Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

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

For those reasons, let us not have that insidious development, which we have seen happen quite a lot, particularly in research funding, move across into the school sector by accident and not address the problem. As my noble friend Lady Morris has said, we must make sure that we do not let it slip through a crack.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 171F, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, and to add my support for this group of amendments.

It is already well established in national and international law that parents have the right to raise their children and the duty to safeguard their well-being. It is also well established that this includes the obligation to ensure that their children receive a suitable education and that this is then underpinned by general presumption in law that, except in cases where there is substantial risk of serious harm, parents do act in the best interests of their children.

Further, under Article 13.3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the UK has ratified, it is also enshrined that parents have the prior right to choose the kind of education that their child will be given. Many parents chose to exercise this right by delegating the education of their children in certain subjects to more qualified teachers in schools in order to provide them with the best education possible. None the less, it is still their choice as parents to do so.

It follows, therefore, that to make this choice, as we have heard this afternoon, parents must be able to review all teaching materials, in order to make a fully informed decision about the education of their children. This must include third-party curriculum resources. Many schools choose to make use of a wide range of these third-party resources, some of which are extremely useful. However, as noble Lords are aware, there is increasing evidence from parents that schools are using third-party teaching materials which are often ideologically motivated and lack factual basis, particularly in relation to some relationships and sex education materials, as well as other contentious issues.

As we have heard this afternoon, even more concerning is that some of these materials are being withheld from parents. Amendment 171F seeks to maintain the right of parents to view all teaching materials, not just the curriculum lesson titles. Schools have a duty to provide these materials for parents to view and therefore this amendment is necessary in order to close that particular loophole in legislation.

In addition, it has long been communicated to parents that children learn best when they are supported at home by parents who are interested and involved. I can remember hours of testing my children on spellings, maths and history. If parents cannot view and understand the materials their children are being taught, they are hampered in their ability and responsibility to support their children in their education.

Parents should not only be allowed to view teaching materials but actively encouraged to read and engage with their child’s education and the materials being taught in schools. That is why, while I wholeheartedly agree with the amendment, there is one issue that I would encourage the noble Baroness to smooth over, perhaps by Report, should she bring the amendment back, which I very much hope she will. For parents to be able to engage fully with their child’s education, the material needs to be freely available to parents online or at home. The phrase “on the premises”, meaning on the school premises, is an unnecessary restriction. These third-party organisations are commissioned to provide a service, not to teach secret material.

Research has consistently shown that the impact of parental engagement in a child’s education has a far greater effect on the child’s educational success than the schooling itself. This is a trend found across the age range and social backgrounds. Parental engagement is particularly important when children start to engage in some of the personal and social issues in society. There are many examples of good practice in this area already in place in schools across the country, such as making the curriculum, teaching resources and guidance for parents available via parent portals. It would be fun to see some of this material taught on BBC Bitesize, for example.

As parents, we have a duty to ensure that our children are receiving a high-quality education, but in order to fulfil that duty, we must retain the right to engage with the material that our children are being taught in schools. With one tweak in mind, Amendment 171F has my full support.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for his intervention and the work of his Select Committee, which is invaluable to the House. He put to the Minister very stark choices that we face as a House when presented with the kind of Bill that the noble Baroness has brought before us. In essence, either we take those clauses out or we must see from the Government a new approach to the way we deal with secondary legislation. As the noble Lord suggested, either we must be able to amend such regulations—framework clause regulations, as he referred to it—when they come to us, or we must have a much more extensive system of scrutiny. Otherwise, the House will start to change the convention and reject secondary legislation, because we cannot allow Governments to steamroller through this type of legislation. I suspect we will see, time after time in this Session, the House becoming much more assertive about the way we are being treated.

I very much welcome Amendment 168, from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. I was tickled by the definition of democracy, which, in subsection (4)(d) of the proposed new clause, means to include

“decentralised decision-making, accountable at an appropriate level to the electorate”

and then comparing it to the Bill, which is taking powers away from local education authorities and giving it to either the Secretary of State or non-accountable academies. Ministers should certainly pay attention to the noble Lord’s amendment.

I strongly support my noble friend Lady Morris on Amendment 171F, and I say to the Minister that, if she thinks the wording is unacceptable and there may be some perverse incentives in it, I hope she will say that the department will make it absolutely clear to schools that parents must be able to see the materials we have been talking about—not to veto, because we need a partnership between the school, the teachers, the students and the parents—and she must come up with something firm. A lot of people have raised issues with her department and officials, and they have been mealy-mouthed in their approach and reluctant to say anything firm at all, but I think that time has passed.

Finally, on 10 June, the Children’s Commissioner published a blog in which she said she had been asked by the department to review the content of RSE, and that she has been specifically asked to look at

“How we can support schools to teach high quality RSE effectively and with confidence .. How teachers can feel fully equipped to teach these subjects well … How we can include the voice of children and young people in achieving the DfE’s aims for RSE more widely.”

That is to be welcomed. I have attempted to get a copy of the letter that the department sent to the commissioner, but the Library of the House has so far been unable to get a copy—I suspect it has not yet been written. I am surprised that it has nothing to say about parents and their involvement. Would the Minister look into this to see that the letter, when it finally goes to the commissioner, makes it clear that parents are seen to be a partner as well?

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their very thoughtful contributions to the debate on the amendments in this group. I start by thanking the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for their Amendment 91. The Government believe strongly that starting career-related learning early is important. As noble Lords have said, children as young as seven start to adopt stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity and social background which can limit their future subject and career choices. In fact, on Friday I was lucky enough to take part in a careers session at the Howitt Primary Community School outside Derby. I am not sure that I converted anyone to a political career, but there were definitely budding newsreaders, scientists, paramedics and others in the room.

The importance of early career-related learning is why we announced in the schools White Paper that we will fund a new careers programme for primary schools in disadvantaged areas, and we will announce more details of that in due course. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, raised some particular questions; if I may, given the time, I will write to him with answers to those.

As your Lordships will remember, careers advice also featured prominently in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act, with many helpful contributions from this House. We have strengthened provider access legislation by requiring schools to put on six encounters—if I remember rightly, that figure was quite challenging for us all in terms of our maths, whatever our curriculum was—with providers of technical education or apprenticeships to take place during school years 8 to 13.

Turning to Amendments 171I and 158 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, of course the Government agree in principle with what the noble Baroness said about every child having access to work experience. We want that happen in practice; it is not enough to agree in principle. The first part of Amendment 171I would require schools to provide pupils with at least 10 days of work experience. We believe it is right to give schools the autonomy to provide a range of experiences of work of different type and duration, rather than to impose a blanket 10 days. Schools can deliver this as part of their legal duty to provide independent careers guidance for year 8 to 13 pupils. Of course, work experience is part of the Gatsby benchmarks, which all schools are expected to follow. We believe that the second part of the amendment is unnecessary as we already fund the Careers & Enterprise Company to deliver careers hubs. We are extending access to careers hubs so that they will cover approximately 90% of schools and colleges by August next year.

On the first part of Amendment 158, many academies choose to use the national curriculum, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, said on another day in Committee, we trust heads and trust leaders to determine their own curriculum. I find a slight irony in the mix between areas where the Government are being encouraged to lean in and influence the curriculum, and others where the Government are being accused of taking too much power. We believe that heads and trust leaders should determine their own curriculum but that the national curriculum is something of great quality for them to benchmark against.

We recognise the value of academy freedoms and do not intend to undermine them with this legislation. Academy trusts have been at the forefront of curriculum innovation. We believe that many of the topics suggested in the remaining parts of this amendment are already covered in the existing curriculum. After a period of disruption in education due to the pandemic, we have committed to make no changes to the national curriculum in this Parliament.

I turn now to Amendment 168 in the names of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. The amendment seeks change to the phrase “fundamental British values”, the list of values and their definition, and their place in the curriculum. The national curriculum does not add the level of detail in this amendment as it is our policy that schools should lead on the development of the detailed content of their curriculum. However, the key principles of the amendment—democracy, law, freedom, respect and sustainability and climate change—are already covered across the citizenship, science and geography curricula.

It is rightly highlighted that these values are not exclusive to our society; however, we believe it is important to articulate those values fundamental to life in modern Britain. “British values” is a shorthand for those values that unite us and are commonly understood to be at the core of what it means to be a citizen in a modern, diverse Britain. Developing and deepening pupils’ understanding of these values is already part of the Ofsted inspection framework. Ultimately, school leaders are best placed to make decisions about how to embed these values to meet the needs of their pupils, and many good schools already do so very effectively.

As I hinted at, we think that adding “respect for the environment” to the values is unnecessary because this is taught through the geography, science and citizenship curricula. Whether we refer to “fundamental British values” or “the values of British citizenship”, what ultimately matters are the values themselves and how they are embedded in schools’ ethos and practices. We do not believe that it is the role of the Government to try to manage the delivery of the curriculum in this way.

The point about quality of delivery was behind what the noble and right reverend Lord and other noble Lords spoke about. As I mentioned, Ofsted inspects how well schools and colleges promote these values and, by 2018, nearly all leaders and teachers—98%—reported that they were confident that their school effectively taught the values of respect and tolerance for those from different backgrounds.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 171F in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, my noble friend Lord Sandhurst and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. Of course, we should encourage parents to engage with their child’s curriculum to allow them to support their child’s learning at home. However, as the noble Baroness and other noble Lords expressed very clearly, parents should feel confident that they understand what their children are learning. We also think it vital that schools and teachers are focused on the activities that add the greatest value to pupil outcomes. It is a priority for the Government to reduce teacher workload. We are concerned that introducing this amendment could drive teachers to focus on tasks which become very burdensome—which I know is not the noble Baroness’s intention. There are already ways for parents to engage with their child’s school curriculum to the extent needed to support learning at home. My noble friend Lady Stroud spoke about online learning. The Oak National Academy, for example, provides packages of optional, free and adaptable digital curriculum resources and video lessons which pupils and parents can access to supplement learning.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

May I clarify with my noble friend the Minister that my comment about online learning was that schools could put the materials online so that parents could access what was being taught in school? I was not actually encouraging online learning.

[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.

Looked-after and Adopted Children

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I mentioned, we have provided interventions when local authorities have failed, and have seen 47 local authorities improve in their Ofsted inspections over the last five years and not revert downwards.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

Could my noble friend outline the Government’s plans to increase the number of adoptive and foster families that are prepared to take disabled children, both under and over the age of four?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My noble friend is right that children with any kind of mental or physical disability are harder to place. The key is to try to get these young children placed as early as possible. Our scorecard will be published shortly, which shows the progress that local authorities are making across the country.

Free Schools: Educational Standards

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Nash for providing the opportunity for this Committee to draw attention to the contribution that free schools have made to improving educational standards. Providing an excellent education for all children and ensuring that no child, regardless of their background, is left behind has been a key driver of educational reform by successive Governments in this country, and free schools have made a significant contribution to it. I pay tribute to my noble friend’s long-term and tireless commitment to creating opportunity in education. I have personally witnessed it since 2006, and I am sure that it goes back even further.

We know that education can provide a pivotal impact on a child’s life chances and opportunities. For example, official statistics show that: 52% of male offenders and 72% of female offenders have no qualifications whatever; one-third of young people who have been excluded from school have been involved with drug dealing, as well as being exposed to growing trends of knife crime; and fewer than half of those with no qualifications were in employment, compared with eight in 10 of those with at least one qualification. Educational failure perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage, preventing generation after generation reaching their full potential.

When I was the executive director of the Centre for Social Justice, we documented the impact of this failure of education in our ground-breaking report Breakdown Britain. We identified significant educational inequality, which showed that emphasising average attainment was masking very real failures at the bottom of the system, where disadvantaged children were falling further and further behind. In 2006, children from disadvantaged backgrounds were five times more likely to fail academically than their peers. Most importantly, pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds were often not being given the opportunity to succeed, as evidence showed that schools with high numbers of pupils on free school meals were more likely to be considered underperforming by Ofsted. The budget uplift in education in the 10 years prior to 2006 was not helping those from disadvantaged backgrounds work their way to a brighter future, and 30,000 children were leaving school with no qualifications or skills and were not attending schools that were good enough to give them the chance to change that.

In the recommendations to tackle this which were included in the follow-up report Breakthrough Britain, we advocated pioneer schools, which were inspired by the successful US charter schools. The pioneer school recommendation was deeply influenced by my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy’s report More Good School Places. The aim was to provide innovative solutions to deeply entrenched educational failure by setting up new schools led in a way that gave them the flexibility to make the best decisions for children in their local area.

Since then, the rollout of free schools has dramatically increased the number of available school places, particularly in the most deprived areas of the country, improving the life chances of a large number of children. Nearly half of the schools that have opened are in the most deprived areas of the country, as we have heard. The schools that have opened provide 290,000 school places, overwhelmingly in areas where more school places were needed. There are 266 schools approved to open, which will add further to this capacity. They are offering genuine life opportunities for children to fulfil their potential and flourish in a good school. Free schools have an excellent Ofsted record, as we have heard, with 86% of them rated good or outstanding, and many are among the best-performing schools in the country. Unsurprisingly, they have been incredibly popular with parents and attract more first-preference applications than any other type of school.

Free schools have ensured that more and more children have a chance to succeed. They are the highest performers at Progress 8, and results are above the national average at GCSE and A-level. The mission to close the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is ongoing, but the gap is closing. The figures in the disadvantage gap index show that this gap has shrunk by 13% since 2011. Since we wrote the Breakdown Britain report, the gap in some areas has shrunk by as much as 30% in key stage 2.

Disadvantaged pupils do better at free schools than at any other type of school, and schools often have the freedom to help address some of the complex social challenges unique to their locality. For example, in areas with high child poverty and youth crime, schools have been able to extend the school day to provide a safe place for further learning and extracurricular activities. For every single one of these statistics, there is a child who has been given the opportunity to thrive.

However, there is still more to do to ensure that this gap continues to close and that children from disadvantaged groups continue to get access to a quality education. For that reason, I ask my noble friend the Minister to comment on the plans he has for ensuring that more disadvantaged children can benefit from free schools. More pupils are now in good schools than in 2010, but there are still 1 million children attending struggling schools, who deserve the opportunity to fulfil their potential, too. As more free schools open over the coming years, the Government should be ensuring that all children, especially the most disadvantaged, can take advantage of the opportunities that they present.

A Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for bringing this important debate to the House and commend him on his excellent and tireless work on this subject to date.

The scale of family breakdown in this country is a significant social challenge for this generation, as we have just been hearing. Far from being confined to the home, family breakdown affects society as a whole and the life chances of many. In this country today, there are nearly 3 million children without a father figure at home and 1 million children who have no significant contact with their fathers at all. Statistically speaking, there will be a child without a registered father in every primary school class. A teenager sitting their GCSEs today is more likely to own a smartphone than to live with their father.

However, the biggest question to ask is: why does this matter? Is it not just part of the social change that all countries have been going through? It matters because it affects the outcomes for children, and for many years we have been silent on this issue. Children from the lowest-income backgrounds with an active father figure at home are 25% more likely to escape the poverty they are growing up in, so it addresses the issue of poverty, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bird. Children with highly involved fathers have better school attainment and higher self-esteem and are less likely to find themselves in trouble in adolescence, so it addresses some of our productivity challenges as well. However, boys with little or no involvement with their fathers are twice as likely to find themselves in the criminal justice system as their peers with highly involved fathers. Girls and young women with similar early-life experiences are at greater risk of mental health problems, entering into early sexual relationships, often characterised by violence and abuse, and early parenthood, so it addresses some of the issues of resilience and mental health.

In my experience, the extraordinary thing is that when one starts to have a conversation with people about the importance of family stability, many times one is confronted with the very genuine and real belief that nothing can be done about it. But examples from other countries show that it does not need to be this way. In the UK, 60% of children born to a cohabiting couple will have experienced some kind of parental relationship breakdown before they are 12 years old. That is almost 40% higher than the European average. Long term, 33% of children in the UK will grow up in a single-parent household. Comparably, in France, only 19% of children are brought up in single-parent households, in Germany 17% and in the Republic of Ireland 18%. Clearly, even in our modern 21st-century world, there is another way. We have much to learn from countries whose cultures are really similar to our own but which have better outcomes for children and families.

When the Government set a course to introduce a new policy agenda, it is really important to understand whether this is a change that the public want or not. Here, it is remarkable to see how out of step the Westminster policy-making bubble is with the majority of the British public. A poll undertaken by ComRes in August this year showed that 76% of adults agree that the Government should invest more to help strengthen families and improve parenting. If I had had that sort of poll rating for any other policy I had previously worked on, I would have thought I had hit the jackpot. Even over half of lone parents say that they recognise the importance of two-parent families. So what could be done? I will leave it there and hand that to my noble friend Lord Farmer, who can tell us in his concluding remarks.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I support the intent of the Bill. I declare my interest as a mother of three children, two of whom are currently at university and one of whom left 18 months ago. Having worked hard and supported my children on this journey, I understand only too well the desire of families all over Britain to see their children take this step. That is one reason why I welcome the Bill, particularly how it supports the Government’s mission to boost social mobility and life chances. The fact that the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education is up from about 14% in 2009-10 to 18.5% in 2015-16, when everyone said that student fees would have the opposite effect, is testimony to the hard work invested by government and both secondary and tertiary education sectors, although obviously there is still a long way to go.

Our higher education system is one of Britain’s greatest assets, which is why expanding it and opening it up to more students has been the right direction of travel. The first step towards this was to end student number controls. By doing so, we ensured that more people can secure a university place. UCAS data show that young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are applying to university at a record rate for academic year 2016-17, but there are two things that students and their families want: first, to know that, when they invest their money in tuition fees, they have a good understanding of the sort of job outcome their hard work is likely to achieve; and secondly, that the sort of academic excellence they are going to university to engage in will be available to them. These two concerns that families have are addressed by the Bill.

Students want to know that their degree represents a real investment. With more students going to university, students want greater evidence that their degree course is worth paying for. They want to be able to see that their investment will lead to a job on the other side of all their hard work. It should concern us that one-third of undergraduates paying higher fees in England do not believe that their course represents that value for money. While the undergraduate premium has remained substantial, recent research suggests there is significant variation in graduate outcomes across providers and subjects.

Undergraduates want the transparency that the Bill offers to ensure that their investment pays off. If they can get into a university that will lift their earning power, they should be able to know before they invest in their course that this is the likely outcome. The Bill will provide that transparency, enabling students to make informed choices between institutions and courses. Publishing the information from HMRC data on graduate employment outcomes will ensure that students will have more information than ever before when choosing a course.

The second issue that students and their families want addressed is to know that the sort of academic excellence they are going to university to engage in will be available to them. Figures from the Higher Education Policy Institute’s 2016 Student Academic Experience Survey show that just 18% of students feel that they have enough information on how their fees are spent and a third of students would have chosen a different course if they knew what they do now. Student perceptions of value for money are falling. Just 37% of respondents feel that they receive good value for money compared with 53% in 2012. These numbers should concern us.

All students, regardless of their background, deserve excellent teaching that helps them to fulfil their potential. The teaching excellence framework will put in place reputational and financial incentives that will drive up the standard of teaching in all universities, and will put clear, understandable information about outcomes in the hands of students so that they know where teaching is best and what benefits they can expect to gain from their course.

The Government are to be commended for achieving greater social mobility, but it is crucial that in widening participation we now take steps to ensure quality and transparency. It is precisely because the Bill ensures these hopes that I have taken the time to speak in support of it.