Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Thursday 5th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

Absolutely. That is why we have Ofsted, which picks these things up. It is my firm belief that schools need looking at very regularly. I do not mean that they need a full Ofsted inspection but, as I said at Second Reading, they need somebody to go in to make sure that these things are happening and to make sure that the school then takes action on the deficit that has been identified.

We have a well-defined definition that is workable; it is not complete, and I do not think that the Minister will claim that it is, but it will flag up the need for further action. Let us get it clear at this stage of the Bill—because some of the amendments later seem to cast doubt on it—that nobody is going to force a coasting school immediately into academy status; it is going to be given an opportunity to improve by other means. After the kind of things that we have seen in the press this week, as if all coasting schools were suddenly going to be made academies against their will and without any consultation, let us just kill that myth among ourselves.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I was not planning to intervene at this stage but I would like to ask the Minister to address a question in his summing up. Like the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Perry, I think that the definition—whatever it is—has to be very clear and simple. My concern about it being simply about academic content and not having just one phrase that adds to the roundness of the whole is that we all know that when schools are under pressure—we all know what a coasting school looks like and when it is defined as such it will find itself under pressure—they will work very hard at the things that will take their scores up, which will be the academic areas. That could be to the detriment of the other areas.

I went to a very good programme that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, arranged. I will say more about that later, but one of the impressive things that the regional commissioners were talking about was how to develop leadership, which in all organisations—and some of us have had to work to change things round—is what is important. Leadership is developed by developing roundness in children. I would just like the Minister to think about how there could be some sort of phrase—a relatively straightforward and simple one—which ensures that schools do not focus just on the academic areas, because they are under pressure, at the expense of developing the other skills that will bring those young people forward and make them the next leaders in schools and in society.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

I am sure that we are all very happy to bring this fascinating discussion to a close, but I want to make one point. I was seized by what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said in discussion on the previous amendment. We can sit in this building and make laws, decide what should happen and sometimes even get it into legislation, but what matters is how it is delivered in reality. My only point is that all these splendid things—citizenship, relationship education, spiritual and moral development and so on—have to be delivered by teachers. Unless we have the right teachers who are properly trained, it simply will not happen. We can write it into the books, but we ought to spend far more time addressing what actually happens in the selection and training of teachers than simply on what we ask them to deliver.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Since the noble Baroness has just mentioned my name, I will say one sentence. I absolutely agree with her; all I will ever talk about is implementation and application. However, in this context the revision of the guidance on sex education would be such a support to teachers that it would make a difference.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I would like to say something about where I think this all came from. We should remind ourselves that in the 1980s racism was rife. When I was working at that time in local authorities, we had people called “race advisers”, some of whom were not the most helpful people. Some changed the whole attitude to racism; some made social workers take a particular view of race. I know that because I was the head of a social work department and was battling to get something rational, while the irrational was being pressed on the workers.

I make this point because I think that this Bill has so much of value and would hate to see one dogma replaced by another, but that is what is happening here. As the pendulum has swung, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, so the Government are feeling that we can stop all this and get placements moved on. However, we need to think about the issues—those points have been made eloquently and I shall not repeat them—and I hope that the Government take a rational rather than a dogmatic view of this issue because it is important for the children. I, too, have talked to young people whose ethnicity is extraordinarily important to them, even though they were placed, and have grown up, in white homes. They need to understand their ethnicity and their links. I hope that the Minister will accept that the welfare checklist is a very straightforward document and that this could be included without any difficulty.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, the UN convention quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asks for respect for a child’s ethnicity and cultural, linguistic and religious background. If I were putting down an amendment to the Bill, which I am not doing, I would want something that emphasised that. That does not mean that adoptive parents have to be of the same ethnicity or religious conviction as that of the child being adopted, but they have to be the kind of people who genuinely respect that. If I may be allowed an anecdote, although we have just been told not to rely on anecdotes, I can tell the Committee that I lived through such a thing in my own family. When I was a very little girl, my parents “adopted” a child of the Kindertransport. Her parents had sent her away from Hitler’s Germany just before the outbreak of the Second World War and my parents, as Christians—my father was a minister—decided that they would open our home and our family to this little girl, Marrianna, who became my sister to all intents and purposes for several years until her own family was able to take her towards the end of the war. I remember well my parents straining every muscle to allow that little girl to keep her religious identity—we learnt in our family to respect all the Jewish customs and festivals—and they were determined, although Christians themselves and very powerfully so, that they would do that. What we are surely asking for is that kind of genuine respect for the child’s religious, cultural or ethnic background, and not for someone who has to be the same. The rationale of the noble and learned Baroness’s amendment reaches towards that, but I would like something that emphasised the wording of the UN convention, which is “respect for” rather than “the same as”.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I am not saying that it is true or untrue. The difference—it is very small—is that in the past the appeals panel could insist that the child went back to the school, while the review panel can now simply say, “You got the decision wrong. We ask you to consider again”. The only difference between what a review panel can do and what the previous appeals panel could do is the power to reinstate. In any case, to allow a child to go back into a school when all this process has taken place is a terrible thing for the teacher who asked for the exclusion in the first case, for the governing body which made the decision and supported the head, and for the authority of the head themselves.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I know what effort heads and teachers make when children are reinstated into schools in difficult circumstances, so I am very pro what is going on; they work very hard. Does the noble Baroness not accept that the child who finds that their case has been upheld but is still told that they are not able to go back to their school would see this as a total injustice? As many of these children are struggling anyway, this simply reinforces their feeling that society is simply not just, so why should they conform and join in with it?