back in this setting because some legislative change could help the work we do.

I emphasise the differences between this amendment and that just moved. I do not have a problem with children’s trusts: if they develop in that way, that is great and they can be a partnership for all services, but my thinking and experience has been of partnerships for school improvement, hence my amendment today, but I am not against taking that wider to the children’s trust idea. The problem my amendment solves is this. The thrust of the Bill into multi-academy trusts is an acknowledgement that schools need to work together: isolated schools are free to fail as well as free to thrive. In schools that are working together, you add capacity to the system.

At the moment, in any geographical area, we have church schools, maintained schools, academies and schools in multi-academy trusts—in one area or beyond. Even if every school in a group is a member of a family, the problem is still not solved because there are still gaps between the groups. Whereas we worried about the fragmentation of individual schools going it alone, even when every school was in a multi-academy trust in 2010, they could fall between the cracks of different groups in any geographical area. At the moment, the problem is worse, because some schools are in multi-academy trusts and some are still maintained, some are still relating to the regional schools commissioner, some to the local authority and some to the diocese.

In an area as big as Birmingham, with more than 400 schools—and it is not the biggest local authority area in the country—that fragmentation is writ large, even if no school is a stand-alone school unconnected to anybody else. Even if we get everybody into a multi-academy trust by 2030, we will still have the gaps between the trusts. That is a problem, in my mind. It is a built-in weakness of the system, in two ways.

Schools have responsibility, first and foremost, for the children in their school. That is what teachers get up and go to work for, and that is where their prime responsibility lies. I have always thought that every teacher accepts a second responsibility, and that is for the children in the area where they teach. They want their children to be best, but they do not want them to be best at the expense of the failure of children in the neighbouring school. They want to accept both those professional responsibilities: primarily, to the children in the school but, secondarily, to the children in their area.

I taught in a Coventry school. If someone asks, “What were you?”, I say, “A teacher in a Coventry school.” It meant something to me. I was educated in a school in Manchester, and that means something to me. That notion of place defined, in part, my experience as a pupil and defined, in a larger part, my experience as a teacher. We have knocked that out of the system.

Even if we get where the Government want us to go, where everyone is in a multi-academy trust, we will have solved the problem of isolated schools but there will be nothing at all that acknowledges place. Who holds the ring for education in Birmingham as a common good, a common endeavour? That is so important: it is what pupils, parents and teachers feel. All the partnership does is act as an umbrella under which every school can come together to recognise their joint endeavour as delivering a local education service. That is not being part of the local education authority; it is an acknowledgement that they, together, deliver the local education service—call it what you want.

Nothing in any of this legislation will allow that to happen. I am aware of more than 30 geographical areas—usually based on a local authority, because that makes sense to people—where schools have, by their own will, because they know it is needed, formed a partnership to deliver their second professional responsibility, which is to act in the interests of every child in that area. You can say, “That’s great: get on with it, go and do a good job, you do not need government to tell you what to do or give you permission to do it”, and indeed you do not and indeed they will. What is missing is a government acknowledgement that they are a player in the system. That is the important thing.

I can give a number of examples. The Government will put out a request for a bid or initiative, ask for volunteers or seek partnerships, but they only do so with the multi-academy trusts, which means that the partnership cannot collectively, on behalf of all its members, bid for the money, try to be a partner or try to be a player in the game. They have to read between the lines to make sure their local area is not deprived of resources.

That is what is missing. I look to the Government to say, “Yes, there is a need in our education system to acknowledge place and deliver for it, and that schools want responsibility for that that goes beyond the children in their class—they want to accept the wider responsibility for children in the area.” At the moment, as we know, every measurement—every accountability structure—militates against that happening. Even in the bidding arrangements, MAT has to bid against MAT in Birmingham for resource for Birmingham children. That does not make sense. Why would you want one MAT to fragment and bid against another to get resource for Birmingham children? If the partnership could bid and the bid go through the MAT—the partnership is no more than the MATs, it is no more than all the groups within the city of Birmingham—that would focus on school improvement and acknowledge the notion of place.

I very much take the point made by my noble friend Lady Chapman about working with other organisations. If a museum in a geographical area, a sports club, the local orchestra, the drama club or a local employer wants to work with the school, because of the demise of the local authority, there is no one to whom they can go to make those links. They end up either just finding a school and working with it because it is easier—that is great, but no one else gets a look in—or they give up because there is no one door through which they can go to say, “I am now working with all the schools in Coventry”. Partnerships are a one-stop shop for any of those essential partners in educating our children to knock on the door to say, “I want to work with Darlington schools.” We could say, “Right, we are the place that can make the introduction.”

For lots of reasons—and now in particular because the system is fragmented, but even when it is as the Government want it to be; I have my own views on that, but I am not going into them now—there is still the need to work in partnership, to recognise place and to mind the gaps between smaller groups that have been reconstructed into local authority areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for Amendment 171H and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for Amendment 171U, both on local education partnerships. I very much enjoyed my meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, a few months ago to discuss her important work chairing the Area-Based Education Partnerships Association. I absolutely agree with both noble Baronesses and other noble Lords about the importance of local coherence and collaboration between different parts of our schools system.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about the importance of school improvement in part underpinning her amendment. She will be aware that, in the schools White Paper, we set out a specific plank of the strong trust framework focused on school improvement. We absolutely support the spirit of her amendment but, as she knows, we believe that this is best done through strong multi-academy trusts.

However, as all of your Lordships have said, it is vital that trusts, local authorities and other actors in the school system work together effectively. The schools White Paper sets out our commitment to ensure that this is the case, and the special educational needs and disability and alternative provision Green Paper outlines proposals to enable statutory local SEND partnerships. We are also establishing local partnership boards in the 24 priority education investment areas that bring together local authorities and strong trusts to help identify local priorities and drive improvement at key stage 2 and key stage 4.

However, we do not believe that either of these amendments is necessary. We have already committed to developing a collaborative standard, which will facilitate effective partnerships between trusts, local authorities and third sector organisations to impact their communities positively in the way your Lordships have described. We will work with the sector to develop the detail of this standard as part of the regulatory review.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about the importance of place. Again, we agree with her. She will be well aware of our work previously on the opportunity areas and, more recently, on the education investment areas.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

What the Minister just said is very interesting. I was going to intervene to ask what mechanism the Government will use to bring them together. Am I right in interpreting what she said as that the mechanism might be something the Government will look at in the regulatory review? If so, at that point, would she consider partnerships as one of the mechanisms that might bring it about?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sure that the noble Baroness would not allow me to get away with prejudging the findings of the regulatory review. In all seriousness, the point of the review is to engage intensively with the sector and partners. I was going to invite her to meet to talk about some of these points in more detail as the review progresses. The review will also develop not just the collaborative standard that both noble Baronesses pointed towards but the area-based approach to commissioning, which we articulated in the guidance we released in May on implementing school system reform.

I also point to the work done by the Confederation of School Trusts, which represents many in the sector. It has done a lot of work on public benefit and civic duty, which speaks to the spirit of what is behind both noble Baronesses’ amendments and which we support very strongly. Although we continue to emphasise the importance of local partnerships, we do not believe it is for government to mandate a particular form in every area, and we believe that local partners are best placed to determine the arrangements that are right for their areas.

I now turn to Amendments 171T and 171W, both tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which seek to extend the role of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to include complaints about academy admissions. There is already a strong and effective route for complaints by anyone, including parents, about academy admission arrangements, including oversubscription criteria, through the independent Office of the Schools Adjudicator, whose decisions are binding and enforceable. Forgive me: I am not sure I heard the noble Lord refer to that, but we believe that system works very well.

Where an individual child is refused a place at a school they have applied to, the parent always has the right to an independent appeal. We made changes to the School Admissions Code last year to improve the process for managing in-year admissions and to improve the effectiveness of the fair access protocols, the mechanism to find places for vulnerable and unplaced children in-year. The local authority can direct a maintained school to admit a child and the Secretary of State has the power to direct an academy to admit a child. Looking forward, the schools White Paper confirmed that the Government will consult on a new statutory framework for pupil movements between schools and a back-up power to enable local authorities to direct an academy trust to admit a child. More broadly, there is a requirement that every academy trust has a published complaints procedure and, in turn, that this must include an opportunity for the complaint to be heard by a panel containing members not involved in the subject of the complaint and one person not involved in the management or running of the school.

As noble Lords have rightly said, it is important that parents have access to a strong and effective appeals process. The department currently provides a route for independent consideration of complaints about maladministration of appeals in relation to academy schools. To put this in perspective, we received 374 complaints about maladministration by independent appeal panels between 1 April and 31 December 2020. Of these, 123 complaints were in scope and were considered further. However, that is a tiny number compared to the total number of appeals that year, which was 41,000 for academies and maintained schools. We are aware that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has made proposal in its triennial review, similar to the one supported by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, that it should include maladministration of academy appeals. We are considering its proposals and will publish a response in due course. Therefore, we believe that there are sufficient measures in place for academy complaints and that these amendments are not necessary. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, to withdraw Amendment 171H and other noble Lords not to move theirs.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Under the changes proposed in the Bill—if I understood the noble Lord correctly.

I turn to Amendment 173 from my noble friend Lord Lucas. We would like the system of registration to be implemented as soon as possible to—I hope—reassure those parents who are doing a great job supporting their children at home. It will offer support to those parents who are struggling to provide education to their children at home, help safeguard those children who may be more vulnerable and not in school, and allow local authorities to better target their resources to those families who want or need support. We will take sufficient time prior to the registration system coming into force to ensure the registers work for everyone and that local authorities are clear on their support duty. Therefore, we do not feel it is helpful to set a strict implementation plan for the new support duty in the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised Amendment 123. I hope he will be reassured that it is already a criminal offence knowingly to recruit someone to work in a regulated activity with children who has been barred from working with children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and my noble friend Lord Lucas brought forward Amendments 122C, 125 and 126A. A threshold set out in regulations will ensure that the duty to provide information targets only those providers that are used for a substantial proportion of a child’s education. I was not altogether surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised the issue of unregulated alternative provision. I know we are going to be debating it in more detail in a subsequent group, so I hope I can save my remarks on that for later.

There is also a power in new Section 436E(6) to make regulations creating specific exemptions to the requirement for providers to provide information, which could be used to exclude certain settings from scope. We will continue to engage with stakeholders on this. However, where providers are eligible, the duty will be vital in aiding identification of eligible children and ensuring the registration system is effective in safeguarding them from harm and promoting their education.

My noble friend—I mean my noble friend Lord Lucas; I have so many noble friends—referred to the importance of adequate funding. We are still in the process of determining what the minimum expectation on local authorities should be in terms of their new support duty. To ensure that it is as effective as possible, it is right that we undertake the necessary consideration and assessment of need, including how this can be achieved and the costs involved. We will engage closely with stakeholders on this prior to the statutory guidance being issued and we have also committed to undertake a new burdens assessment to identify the level of funding that may be required to support local authorities so that they can discharge their duty effectively and well. Therefore, I ask my noble friend Lord Lucas—

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

I have a very quick question before the Minister sits down. She talked about making sure that people have the relevant safeguarding qualifications and going through the process. Whose responsibility is that? Does the parent of a home-educated child have a legal duty to do the checking or does that power and responsibility lie with someone else? If it was a school, it would be the school’s responsibility. I am not sure whose responsibility this is.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not know the answer to the noble Baroness’s specific question, but I will get an answer and respond to her.

In closing, I ask my noble friend Lord Lucas to withdraw Amendment 114A and other noble Lords not to move the amendments in their names.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on the issue raised by these amendments. I support the thrust of them, although I do not support all the details, particularly the one about Ofsted. I think that would not be an Ofsted role, but I agree that we need to have focus on it and that some organisation needs to give it.

My worry is that we are in the foothills of learning about what we should do with mental health in school. When I taught, which was many years ago now, it was never even discussed. It was not on our agenda, yet the children I taught in the inner city were just as likely to suffer from mental health problems as the generation that we have now. We are very much learning how to deal with this, which is worth bearing in mind.

I do not know what the answers are, but I think there is a problem and it is growing. In a way, it is becoming more evident to us because we did not analyse it in that way. Historically, we have always assumed that children did not suffer from mental health problems. It could be unhappiness at home, bad behaviour or whatever, but in schools we did not focus on mental health being a problem, except in the most extreme cases. Things are being done, but we really are in the foothills and we had such a long way to go before now.

There is the whole issue about CAMHS and its underfunding. It is a disgrace—we all know that. So much more needs to be done. I was interested in hearing from the Minister was about prevention work and the things that we can reasonably expect schools to do to head off people needing more acute services. The work I do in the Birmingham Education Partnership has had some success in this. We received a grant from the clinical commissioning group—so it was actually health money—about three or four years ago. We have rolled out a programme across the city now. I think it has been taken up by the DfE and is either closely aligned to, or has become part of, the DfE initiative, where it is getting mental health leads in schools.

All that is good, and I have seen the good work happening, but it is not universally successful. In Birmingham, where we have over 400 schools, we have put in extra money, resource and effort; we value this highly and prioritise it. After three or four years, however, we have still not rolled it out to every school, and we have only one person on this. This is a major problem. That is where my concerns are.

I will end up not disagreeing at all with what the Minister says about the initiative that has been launched for mental health leads, but it is not at the pace or speed that we need. We are starting from way behind if you look at any other area of school activity, be it phonics, numeracy, PE, sports or art. We have only just started on the journey of understanding what to do to support our young people with mental health difficulties. I should like to hear from the Minister what else is going to happen, and how they will build on the small seeds which have been slowly put into the ground and will take decades to help solve the problem.

If we are to get this right, we must have a picture that schools will not be staffed as they are at the moment. I worry that it is the teacher who has become the mental health lead. To be honest, if it is the physics teacher doing that, we need them in the physics lab teaching physics lessons. We cannot constantly take teachers away from the subjects we need them to teach to give them extra responsibilities to address important issues.

I know I am harking back a bit but, in the days of Every Child Matters and Sure Start, the aim that we made a start on when I was in the department was for a school to be staffed with people other than teachers. I remember visiting a school in the north-east, in Gateshead, where the secondary head proudly told me that just under 50% of his staff were teaching. The other 51% were not teaching: they were counsellors, mentors, assistants, lab assistants, careers advisers—all those other things. Unless you have that multitude of roles within the school, you cannot expect schools to be a key player in this; they just cannot do it. They can enable politicians to tick the box, make a speech and say, “I have done this”, but they will not be delivering effectively.

My vision would be to go back to the model of schools as bases where we can begin to support children’s mental health needs. The only way to do that adequately is to staff them with people who have the skills to do it. Of course, teachers have a role in that and we need mental health leads. I do not have a problem with that, but we cannot have nothing between the mental health lead and CAMHS. That is what we have at the moment: there is nothing in between, as far as a school is concerned. That is my worry.

It is a shame that Amendment 171Y was not spoken to as it is about testing eyesight. It is a great little amendment and it would be effective. I happened to work with some researchers once who did research in American kindergartens, the lowest schools in the system; they were experts in literacy and numeracy. They did eye tests on all five and six year-olds, and the number of children proven to need glasses at that point was unbelievable. They gave the kids a pair of glasses and kept a pair of glasses at the school—it was in a deprived area—and the attainment rate at the school rose significantly. No one had spotted that poor eyesight meant that the child did not know that they were missing out to some extent, especially children sitting at the back of classes. It is an important amendment, which would not need as much resource as mental health, but it would add to well-being and health. That would acknowledge the point that if we want to remove barriers to children’s learning, making sure they are mentally and physically well is a prerequisite for everything else.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to raise some qualms about this set of amendments. For different reasons, I find myself agreeing with the way the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, has just raised some issues.

I have spoken, on earlier amendments, about my concern about pathologising and medicalising all sorts of everyday experiences for children and adolescents. If we see the trials and tribulations of growing up— goodness knows, there are many of them—too much through the prism of mental health, we can contribute to children being anxious and worried about their own mental health. There is a kind of danger that we make children self-absorbed or unable to get over things and undermine their resilience. Important work has been done on this. One of my favourite books is The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education by Professors Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes, which was ahead of its time in worrying about some of these issues and raising them. There is a whole body of research on this work.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 171F in my name. Had I not had an amendment in this group, I would have risen to support the amendment to be addressed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. I very much support the gist of that amendment on citizenship, having worked with him on some of the committees. What it says makes absolute sense and I hope we will see progress with that idea as we take the Bill forward.

Amendment 171F is on something completely different. I do not think it is contentious. I hope that we will all agree that there is a problem that needs to be solved. I do not think for a minute that it has been deliberately created by Ministers or anyone else. I think it is a loophole, but a very big loophole, and the Bill is an ideal opportunity to address it.

We all would sign up to the idea that partnership between schools and parents is absolutely crucial. Whether we are mums, dads, grandparents or whatever, we all make speeches and know that partnership and the strength of it between the teacher, parent and child are crucial. It is possibly more crucial in some areas of the curriculum than in others: sex education, faith education and some aspects of history. That understanding about what is happening in the school is very important so that the parent can support the teacher and the teacher can support the parent, all in the interests of the child.

If we look at the Government’s guidance on relationships and sex education, it says that parents should have visibility of what is being taught to their children. That is the central core of what I have always thought was the case, both as a teacher and through my time in politics. I was therefore surprised to see a letter that a parent made available to me after she had gone to her child’s school to ask to see some of the curriculum papers that were being used in relationships and sex education. In this case the child was in key stage 2, the latter years of primary education. The head had written to the parent to say that he could not make the curriculum materials available to her because the organisation that was delivering that part of the curriculum said that it was exempt under Section 43(2) and Section 42 of the Freedom of Information Act.

In many areas of the curriculum, especially the contentious areas, schools look to outside bodies to bring in their expertise. We have already had a discussion in Committee on the importance of sometimes not necessarily using teachers with QTS but going to where there is specialist skill. This school had asked an organisation to come in and deliver sex and relationships education. But the organisation had said, “This is our intellectual property. It can’t be photocopied and shown to a third party.” The law allows it to claim that parents are a third party. That cannot be right. It does not matter whether they like the curriculum material or not. This particular bit of curriculum material was, I think, very contestable in terms of appropriateness for age. However, even if I thought it the best bit of teacher material I had ever seen, I would say it could not be right that a parent could not have access to it and see it. There are so many areas where a parent would want to know what is being taught to a child, and something needs to be done about this.

It is in the area of contested facts and difficult things to teach that schools are most likely to turn to outside organisations to help. They tend not to do that with maths and English and things like that, because they have the qualified staff in the school. It is for the areas that are difficult to teach, because they are contested, that outside organisations are particularly likely to be approached.

Whether we like it or not, we live at a time when there are lots of curriculum areas in which facts are not facts, and what we all assumed was appropriate to pass on to the next generation is now being contested. We have contested information and different views; as a society and a generation we are trying to work these things out. It is critical that giving ideas and words to the next generation is done with care, openness and the support of all the adults possible.

I very much hope that the Minister will be able to do two things when she responds to this amendment: first, to accept that there is a problem and, secondly, to say how it will be addressed before Report. I do not want—as was the position in the letter I read—the head to have to come between the parent and the outside provider. It was not fair for that head to have to write to the parent, with whom they would be having a longer-term relationship than that over the relationships and sex education lesson. We can all see that it potentially damaged the working relationship between the head and the parent.

Even if it were the case that the law could be got round, or it would have been possible for parent to see the material, or the outside provider need not have said that that should happen, we cannot make the head the go-between. We must have greater clarity. I do not think that this is intentional on anyone’s part. If this amendment is not appropriate, that is fine. We think it works but, if it is not appropriate—or perhaps I should say, if there is a better way of solving this problem—I know that everybody who supports this amendment will be delighted to discuss this with the Minister in the intervening weeks. I hope we can solve this problem.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I too have put my name to Amendment 171F because, as your Lordships have heard, it is important that parents should be able to discover what their children are being taught and, in particular, to see the materials. This has arisen because the commercial providers of materials have apparently tried to prevent parents getting access to those materials. They have met requests for information or to see the materials with the assertion that these are protected, and they can rely on an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act.

I find that surprising. The material has been, or will be, referred to in class to the children, perhaps with slides shown. I should have thought that any duty of confidence on the part of the school to the commercial provider has been waived by that disclosure in class, but so be it—the effect of the assertion is to put parents off and, as we have heard, it puts the schools in an embarrassing and awkward position. The parents and the schools are on the same side.

The issue is, of course, particularly sensitive where the subject matter is RSE—relationships and sex education—but it is not limited to that nowadays. History, economics and politics—a whole range of subjects—raise awkward and difficult matters in which there are strong differing philosophies and political views. It is very important that parents should know what is being taught and, in particular, whether their children are in fact being indoctrinated; things are not always the facts that they appear to be. The content must be accurate and balanced.

This amendment will give statutory force to a policy to which, we would argue, there can be no reasonable objection. In the case of RSE material, there is already statutory guidance, provided by the Government in 2019. I note that only the other day, on 17 June, my noble friend the Minister wrote to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I quote one short passage, as follows:

“When schools choose resources and external provision for Relationships, Sex and Health Education and PSHE, we expect schools to consult with parents on these matters and to make reasonable decisions about the content of their curriculum. Schools should also ensure that when they engage parents, they provide examples of the resources they plan to use (for example, the books they will use in lessons).”


That seems to be the Government’s policy, and who could argue against it? If that is the policy, what possible objection could there be to having it reinforced by statute, which would meet the arguments put forward by certain providers?

In 2019 the Secretary of State wrote in the foreword to the statutory guidance:

“We are clear that parents and carers are the prime educators for children on many of these matters. Schools complement and reinforce this role and have told us that they see building on what pupils learn at home as an important part of delivering a good education.”


The guidance says in paragraph 13:

“All schools must have in place a written policy for Relationships Education and RSE”,


and in paragraph 24, under the heading “Use of materials”:

“Schools should also ensure that, when they consult with parents, they provide examples of the resources that they plan to use as this can be reassuring for parents and enables them to continue the conversations started in class at home.”


Who could argue with that? It is common sense and uncontroversial. However, as we have heard, parents are not always getting the access to which they are already entitled and should be getting. We have heard about the school that obviously felt on the spot because the provider did not want them to see the material. The provider wrote that the material was exempt and that the placing of the copies of the actual documents in the public domain by inspection or copying is not justified. What on earth does that mean? How can it be right not to put a copy in the public domain or show it to the parents?

So there we are. We suggest that the amendment strikes a reasonable compromise. It would not require schools to copy all the materials, some of which might be quite lengthy, but would allow people simply to go into a school and see what is there. That would spare schools the burden of copying. The amendment is necessary and reasonable. Without it, it appears that parents will not be assured that, without recourse to litigation, they can see what their children are taught. I commend the amendment to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Just to be clear, the Oak National Academy, as my noble friend may know, was set up during the pandemic to provide online resources. It continues to make those resources available to any parent or child who wishes to use them and to teachers who want high-quality curriculum resources to teach in a physical setting.

Furthermore, the statutory guidance for relationships and sex education is clear that schools must have a written policy in place for these subjects and must consult parents. My noble friend Lord Sandhurst referenced our guidance in this regard: schools should provide examples of the resources they plan to use when they consult to reassure parents and enable them to continue the conversation started in class when their children are at home. I think those are exactly the points your Lordships raised this afternoon.

The department has published guidance to support school engagement with parents and leaflets for schools to provide to parents when communicating about their teaching of these subjects. As was referenced, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has asked the Children’s Commissioner to look at the RSE curriculum to complement the work that the department is already doing to improve the consistency and quality of RSE teaching, to make sure that children are being taught well and that we have equipped teachers with the right tools to teach these sensitive and difficult subjects well.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an incredibly disappointing reply. My worry is that I do not know whether the Minister has offered all she is going to offer. This is not about using Oak National Academy resources rather than those of an outside organisation. It is not about how to communicate with parents. The amendment has nothing to do with that. I am quite sure that the Government have a lot of good ideas on advising schools about how to communicate with parents. This was very specifically about schools using materials from outside bodies, which save them work and having to rewrite the curriculum in line with what the Government want them to do—but, by law, they are not permitted to show parents these materials. I hope the Minister will forgive me if she was about to address that point, but I do not want her to sit down before doing so and I am a little worried by the tone of the response so far.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sorry; the last thing I want to do is worry the noble Baroness. I am not sure that I will be able to reassure her entirely, but I was coming to this point. Specifically on the intellectual property loophole, which I understand is the point the noble Baroness raised, if she would be agreeable, it would be helpful to meet and go through some of the examples. We would like to be confident that the law is being interpreted correctly and, without seeing the examples, it is difficult for us to establish that. If the noble Baroness agrees, we could look at this in more detail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand the noble Baroness’s point and I do not think I said for a second that I thought the Committee was suggesting that parents should have a veto. If I may, I will take this point away and write to your Lordships on it.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

The department and the head teachers the Minister has spoken to have chosen to go down a dangerous avenue on this. If the issue is to stop parents being vexatious and demanding too much of schools in asking for materials, they can do that now with almost all the curriculum materials that are taught in schools and they do not. The only ones they cannot see are these in the most contentious areas of the curriculum. I am not worried about parents being vexatious and asking for all the curriculum materials; that is not what happens at the moment. I am not sure how there can be any justification for the one area where, by law, you cannot see the teaching materials happening to be the area where parents would have most concern about curriculum content.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

All I was trying to say to the noble Baroness is that I think there are two steps in this. First, is the intellectual property law being applied correctly and, secondly, how does that then translate? I think we have to answer the first question first, but I will undertake to give a full answer to the House when we have a chance to look at this in more detail. If your Lordships have specific examples, it would be extremely helpful to share them with us so that we get a broad sense of the issue.

With that, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, to withdraw Amendment 91 and other noble Lords not to move their amendments.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly. I apologise that I have been away and therefore unable to participate in debates on the Bill as much as I would have wanted to. I start by declaring my interest as still being a member of Cumbria County Council.

I agree with quite a bit, but not all, of what my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton has just said. I am personally not against academies and academy chains; I think they have brought fresh thinking into the education system. The problem is how to regulate them. My impression is that the Bill is adopting far too centralised an approach.

The essence of the point I want to make is that it is my impression that, in my own authority, the schools forum approach, allowing the per capita payment to be flexed, has worked well. It has worked well in two respects, and I hope the noble Baroness might address this. I have great respect for her and her concern for education, and I hope she might reflect on these points.

First, in an area that is a mixture of big towns and lots of rural village schools, the formula can be flexed to help keep open village schools that serve important local needs. This is particularly true in areas where there are big distances, such as Cumbria.

Secondly, there is a problem when a school gets into difficulty. Schools can get into difficulty quite quickly, particularly if there is a change of head or something like that, and it does not work out well. In an area where there is no shortage of school places and parents have a lot of choice—this applies particularly at secondary level—you then get into the situation where parents can choose to take their children out and put them into other schools in the area if they think a particular school is not doing well.

You cannot turn that situation around—perhaps the noble Baroness agrees with me—by having to cut teachers as a result of school income declining. Somehow, we have to get better leadership into the school, and I am sure that this is what an academy chain would want to do. The formula has to reflect that possibility. How is that going to happen? I fully support the amendment from my noble friends on the Opposition Front Bench.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this issue; I will do so very briefly. It is really important, and it is a shame that it is so late in the evening. I am in two minds about it: I can see where the Minister is coming from but my views, on the whole, accord with those of my noble friend Lord Liddle, who has just spoken.

The point I want to make, and I would ask for the Minister’s observations on it, is this. When I was doing her job, I remember when I learned that my decision on how the money should be allocated was not replicated in the local authority. I was a bit cross about it: here we are taking decisions about this, we send the money out to the local authorities and, blow me down, they change it around. I then realised that we just had to live with it—that was democracy, and that was making sure there was some local flexibility. However, I can remember feeling irritated by it. We lived with it because we were not as centralised as this Government intend to be.

My worry about this is not that it is trying to remedy the wrong that was referred to earlier on this evening—that 20 local authorities do not pass on the funding to small schools in rural areas when it leaves the department. It does not look like that to me, although I do not doubt that she is concerned. The way it looks to me is that this Bill is about giving power to the Secretary of State over every school and over everything. The minute the Government do that they have to control all the money. It seems to me that is the order: if the Government were not taking all the powers to control every school and everything they do, they would be able to be more flexible with the money, because that flexibility with the money would go with the flexibility given to the school. Because the Government are taking all the power to control all schools over all things, it looks as though they have thought, “The only way we can do that is to control every penny as well. We have to have that lever.” That is what worries me. If you put it together with what is happening in initial teacher training, it is the last brick in the wall of an absolute top-down, very heavily controlled nationalised school system. I would really like the Minister’s observations on that.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I will start by setting out the principles of Clause 33, in response to the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, to oppose the question that the clause stand part of the Bill. I am thankful for the opportunity to debate the role of Clause 33 and this part of the Bill more broadly. This measure implements the direct national funding formula and, as I said in response to the third group, delivers on our long-standing commitment to achieve fair funding for schools. We received wide-ranging support from the sector for this vision of how we fund schools in our consultation last year, and we heard your Lordships’ views on the importance of not only holding consultations but listening to them.

A single national funding formula, replacing the current 150 local arrangements, will make funding for schools simpler, fairer and more transparent. It will allow the sector, and your Lordships in this place, to hold the department to account for school funding. This measure outlines the framework of roles and responsibilities for the new funding system. The reforms set out in this part of the Bill have been developed carefully, in extensive consultation with stakeholders, to ensure we reflect the needs of pupils and schools in the fairest and most consistent way.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about how well the system had worked previously, but when I look at the data for funding per pupil from 2017—I think this was something the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, also touched on earlier—for Brent and Lincolnshire, both of which had 12% of children on free school meals, the funding per pupil was £5,523 in Brent and £4,305 in Lincolnshire. Similarly, there were big differences in a number of other areas, not only London boroughs. For example, Blackpool and Manchester, at that time, had 25% of children on free school meals and there was about £800 higher funding per pupil in Manchester than there was in Blackpool. I hope the noble Lord will acknowledge that is hard to see as either transparent or apparently fair.