Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Lexden

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“specially organised to make special educational provision”.

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

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

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

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

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Lexden

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, I vigorously support Amendment 107, on which my name appears. It would be even better if subsection (1)(c) in the amendment included the words “independent schools” after the word “academies”.

Speaking on an earlier amendment, I laid stress on the importance of partnerships between independent and maintained schools. Nowhere is co-operation more likely to be valuable on both sides than in the areas covered by the amendment. In subjects like science and maths, independent schools can really help to raise standards and prospects for high-ability pupils overall because of the successful results that they achieve. In modern languages, for example, almost 50 per cent of top grades go to pupils from independent schools. Let that expertise be shared widely in order to break down even more of the barriers between the two sectors. Independent schools see themselves as part of our national education system. Their inclusion in co-operative ventures of the kind envisaged by the amendment would be greeted by them with considerable enthusiasm. For those reasons, I support Amendment 107.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the intention behind these amendments, but I have a few issues about the solution to the problem. I want to ask a particular question that the Minister might address in her response. In the past we assumed that very bright children will succeed despite school and that we should not put in a place a system where they could succeed because of their schooling. I am very much in favour of the proposal that all schools should try to meet the needs of all their students. I have often thought that the most able 2 per cent to 3 per cent of young people in this country have special educational needs in the broadest sense, and that they need to be supported. So I am entirely on board with the idea. I welcome the debate, and although I will have to look at the amendments more closely, raising the issue is a good thing and this should be a feature of our education system. We should ask schools to address the particular needs of this group of children just as we ask them to look after the less able.

I welcome what the mover of the amendment said in terms of not wanting to go back to selection, and I can see that the amendment is not about that. However, I think that there must be a more imaginative approach than creating what is essentially a high ability stream within a school. I am no great researcher, but I know that all the evidence shows that separating children in schools is not the best way of raising standards. With reference to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, work has been done about children working with those in the independent sector. I remember an innovative scheme that was set up under the Excellence in Cities programme in Manchester. Sixth-formers from state schools took an undergraduate module with students from Manchester University, or it could have been the Open University, I cannot quite recall. That was not an isolated scheme.

All I would encourage is more general thinking about how to provide for really able children who need to be pushed. What, in the first part of this century, can we do that has not been done before to raise standards? I would be much more interested in using new technology to set up master classes with the best in the world, even if they are located on the other side of the world. We should free this debate up in order to be more creative than we have been in the past, and therefore my question for the Minister is this: why did they abolish the Young, Gifted and Talented Programme? It was the one scheme that made every school in this country identify a number of students who were thought to be gifted and talented. It brought about cultural changes in schools; some schools had said, “We haven’t got any bright kids”, while others had said, “We’ve got too much on our plate with our struggling kids”, so there was a group of children whose needs were not being met. Over the years that the programme was in operation, we began to change the culture of every school in the country. It was not perfect, but it got on to the agenda in every school that the needs of the most able, by ability or aptitude, also have to be met. It was sad that the Government chose to abolish and destroy the programme, which would have been a good hook on which to continue the debate. I would not mind an explanation of why it was done and what will take its place.