Covid-19: Education Settings
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, we have been clear about the risk of aerosol transmission. That is why there was specific guidance right from, I believe, the first lockdown in relation to children attending special schools and the rules on social distancing. As I have outlined to noble Lords, we are awaiting the results of the pilot and we made funding available, in two application tranches, to deal with certain increased costs for cleaning and other additional costs that schools and colleges had as a result of the pandemic.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I am pleased to follow noble Lords who have spoken with so much wisdom, and I thank the Minister for the Statement. At the outset, I want to acknowledge formally and thank Ms Davies from Mulberry school, which is my local school. She has been helping thousands of children—400 children and their families—every single week for the past six months.
A number of parents have written to me saying that they have received letters threatening punitive fines and other actions for children missing school, either due to Covid or long Covid symptoms. Can the Minister assure me that parents will not be punitively fined and punished for any such reasons? My second point is that, as we approach the summer, can the Minister give details of the government plan to support children with the provision of breakfast and lunch, in addition to providing essential IT equipment and broadband access? Have the Government undertaken an assessment of the gaps, particularly among children who are already disfranchised—
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
I have nearly finished, thank you. These children are marginalised as a result of inequalities, poor health, poverty and poor-quality housing. Will the Government ensure adequate planning for their education needs, as well as their well-being?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
I join the noble Baroness in thanking the staff at the school she mentioned. We know that many have gone above and beyond, particularly in supporting disadvantaged children in their community. Dropping food parcels and workbooks at the door has been pretty commonplace for many of our school staff, which is amazing.
Upon the return of schools, attendance has been compulsory but we have given specific guidance to schools if they have pupils absent due to parents or carers being concerned about Covid, or about their own health if they are clinically extremely vulnerable. In fact, there is a particular X to mark in the reasons for non-attendance. We hope that schools have encouraged parents to keep their children on the school roll in that situation, because we are concerned to see the rise in the numbers of children being electively home-educated in these circumstances—obviously, many parents do that job really well. On breakfast clubs, I think we have provided funding of £24 million through Magic Breakfast and other charities to deliver breakfasts. Over this summer holiday, in addition to the summer schools there will be, as there have been since Easter, holiday and activity clubs operating in every local authority area for disadvantaged families.
Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that work is going on across government. The strategy he outlined is obviously being led by the Home Office, and I had the pleasure of meeting the Minister leading on this, Victoria Atkins. As a result of her intervention, we have changed and updated the definition of child sexual exploitation in our guidance to make sure that we are working together on this. This is a journey for all of us in terms of how we deal with the prevalence of violence against women and girls. The domestic abuse legislation is landmark legislation in outlawing coercive control and hopefully getting better societal understanding of the nature of abuse.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I welcome the Statement and the report. However, there is a lack of reference to stakeholders from black and minority ethnic communities, including Members of Parliament, who have expertise and may have been consulted.
The domestic violence legislation was a watershed moment for Parliament, as was the Government’s leadership in their determination to root out violence against women and families. Throughout, we heard repeatedly how endemic violence and abuse are in our homes, and that they have permeated our societal structures and norms. We cannot put aside the role of schools and colleges—and, indeed, some police officers —in not investigating matters as they should.
As a former children’s social worker, it pains me to ask why we are aghast, given our years of such debates in this House—as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, cited—and the work of charities to highlight the many aspects of adult violence, which inevitably results in children experiencing and witnessing much violence and abuse. Many of those children subsequently also undertake bullying, sexual harassment, abuse and online threats in schools, colleges and universities.
I have not read the whole report at the moment, but I acknowledge that the pressures on resources are significant. How do the Minister and the rest of the Government intend to collaborate with local authorities and national women’s and children’s rights organisations to consider the recommendations of the report to prevent further immediate harm to children?
In the meantime, will schools and colleges provide access to counselling and have anonymous structures for receiving reports? Of course, I note what the Minister says about safeguarding being everybody’s business. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that children and parents are made aware that they will be believed and, as the report says, to prevent children seeing sexual abuse and harms as being so common that they see no point in reporting them?
Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, as I have outlined, robust disagreements in this scenario sadly descended into abuse of the commissioners, which is not acceptable. The first recommendation ironically outlines more work needing to be done on online abuse. I am concerned that the treatment of these commissioners may mean we see people less likely to come forward to volunteer for public services, if that is the treatment that they expect.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Woolley. Since Scarman, again and again reports have reiterated that we live in an inherently unequal society predicated on race, gender, religion and socioeconomic conditions such as class and wealth, as well as access. Work undertaken by the right honourable David Lammy and recently by my noble friend Lady Lawrence directly challenges the Government’s assessment and findings, and asks for immediate long-term action to address structural discrimination and inequalities as they impact our citizens of minority heritage. I join my colleagues in this House and the other place, alongside thousands of British experts, including highly respected academics, in making clear that this shocking attempt to misrepresent and deny experiences of racism and islamophobia will be challenged so that justice prevails. Will the Minister consider urgently meeting Members of this House as a way forward?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the commission outlined a number of reviews, including those that the noble Baroness outlined, and they were broadly in agreement with many of them. They took the recommendations of the Lammy review seriously, many of which have already been put into effect and others are in train. I shall come back to her on her kind offer of a meeting.
Skills for Jobs White Paper
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, there are requirements on the local authority, and indeed on provider schools, to make sure that their young people are aware of the opportunities for them, so that if they choose to go down the route of a UTC or studio school, many of which have an entry point at 14, they are made aware of that. It is the role of the Careers & Enterprise Company to make sure that other roles and occupations are brought in front of young people, so that they know the full options before them in terms of academic and technical qualifications and career routes.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, in my communities there are thousands of well-qualified young people, who have lived in the shadows of successful corporate business organisations in Canary Wharf and the City with a palpable record of providing few opportunities for work, other than in paltry numbers in the poorly paid hospitality-based sector, causing continued disparities. Therefore, I welcome the Statement and the paper and its focus on local skills improvement plans, on strengthening the statutory footing on which business organisations will be expected to participate and on improving local skills and so increase access to jobs. Given the deepening current unemployment crisis, can the Minister say what further steps the Government will take immediately to increase the number of industry and sector-based paid apprenticeships? I urge the Government to reconsider their loans into grants, if they are really serious about upskilling the population.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, it is inspiring to hear the noble Baroness. When one thinks about being in those parts of east London, I believe, that she makes reference to, it is interesting to look from where people live and see Canary Wharf and those buildings at the end of Whitechapel Road. From a local skills improvement plan point of view, obviously it will involve the London Mayor, but actually having those career opportunities and the local skills that are needed for those young people to access those jobs, which they can see in those institutions visible to them, is part of this strategy. We are pleased that, with the full maintenance loans that are also available, we have seen record numbers of disadvantaged students going into higher education. The largest increase has been within the British black African cohort who have been accessing universities, so we are seeing improvements there.
Child Welfare
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as a practitioner in the field of family protection, I add my voice to the call by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for a Cabinet-level Minister. This is a seminal moment in children’s lives. They face countless burdens, including poverty, education, mental well-being, online harms, county lines, and an unprecedented level of violence and abuse. A Cabinet Minister with a diverse team to address these complexities would be in the forefront of decision-making. Does the Minister agree?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege for the Secretary of State to be in charge of driving forward policy in this area. However, we should not focus solely on the level of responsibility, because often the first points of contact for vulnerable children are not only the local authority but voluntary services. So we have invested about £9 million with Barnardo’s, which takes the lead on See, Hear, Respond to try to reach children who have yet to be sighted by the statutory authorities.
Schools: Spending per Pupil
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, in relation to the particular challenges—I mentioned those attendance statistics, and one cannot underestimate the effort made in our schools to get attendance at that level. In relation to 16 to 19 year-olds, £96 million of the national tutoring programme fund is aimed at disadvantaged students in that year group, and an extra £400 million is going into 16 to 19 funding. Indeed, we should in the autumn get the list of the first 50 schools that will be rebuilt under the repair programme. Over the last five years, £23 billion has gone into the school estate. The noble Baroness is correct that we need to accelerate the building programme, not only to give our children the buildings they need to learn in but to motivate the economy and the recovery that we need.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the House will have become familiar with the many government pronouncements of overwhelming investment in education and public services. Equally, the House will have noted the persistent and alarming social divisions shamefully ever increasing in the fifth-largest economy in the world. With the Government’s levelling-up agenda and intention to close the gap between students from wealthy backgrounds and those who battle an onslaught of socioeconomic conditions—poor housing, poverty, racial and religious discrimination, and now the digital divide—what additional resources have the Government allocated to meet these challenges? Does the forward strategy include increasing the recruitment, retention and promotion of teachers from minority communities in leadership positions, which remains unacceptably low?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, in relation to the issues that the noble Baroness outlined, the Government are obviously concerned about the attainment gap and are trying to ensure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have the opportunity of a great education. That is why £2.4 billion has gone into the system as pupil premium money for those students. At the moment, we have spent £100 million on remote education, and in addition to the 220,000 laptops that have been distributed, another 150,000 are being delivered to ensure that we can help schools, particularly in those areas with disadvantaged students, if they have to learn at home. As I have outlined, the national funding formula prioritises the most deprived students, and a significant proportion of that money goes to them.
BAME teachers are part of the recruitment strategy. In relation to governors, we are now making it a KPI of the forthcoming contract subject to spending review that they should be able to achieve targets for BAME representation in the governing of our schools.
Education Settings: Autumn Opening
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge
My Lords, as I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, there will be no exam data and performance tables for 2020, for precisely that reason. Ofqual is consulting at the moment to see how we can deliver exams next year. One issue is that the effect on children has been disparate. We are getting reports that, for some of the vulnerable children who have been in school, there have been small class sizes since February and some of them are excelling. Some children with English as an additional language have thrived. At the end of the day, we have to trust that schools know how best to deal with their children when they come back. Of those vulnerable children who have been in school, some of them have had an excellent experience.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I have an interest to declare, as my family is full of generations of teachers. My gratitude goes to all those teachers who have maintained the education of many children. I welcome this Statement and the funding measures, including the national tutoring package, particularly for catch-up purposes. Will the funding be enough to include computers? I understand that nearly 700,000 children have never had access to a computer, and this might help them to catch up over the summer and in the following months. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that we should be innovative in ensuring that this funding is used more creatively. What is the Government’s new advice for children who were previously excluded but are now expecting to return? They will have been even more vulnerable during this process.
Further to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about children with disabilities, the Minister will be aware that local authorities are expected to uphold their responsibilities to meet their health and social care plans for special educational needs. Will funding be ring-fenced for that?
Much has changed as a result of the pandemic, and minority communities being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 means that fear has reverberated throughout those communities. Will the Government ensure that we do everything we can to mitigate any harassment, bullying, racism or Islamophobia, which detrimentally affects children’s education and well-being?
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, in relation to the funding that is needed, as I have outlined, there are many pots of money. There is of course the regular £2.4 billion of the pupil premium.
Over 200,000 laptops were ordered because we need to be flexible in these coming circumstances, and eventually we purchased 230,000 in order to have that flexibility.
In relation to excluded children, AP settings are expected to be open and have been open because we have wanted them to have some face-to-face contact with all their students. I pay tribute to those settings, many of which have kept in touch with those vulnerable children during this time.
BAME Students: Pupil Referral Units
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge
The noble Baroness will be aware that some pupils who are in a pupil referral unit are still on the roll of a mainstream school and are in alternative provision on a part-time basis. We expect alternative providers to remain open because we are aware that just under half of their cohort will qualify under the definition of vulnerable. We trust head teachers presented with somebody who might not technically be within the letter of “vulnerable” to make that decision, and we will support them in doing so if they view the young person in front of them as vulnerable; for instance, if they had contact with them two or three years ago, they can make that decision.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in the other half of the statistic mentioned by my noble friend Lord Woolley and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, lie numbers of Muslim young boys, in particular, as well as those who are autistic. That statistic makes them vulnerable students and pupils. Some of them may be vulnerable to county lines, about which we heard last week, and sexual exploitation, about which we have heard many times. Given the crisis that we face, what will the Minister do to ensure that local authorities take seriously the gaps that may begin to emerge, with these young people falling through the system because they are not classified as vulnerable children?
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, any child who is not in an educational setting should be. We do take action. We recognise that they are particularly vulnerable to the phenomenon now called “county lines”. The Government have provided £20 million to fund more national co-ordination on county lines. Since September 2018, four weeks of criminal justice interventions have led to 2,500 arrests; more importantly, they have resulted in more than 3,000 people being identified as having safeguarding concerns. We are doing what we can and taking action to deal with these issues.
Children: Special Educational Needs
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I think my noble friend is referring to the tribunal process. Since 2014, the percentage of decisions being taken to the tribunal as a proportion of the overall number of plans is the same. Numerically, it is going up because the number of plans is going up. There are actually now five different decisions, or combinations of decisions, that parents can appeal. But my noble friend is right, too: we have given £365 million of capital so that local authorities can build more spaces because—he might not be happy to hear this—it is actually cheaper for local authorities to provide the spaces themselves, rather than use private or independent providers.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I declare my interest in that I have an adult son with learning disability and autism. Will the Government’s review consider ring-fencing the money for special educational needs, which has always been a problem? This is especially given the fact that local authorities and other institutions are facing extreme cuts and pressures at this time.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, as I understand it, the funding goes out to local authorities and schools now receive, within the national funding formula, a proportion of that money. The money that I referred to—what is now over £7 billion— is given to local authorities and it is for them to determine locally what the needs of their population are. We believe that to be the right strategy, as they are closer to the needs on the ground.
Housing: Social Homes for Rent
Debate between Baroness Uddin and Baroness Berridge
Baroness Berridge
Noble Lords have previously raised this issue in debates on this topic. Social housing in this country comes from the budget in the affordable housing programme and the borrowing that local councils can now do, and, yes, under Section 106 agreements. There has been a problem with developers then saying that they are not economically viable. In the plans I have mentioned, there are now requirements that landowners and site purchasers will know the likely costs up front, so they will know the types of affordable housing provision they have to provide and the levels of it. They will know that up front, before they buy the land, so they cannot then come back to the council and say, “Oh, we purchased the land for a different sum of money, and it is now no longer economically viable”. I hope that that will close the loophole.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I note with some caution the noble Baroness’s confidence about private sector housing. From my knowledge of places such as Tower Hamlets, I know that huge development has not necessarily yielded a social rent market in any meaningful way. What are the Government doing to ensure that her department is working with the housing associations, which have a long, honourable history of creating quality housing for social rent purposes? I declare my interest as on the register.
Baroness Berridge
Both councils and housing associations can bid to the affordable homes programme for that money. Housing associations now have the benefit of a 10-year secure, £2 billion-worth of funding; they have never had that, under any Government. They should be able to plan to deliver the homes that we need. We recognise that, particularly for those at risk of being homeless and for particular families, we need to increase the number of homes available for social rent. We want to see a new generation of council housing, built both by housing associations and by local councils.