Education Bill
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I welcome the emphasis in this Bill on improving the ability of teachers to teach. Given what she has just said, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, will not be surprised to hear me agree with my noble friend the Minister about the importance of freeing up schools to get on with the job. Members on these Benches will emphasise the rights of every child, particularly the most vulnerable, and judge the Bill on whether it furthers the Government’s objective of encouraging social mobility and inclusion. There are a lot of issues in the Bill, so I shall focus my remarks on Parts 1, 2, 4 and 5, and leave the rest to my noble friends on these Benches.
I give an enthusiastic welcome to the extension of free early years provision to disadvantaged two year-olds, but I am a little concerned about charging for provision beyond the statutory three hours, and I worry that those families who most need high-quality early years education might be deterred from taking up the free hours by their lack of ability to pay for the additional hours they actually need. Will the Government please review this to ensure that disadvantaged families do not lose out?
Wide concern has been expressed about the proposals in Clause 2 on searching pupils. We on these Benches of course agree with the coalition agreement, which says that teachers will be given the tools they need to maintain discipline. I echo the Minister’s statement that every child has a right to learn, so schools must ensure that the behaviour of one child does not impinge on the rights of other pupils to an education. However, there are two questions. First, are these the measures that will support teachers to maintain discipline? Secondly, are these the measures that teachers and heads want? In answer to the first, I think they are much less relevant than a fair code of school rules and a strong leadership team supporting the authority of all teachers. In answer to the second, some heads want these measures but most teachers do not, so the profession is divided.
I think that searching affects the fundamental relationship between teachers and pupils, which changes from one of trust, about preparing the child for its future life at work and in the family, to one of policing. I have concerns about training and teachers searching children alone, and I will raise these as the Bill progresses. The Joint Committee on Human Rights also has concerns about the impact of this very widely drawn power on the rights of the child and recommends three amendments to restrict it. Will the Minister say whether the Government intend to introduce these amendments in Committee? Most FE colleges have a security officer trained to search safely. However, if a 20 year-old male security officer wishes to search a 14 year-old female student, we have a human rights problem.
On exclusions, Clause 4 removes the exclusion appeals panel and replaces it with a review panel, which cannot insist that a child should be reinstated if it feels that the decision has been unfair. I accept that this happens in only a very few cases, but we need to have an eye to natural justice. The fact that appealing parents can have the support of an SEN expert is welcome, but I would like them to be able to choose the expert for themselves. The threat of a fine might not be enough to deter a school from excluding a child unfairly, but I would ask whether there will be a sliding scale, since £4,000 seems an awful lot for a small primary school. We must of course balance the right of a child to a placement that best suits his needs with the rights of the other pupils in the school.
We welcome the proposal in the White Paper for schools that exclude a child to retain responsibility for both his funding and his future achievement. However, that does not appear in the Bill. We are told that there are to be pilots. Will the Minister commit the Government to legislating for this if the pilots prove a successful disincentive to unfair exclusions?
Clause 5 removes the duty to give 24 hours’ notice of an after-school detention, which was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for the good reason that it would avoid a child’s journey home being unsafe. I am very concerned about the removal of this duty. We do not want another Milly Dowler case. A child can disappear in the blink of an eye. However, schools tell me that there are problems with 24 hours’ notice, so I will table an amendment to ensure that parents are contacted on the day and that the school satisfies itself that the child can get home safely. We need to be very specific about that.
Many schools have found behaviour and attendance partnerships to be of great value in arranging managed exclusions. With the removal of the duty to take part in such partnerships, how will the Government ensure that schools work together to manage children who are not settling down, or those with special needs for whom the school is not properly catering? The Minister will know that children with SEN are disproportionately excluded. This has gone on for years. Can he explain how it will be avoided?
The abolition of the QCDA passes control of the curriculum to the Secretary of State. The QCDA was established only recently to advise the Secretary of State on the curriculum, but now he feels that he does not need its advice. Perhaps we shall see established an external review of the national curriculum and an internal review of PSHE. It seems a great deal of trouble and expense at a time when the Government are urging all schools to become academies, which do not have to follow the national curriculum anyway. Perhaps that is why the Secretary of State feels that there will not be enough work for the QCDA in the future. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us on this.
I am particularly concerned about the abolition of the duty to co-operate with local authorities. It is very important that professionals work together around the child. We need to make sure that that continues to happen.
Clause 36 means that you cannot have a new community school unless no one wants to set up an academy or a foundation school. This does not sit well with the Government’s intentions on localism, fairness and parental choice. I have no doubt that we will have considerable discussions about this in Committee.
Education Bill
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, said, we have had an excellent debate. The number of speakers alone shows the great concern that this House has in improving education and extending opportunity. Expertise, knowledge and passion have been shown in equal measure this evening, and I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I particularly congratulate my noble friend Lord Edmiston on his excellent maiden speech and on all that he is doing as a sponsor of the Grace academies in the West Midlands. He reminded us all that academic education is not the be-all and end-all, as, rightly, did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, and that routes to success come in all shapes and sizes. He is also living proof of the importance of people having second chances.
With more than 50 speakers, I hope noble Lords will forgive me if in the time available I do not respond to every point that has been raised. However, I undertake to write to noble Lords when their points require a more detailed reply.
I am glad to say that I think there was a broad consensus on a number of the principles underlying the Bill. First, I welcome the support that the Bill has received from a number of my noble friends, including my noble friends Lord Baker, Lady Perry of Southwark, Lady Ritchie of Brompton, Lord Lucas, Lord Blackwell, Lord Lexden and Lord Willis of Knaresborough, about the importance of increasing school autonomy and trusting professionals. The evidence of the desire of school leaders to take greater control of the future development and success of their schools is clear, as we see thousands of schools seeking academy status.
I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, and my noble friend Lord True for the academy programme, which shows that it is possible to have greater autonomy, which is widely accepted, without the isolation and fragmentation which I know some noble Lords feared when we debated the Academies Bill a year ago. Indeed for me, one of the most exciting developments of the academies programme is the way in which chains and clusters of schools are joining together to increase opportunities across their schools for school improvement and career development. On free schools, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, may in time revise his views a little—as he has on academies, a little.
Many noble Lords, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, spoke about the importance of teachers. I agreed with much of what she said, as I often find myself doing. It was no accident that we called the schools White Paper The Importance of Teaching. It reflects the evidence that teachers make a critical contribution to the achievement of pupils and that we must do more to recruit the best graduates into the profession and retain the best teachers. I take the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, about setting out our plans. I agree with him about the importance of professional development. We are taking measures to improve teacher quality that do not require legislation, and we will be setting out our plans in the way that he suggests.
Some of the debate, however, highlighted some of the tension that seems to exist between our ambition to treat teachers as professionals who know best how to meet the individual needs of their pupils and wanting to require all schools to act in particular ways. My own view is that most teachers and school and college leaders are far better placed than Ministers to know how best to inspire, educate, and indeed discipline pupils. That brings me to the proposals on behaviour and discipline, about which it is fair to say there was a range of views.
Many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Perry, Lady Morris of Bolton and Lord Lingfield, supported the additional powers in the Bill on discipline, which build on those introduced by the previous Government through the ASCL Act 2009. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, spoke about bullying, in particular homophobic bullying, while the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids, spoke about racist bullying and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, mentioned Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children in that context. We are working with external organisations, including those such as Stonewall, in helping schools to develop best practice on these issues, but it is important that the measures that we want to take to help entrench discipline will help to deal with the problems of bullying, in particular cyberbullying.
I recognise that other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids, had reservations about our measures and wanted to ensure that adequate safeguards are in place. The Government believe that the extension of powers are proportionate and necessary, and that they strike the correct balance between the rights of pupils and students and the powers that those running schools and colleges want to secure a safe environment for all—including, perhaps above all, the most vulnerable—in which to learn.
I am grateful to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for its scrutiny of the Bill. I see that its report welcomes the changes that we are making to extend free early years education and to improve behaviour and discipline in schools as they help children exercise their right to education. They are an important part of this Bill and our wider education reforms. I am confident in the rationale for the changes we are making and their compatibility with convention rights, but we are obviously considering the detail of the JCHR report and will clearly go on to debate the issues that it gives rise to as the Bill passes through Parliament. The department’s new expert adviser on behaviour, Mr Taylor, will be working with teaching schools to help ensure that best practice is shared both through initial teacher training and through school-to-school support, while working with existing initial teacher training providers to ensure best practice.
If I may, I shall say a few words on exclusions, concerns about which were expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, my noble friend Lord Avebury and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. A number of concerns were raised about the changes to the exclusion process made by Clause 4. I agree with those who argued that avoiding problems escalating to the point where exclusion is necessary at all is in the best interests of all concerned—the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made that point particularly persuasively. That is why we are trialling a new approach to exclusions aimed at encouraging exactly that. A similar approach in Cambridgeshire has had excellent results, cutting the number of children in PRUs from 700 to some 150. The Government intend to take forward trials to help deal with exclusions and give schools the budgets in the way that was suggested. Moreover, by ensuring that behaviour and achievement are core elements of the more focused Ofsted inspection framework, we will hold schools to account for ensuring an orderly, safe environment in which all pupils achieve.
Unfortunately, we cannot avoid exclusion in every circumstance. Schools must be allowed to make these difficult decisions in the interest of all pupils and staff. The revised process will provide an independent review in every case of permanent exclusion where a parent requests it. The panel’s decision will give governing bodies a clear indication that the exclusion has been unreasonable and return the case to them for consideration.
I reassure noble Lords that the statutory framework in place for the education of permanently excluded pupils ensures that their right to full-time, suitable education is protected, and we are also determined to increase the quality of alternative provision available for excluded pupils, including by legislating to create alternative-provision academies through this Bill. That relates to important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, and my noble friend Lord Lingfield about how we can improve the quality of provision for the children most at risk.
One theme running throughout many contributions was schools’ accountability and the impact of the changes on the role of local authorities. This point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, and I am glad that I was able to meet at least one of his concerns about local authority governors. We are keen to have a system where schools look to parents and their locality for their accountability, with better information available to enable schools to be held to account, including international comparisons, as my noble friend Lady Perry and the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, argued. I was grateful for the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, about Ofsted and her reminder about the need to keep inspection focused. I can reassure my noble friend Lady Jolly that, in addition to risk assessments to trigger inspections of outstanding schools, we expect Ofsted to include outstanding schools in thematic inspections.
Local authority children’s services continue to play a critical role in the early years, special educational needs and child protection in particular. There are, however, two areas in which changes are necessary. The first is in relation to commissioning school places. The previous Government’s 2005 schools White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools For All, set out a vision of greater autonomy for schools with the local authority acting as a commissioner rather than as a provider. We share that vision.
We want to see swifter and more decisive action by local authorities to address underperformance, but, as my noble friend Lady Ritchie of Brompton argued, that is best achieved where local and central government work together. However, where authorities fail to act, Clause 43 gives us a reserve power to require action.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, characterised the Bill as centralising powers to the Secretary of State. I look forward to discussing that during detailed scrutiny of the Bill in Committee. In the vast majority of cases these powers are simply existing powers transferred from a quango, which will lead to increased accountability —yes, through Ministers—to Parliament. There are few areas where the Secretary of State can reasonably be described as having taken substantive new powers rather than powers to give effect to the legislation. These new powers—they are new powers—include the reserve powers to direct sample schools to take part in international surveys, to require local authorities to address underperforming schools and to intervene in underperforming colleges, which has been welcomed by the Association of Colleges. One of the other areas is a power to cap fees for part-time higher education so that the new loans the Government are introducing will cover the course fees. I think that that measure commands broad support. I do not accept that these powers can be used to characterise the Bill as centralising, especially as it also removes a significant number of requirements currently imposed on schools, colleges and local authorities by central government.
Concerns have been expressed about the practicalities of major reform of the arm’s-length bodies, some of which were raised by my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford, and particular concerns were raised in connection with the General Teaching Council for England. I always listen to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, with great care, but I do not agree that the Bill diminishes the role of teachers. However, I was particularly struck by what he had to say about technology, as I was by the remarks of my noble friend Lord Willis of Knaresborough. In response to a question put by my noble friends Lady Jolly and Lord Lexden, we are considering whether to make available to employers information on individuals who have qualified teacher status to make their recruitment checks easier. I hope that I will be able to reassure noble Lords during the passage of the Bill of how the changes being made to the arm’s-length bodies are being managed.
Specifically on the abolition of the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, the Government of the day, not the QCDA or its predecessor bodies, have been responsible for the national curriculum since its inception. The QCDA’s current role is only advisory. Decisions about the national curriculum are already taken by the Secretary of State and it is of course the aim of the Secretary of State, with his national curriculum review, to slim it down.
On teacher anonymity, I welcome the support of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Perry, and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, on the provisions for reporting restrictions about allegations made by pupils against teachers. A number of noble Lords asked us to consider extending these provisions further, although by contrast my noble friend Lord Black set out his concerns in that he felt the measure is an unwelcome interference with the freedoms of the press. The Government are proceeding cautiously in this area, reflecting the need to balance these competing rights. I look forward to more detailed consideration of this measure in Committee, and I want to make clear that we will consider carefully the arguments that are made.
I was pleased to see that Clause 1 has commanded so much support across the House. A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Walmsley, who has done so much to champion early years development, along with my noble friend Lady Perry, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Massey of Darwen, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, spoke eloquently about the importance of greater support for children from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they can have the best start in life. That links to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about the importance of parenting. We have implemented the extension to the 15 hours of free early years education for all three and four year-olds last September, and through this Bill the most disadvantaged two year-olds will also have an entitlement to 15 hours by 2013.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Grey-Thompson, for raising issues related to children with special educational needs and disabled children. I was pleased to meet representatives from the Special Educational Consortium last week to discuss how specific clauses in the Bill will work for this particular group of children and their families, whose needs the system, as we know, can sometimes struggle to meet. I look forward to continuing that dialogue as we go forward with the Bill.
There was much interest in vocational education, and I share the concern of noble Lords to strengthen what is on offer to young people. I agree with my noble friend Lady Brinton about the importance of vocational education, and with my noble friend Lady Stowell about university technical colleges and studio schools. The Government’s response to the excellent Wolf review and our investment in apprenticeships shows our commitment to improving the position, and I should like to reassure the noble Lords, Lord Layard, Lord Haskel and Lord Young of Norwood Green, that there is no diminution in this Bill of the Government’s commitment to apprenticeships. It is just that we think that the entitlement is not one that the Government can deliver since only employers can offer apprenticeships. My noble friend Lady Sharp put a specific question about preparing young people for apprenticeships, and perhaps I can write to her about the access to apprenticeships scheme which the Government are taking forward.
Several comments were made about the reforms to careers guidance. I believe that we have made the right decision: schools, rather than local authorities and the Connexions service, should be responsible for securing independent and impartial guidance. Although there were some dissenting voices on that, I think it was broadly accepted. The destination measure is more important than being prescriptive about precisely how careers education should be provided. It is also the case that young people themselves often prefer to get information online. Schools will be able to secure face-to-face advice if they think it is right for the children in their care. However, I understand the concerns about how we will move to the new arrangements in practice. I have no doubt that we shall return to this in Committee.
The theme of admissions was raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, slightly overstated the extent of the changes that the Bill makes to admissions. We are making changes to the role of the adjudicator, making schools and local authorities responsible for implementing his decisions. However, his decisions remain binding and the Bill extends his remit to academies and free schools, a development that I would have expected noble Lords to welcome.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, raised the issue of grammar school expansion. The Bill and the code do not allow for an increase in school selection. However, as has been the case since the Education Inspections Act 2006, a maintained school can increase the number of places that it offers, subject to consultation. We want and need good schools to be able to expand, and it would be wrong to exclude grammar schools from this.
I understand the concern raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, about the timing of the package of major reforms to higher education. On the fiscal context, our desire to let potential students know the financial arrangements that will apply next year as early as possible has required us to take the change forward in stages. The increases in tuition fees were settled at the end of last year. The Bill makes necessary changes to primary legislation to enable progressive interest rates to be charged.
Noble Lords asked about the forthcoming White Paper on higher education. I reassure them that it will be published shortly. My noble friend Lord Henley will seek opportunities to brief those noble Lords who are interested in the subject before we come to the relevant clauses.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I briefly offer the Minister a constructive suggestion from my noble friend Lord Phillips. He pointed out that the Bill contains amendments to 15 other statutes; indeed, there are 42 amendments to the Education Inspections Act 2006 alone. It may therefore be for the convenience of the House, and would aid noble Lords in scrutinising the Bill, if the Government place in the Library of the House all the statutes that are to be amended, with the amendments clearly marked. Noble Lords could then photocopy the relevant parts of those Acts so that we could more easily understand what the amendments would do.
Children: Ofsted Report
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the recommendations in the report The voice of the child: learning lessons from serious case reviews, published by Ofsted this month.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, Ofsted’s report highlights the crucial importance of placing children at the centre of front-line practice in child protection. The Government expect practitioners and local safeguarding children boards to take account of Ofsted’s findings and their implications. The final report of Professor Eileen Munro’s review of child protection, A Child-centred System, which was published on 10 May, also underlines the need to refocus the system on children. The Government will respond to her report by the summer.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank the noble Lord for his reply. In his response, will he consider agreeing with Professor Munro that the current system is far too focused on finding out what happened rather than why and that, in future, the focus should be more on the underlying issues of how the social workers behaved? Will he also agree with me that it should be a statutory duty, and not just guidance, for social workers to see the child alone, in order to ascertain its wishes and feelings?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the Government have welcomed the review by Professor Eileen Munro, which includes the recommendation that my noble friend refers to about looking at the whole way in which serious case reviews work and about moving to a more systems-based approach. The Government are considering their response and have set up a working group of practitioners across different disciplines—not just social work, but the police, education, health and other areas. We will be responding to that and will bear in mind the points made by my noble friend.
Education: Vocational Subjects
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I also thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and we, too, welcome the Wolf report. We particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to improving the quality, status and availability of vocational education.
I will pick up two concerns that I heard expressed earlier today in another place. The Chairman of Committees was concerned that, although it is welcome that schools will be made accountable for how they deliver vocational education, teachers and parents may find it rather confusing to have another system alongside the English bacc for holding schools accountable. Given the Government’s commitment to improving the quality of vocational courses, once that has been done to the Government’ satisfaction, would they consider adding an additional section to the English bacc to include vocational courses, and perhaps arts and cultural courses, once they are convinced of the quality of those? Of course we all agree with the objective of giving young people a broad and balanced curriculum. Once we have achieved that quality, surely there is a case for expanding the English bacc.
Secondly, on the amount of timetable time given to the English bacc, will the Minister confirm, as his right honourable friend the Secretary of State did in another place this morning, that the 80 per cent of timetable that is supposed to be spent on English bacc subjects is only advisory and not statutory; and that schools are very open and able to allow young people to choose subjects which would means that they spend, say, 40 per cent on vocational subjects and not just 20?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend for her welcome for the Wolf review and her recognition of the importance of vocational education. One of the performance measures that we are keen to try to develop is a destination measure for schools and colleges so that we can see where children and young people go on to when they leave, and so that parents can see how a school or college is doing, whether it is vocational or academic.
We are keen to have more information generally. As that spreads and people are able to look at data and find their own ways of using them, the measure that my noble friend mentioned of seeing how schools and colleges might be doing, particularly as regards vocational or technical subjects, will develop of its own accord. The point of the EBacc is to try to have a small, narrow basis on which to shine a spotlight, particularly on academic subjects. It is not meant to betoken any kind of judgment and is obviously not compulsory. It is not a qualification in its own right. We want schools to decide for themselves whether it is something that they want to pursue. As my noble friend flagged, there is no statutory requirement on timetabling around the EBacc. There is, indeed, no statutory requirement that anyone should offer the EBacc at all.
Education: English Baccalaureate
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
As I hope I have already indicated, I would like as many pupils as possible to have a chance to study academic subjects, if that is appropriate for them. Modern foreign languages would be a good example of that. As the noble Baroness will know, the question about their place in the national curriculum stages is part of the curriculum review. I know of the case that she makes, and I hope and believe that one consequence of the English baccalaureate will be to encourage the take-up of modern foreign languages and reverse the sharp fall that there has been in recent years.
Baroness Walmsley
Does the Minister accept that broad-brush monitoring cannot look in detail at what is happening at school level, and that the Government cannot control individual school timetabling? Is he aware that schools are already staffing up for the subjects covered by the English bac at the expense of other subjects? How can he ensure that children are not limited as to the choices that they want to make for their own future ambitions by what the school is doing and the way it is timetabling and staffing up for the English bac?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, one problem has been that children have been limited in their choices and some of that limitation has applied to some of the key academic subjects. That is what we are keen to open up. We are trying to open up more choices.
I agree with my noble friend that the Government cannot monitor every school and should not seek to micromanage those schools. The English bac is part of what we are trying to do more broadly to encourage more information about school performance. I hope over time that with the provision of more information, whether it is on the vocational or academic qualifications being offered, schools and parents will work out for themselves what is the most appropriate mix of subjects for the children in those particular schools to study.
National Music Plan
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
The noble Earl is very kind in trying to induce me to go around the corner with him; I would be keen. I was lucky enough last year to go to the Schools Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. If any Members of this House have been there in their roles, they will know what a fantastic, wonderful evening it is. It was one of the most life-enhancing evenings that I have had for a very long time—which may say something about my life as well. It made one realise how much is going on in schools, what music teachers and music services are delivering, and how music can bring so much to children in a range of ways. As the noble Earl knows, there are a number of ways in which we need to look at the quality and range of teacher training, developing the idea of school-to-school support and learning the best that schools have already developed. That should have an important part to play in the development of specialist music teachers as well.
Baroness Walmsley
If the Government intend to implement recommendation 11 of the Darren Henley report, that Ofsted’s remit should be extended to review the standards and quality of music education, will the Minister find a way of instructing Ofsted to take account of those many music teachers who bring enormous joy and fun to their pupils through music? It may not be easy to measure fun, but it is terribly important.
Lord Hill of Oareford
On recommendation 11, we will talk to Ofsted. I do not know how one develops a measurement for fun. Perhaps we should talk to the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who I am sure has developed an index for measuring happiness. However, I shall bear those points in mind.
Schools: Curriculum and PSHE Reviews
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the time she gave yesterday to discussing PSHE with me and for the advice she gave to my officials. I hope that she will carry on doing that as the review continues. I know from our meeting how impatient the noble Baroness is to make progress and I agree with her that a lot of information is available. However, we want to hold a proper review and to co-ordinate it with the separate review into the national curriculum that is also going on. But her admonition to get a move on is ringing in my ears.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, in relation to the co-ordination just mentioned by the Minister, will the Government bear in mind the beneficial effects on children’s achievement in other subjects across the curriculum of high-quality PSHE courses? It gives them the skills with which to learn, as well as the self-confidence, the ability to undertake teamwork and all the other qualities needed in order to become effective learners across the whole of the rest of the curriculum. That is why it is so important that these two reviews are properly linked together.
Education: 16 to 18 Year-olds
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, it is my pleasure to thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fink, on his maiden speech. Like myself, he comes from the north of England and therefore he and I are very modest. Modesty forbad him from telling your Lordships how successful he was in business. I read that in the 12 years that he was managing director of his Man Group, he managed to increase its assets under management 70-fold. That may be the reason why he was appointed the treasurer of the Conservative Party in October 2010.
Apart from being a committed business person, the noble Lord is also a committed philanthropist and a very successful fundraiser. He has told us about his chairmanship of ARK; he has also worked on the Mayor of London’s charity and Guy's and St Thomas' Charity and was chairman of the 2009 Lord Mayor’s Appeal. But his most successful fundraising was £10 million for the Evelina Children's Hospital Appeal. Your Lordships will have noticed how very passionate he is about education and health, and I am quite sure that it is on those subjects that we will hear very much more from him.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Willis on his groundhog day speech. He explained with great cogency and passion the point that he makes about the financing of student support for 16 to 18s. I welcome the statement on the EMA replacement and I do not believe that it was a U-turn, as some are saying. Some £110 million was put aside immediately the abolition of the EMA as it stood was announced. Simon Hughes was commissioned to work out how to target that money better, and he has been working on it for months. I do not believe that the EMA had been well targeted. Even Labour acknowledged that it had planned to restructure 16 to 19 financial support anyway in 2013 once participation became compulsory up to 17 and, two years later, 18. It also planned to use the EMA as a replacement for child benefit for 16 to 19 year-olds. I welcome the fact that the poorest students will be better off under this more targeted system and that schools and colleges, which know their students’ needs better than any centralised system, will be charged with distributing the enhanced discretionary funds.
As to the groups included in roughly the 1,200 of the poorest young people who will get a bursary as of right, can the Minister tell me whether they include asylum seekers?
Transport was cited as the greatest issue of concern by many students and colleges. It could be a real attraction if colleges were allowed to guarantee that free transport would be provided to students within their catchment area. Can the Minister confirm that they will be able to do this under the new arrangements?
Colleges need information as soon as possible about how the new system will work so that they can communicate with their students and potential students, who are, at this moment, considering whether they can afford to stay on. Can the Minister say how soon colleges will get the details of the operation of the new system? The consultation is out now but when will the conclusions be drawn?
Although financial support is very important, I should like to take the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, somewhat wider to include curriculum and careers advice, partly because I could not have addressed the financial issues as well as he did. Two recent reports have commented on these two issues—the review of vocational education by Alison Wolf and the recent report from Demos and the Private Equity Foundation, called The Forgotten Half, about the 50 per cent of young people who do not go to university. Both reports have important points for our consideration in this debate.
There are to be changes to careers advice with the establishment of an all-age service. Schools will have a duty to provide independent advice and Connexions will be scrapped. I am concerned that there will be a 12-month gap between the scrapping of the one and the establishment of the other—a hole through which some young people could fall. Can the Minister say how the Government will avoid this?
Careers advice should be high quality, comprehensive and timely. I think that there should be an entitlement to careers advice which is available face to face and not just online. Alternative paths to work and work with training need to be explained to these young people. Advice about apprenticeships must be given to all young people as of right. An entitlement to this was dropped from an earlier Bill under the previous Government. Do this Government plan to reinstate it?
Work is currently being done on the curriculum. Schools are very affected by the various ways in which they are measured. The latest of these is the EBac. I have concerns in relation to young people aged from 14 to 19 who are disengaged and are more likely to be engaged by a more practical and vocational curriculum. I do not want to see schools making it impossible for young people to choose a combination of courses to suit their needs. Of course, it is important to provide a foundation in core subjects but my view is that the EBac categories are too narrow and will suit only the half that go to college or university. Yes, all our children should study a humanity, a language and a science subject, as well as English and maths, but is it really necessary for them to take a GCSE in all of them? They will already have had eight years of all those subjects before they start on their GCSE courses as part of the school curriculum from age five to 13, so it can hardly be said that they have studied no history if they do not take history GCSE.
The university technical colleges have the right idea. They offer technical training opportunities for 11 to 19 year-olds. Today we are considering 16 to 18 year-olds, in particular, but it is important that they have had the right range of opportunities further down the school.
However, there is no doubt that vocational education requires revision. Alison Wolf quoted it to be,
“sclerotic, expensive, centralised and over-detailed”.
We need to look at the courses that she described as dead-end courses which lead nowhere and which are sometimes currently ascribed as equivalent to several GCSEs. Crucially, we need to listen to employers as to what they need from young people starting work, and it is clearly not just GCSEs that they are looking for. The CBI welcomed Wolf’s focus on English and maths, ensuring that young people continue to study them beyond 16 if they have not achieved a grade C GCSE. I agree with that proposal, but do the Government plan to accept it, too?
The Demos report also focuses on the importance of literacy and numeracy, but it adds three additional “proven labour market premiums” which, it says, provide the best insurance for young people against becoming NEETs. They are: a character premium, which is basically acquisition of the soft or wider skills; a technical premium, essentially a level 3 qualification; and a graduate premium. It calculates that, if you have all five, you stand the best chance of progressing in the labour market. It is on the soft skills that I want to speak finally.
There are many young people who do not get from their home environment communication skills, problem-solving, punctuality, perseverance, conscientiousness, the ability to work in a team, social and emotional maturity, drive and energy, initiative, ability to adapt to change, the skills needed to learn new things et cetera—all the things that make a successful employee. It is important for those young people that schools and colleges provide opportunities to develop all those. This is where PSHE comes in, as well as courses such as the Certificate of Personal Effectiveness, Wider Key Skills and other qualifications developed by ASDAN and other providers. Last week, I was at a function where employers told how, when they interview, they look for young people with these skills as well as the appropriate academic qualifications. That is why these courses are as important to making a child life-ready and work-ready as English, maths et cetera. That is why I would like reassurance from the Minister that the department will discriminate carefully between these high-quality courses and qualifications and those dead-end, over-equivalenced courses that Alison Wolf was talking about. Schools must continue to be credited for these qualifications in the league tables. If we are dedicated to improving social mobility in this country, and this Government are, we must ensure that the most disadvantaged young people, as they approach the end of their compulsory schooling, are given the skills for life that the more advantaged children learn at home.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Willis, on securing this debate. It is an extremely important time to be talking about these issues. He has a reputation from the other place and from his earlier career of being a terrier on these issues, a real champion of young people in education. It is good to see him continuing that.
I also thank all Members for their contributions, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Fink, for his maiden speech. I was very pleased to hear that his priorities as a new Member of the House are the improvement of children’s health and education. They are very fine objectives and I very much look forward to hearing his contributions to future debates.
Among Members right across the House and among teachers, parents and others working with young people up and down the country, there is a growing concern about this generation of young people, particularly those aged 16 to 25. That concern, which in some ways is unintentional, is none the less the cumulative effect of many of the cuts being brought in by the Government and they are falling hardest on that age group. We have seen dramatic cuts in youth services, in Connexions, in services to address teenage pregnancy, NEETs and so on, limitations on the school curriculum, on sports, music and enrichment activities, tuition fees and rising unemployment for young people and for their families. In this context it is even more important that as many as possible of the subset of the 16 to 25 group, the 16 to 19 year-olds, can stay in education or training as long as possible. There are in fact a range of cuts that, taken together, make it more difficult for thousands of young people and they fall disproportionately on disadvantaged young people affecting their ability to stay on. We have seen the scrapping of the September guarantee, the abolition of the diploma entitlement, the abolition of the apprenticeship guarantee, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the abolition of the EMA. I want to touch briefly on the apprenticeship guarantee before talking about the EMA, as most Members have done.
The additional funding for more apprenticeship places for young people is very welcome, but I wonder whether the Minister understands that in this regard funding is the easy bit. From my experience in government, it is much more difficult to secure high-quality places, engaging employers and matching young people to those placements. The guarantee was designed to put the onus on local agencies and the providers to ensure that the apprenticeship placements were there and to give a guarantee to a young person. I am concerned that if this guarantee is abolished as the Education Bill proposes—the previous Government did not abolish it, they introduced it; the current Government are proposing to abolish it—then, despite the funding, we will not see a substantial increase in apprenticeships.
Baroness Walmsley
The noble Baroness has slightly misunderstood what I said. It was the guarantee for information about apprenticeships that was dropped, not the guarantee of an apprenticeship if suitably qualified.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank the noble Baroness for her clarification but my point remains valid: there is a proposal to abolish the guarantee itself, which is arguably more important. What are the Government going to do to ensure that there is a sufficient supply of good placements?
Secondly, on the abolition of EMAs, despite repeated promises from the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State before the election that they would not abolish them, and despite the independent evaluation from the IFS, to which my noble friend Lord Watson referred, that EMAs increased participation and boosted grades, even if you accept the Government’s dead weight costs, which are dubious, the cost of EMAs is still outweighed by the financial gain of getting young people into training. Despite all this evidence, there was a rush, without consultation and without any alternative plan in place, to abolish them.
The bursary scheme that has now been announced after fierce public protest and the threat of legal action from students in the middle of courses is not only much reduced, with about a third of the previous level of funding, but also has a number of questions about it which I hope the Minister can clarify. First, on the guaranteed bursary of £12,000 for a tiny minority of the most vulnerable students—less than 2 per cent—the Secretary of State made much of the claim rehearsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that this is more than those students would have received under the EMA. It is more—it is 77p per week more. Does the Minister agree that it is only 77p more per week than those students would have received under the maximum EMA to which they would have been entitled?
Secondly, the Secretary of State also announced two other elements—a discretionary pot of the balance of £165 million for colleges to pay out, as well as transitional protection for those students already receiving EMAs to the end of the course. However, he did not make clear whether both of those elements are to be paid out of the £165 million that is left after the bursary for the vulnerable students. Can the Minister clarify this matter? Does he agree that the transitional protection for existing students at the level announced by the Secretary of State will come to about £130 million, as my noble friend said? Does that mean that there is a balance of only £35 million for the discretionary pot for colleges? They already receive £26 million, so if that is the case it is not much of an increase. If these two elements are not coming out of the discretionary pot, where is the £130 million for the transitional protection coming from and what other services have been cut to pay for it?
Thirdly, the Secretary of State claimed that the poorest students on free school meals would receive more than they do at present, with a potential under the discretionary pot scheme of £800 per annum. Does the Minister agree that with a household income of under £17,000, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, identified, to qualify for free school meals, these students would be entitled now to the maximum of £1,170 of the EMA and that therefore, under this scheme, they would face a reduction of over £300 a year?
Fourthly, does the Minister agree that many thousands of young people, whose hard-up families have an income of more than the threshold of just under £17,000 for free school meals but less than the threshold of £21,800 for the maximum EMA—let alone the £30,800 to get any EMA at all—will not be guaranteed anything under this scheme and could end up with nothing?
Finally, as the IFS pointed out, after the proposed discretionary scheme—and this is a very important point, notwithstanding the limitations that we have already identified—young people will not know from their colleges whether they qualify for any support from the discretionary pot before they decide to apply for courses. My big concern is that, unless many young people from very hard-pressed families have some certainty that they will get some financial support, they may well not take the chance and sign up for the course.
The noble Lord, Lord Willis, has made an interesting suggestion of diverting child benefit to preserve a larger budget for EMA under the scheme proposed by the Government. I think there were any number of ways, with the right commitment, that the Government could have approached this differently, with careful consideration and a real attempt to keep the main benefits of the scheme for more of those who qualify. As it is, I feel that the Secretary of State acted very rashly and irresponsibly on this, reneged on those pre-election promises and created a great deal of uncertainty and potential hardship for many hundreds of thousands of young people.
Children: Early Intervention
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
To call attention to the cost-effectiveness, and impact on quality of life, of early intervention in the first few years of a child’s life; and to move for papers.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this very important topic and look forward to hearing from the star-spangled cast assembled in the Chamber. In particular, I look forward to the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Storey and of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
The successful development of our children is one of the most crucial responsibilities of government, both for their sake and for the sake of society and the economy as a whole. There are about 12 million children in the UK, of whom about 1.5 million are growing up in “at risk” situations. However, only 25,000 were on the “at risk” register when it was discontinued. Practitioners have had to raise the bar for intervention because of lack of resources. For example, if one or even both parents are drug addicts, that is no longer sufficient cause to act.
Each child has rights under Article 19 of the UNCRC which compels Governments to intervene on their behalf. It states:
“Governments should ensure that children are properly cared for, and protect them from violence, abuse and neglect by their parents or anyone else who looks after them”.
That is why, although in our culture government intervention in family life is a sensitive issue, we must respond to the evidence that is stacked up so high about the importance of the early years.
It is parents who should bring up their children, and we must help them do it well. In his recent report, Graham Allen states that,
“if we could equip parents to optimise … maternal responsiveness and their impact on their 0-3 year old children, we would be laying secure and strong foundations for all the work that the public sector did thereafter … Crucially, it would enable public expenditure to become developmental and not just remedial”.
The WAVE Trust states:
“The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that dysfunction strongly correlates with adverse experience in early life”.
The relationship with the mother or first carer is the most crucial in the whole of life. Unless there is attachment and attunement, the child will find it very difficult to form future relationships. Unless she feels warm and safe, is rocked and stimulated, has eye contact and a lot of love, her brain and the rest of her body will not develop to its full potential and may become very damaged. Damaged brains mean damaged people, damaged lives and damage and cost to society. To coin a popular phrase, it is a “no-brainer” that investing in that crucial relationship and the early years is money well spent.
There are multiple reasons why I was anxious to have this debate at this time, in the hope of influencing the Government. The Budget is next week. The Government have emphasised their firm intention to improve social mobility during their term of office, and their strategy will be published soon. We also await the child poverty strategy, which will no doubt respond to the report by Frank Field. Graham Allen produced last December his report entitled Early Intervention and its equivalent in Scotland, the Deacon report, has already had a major influence on the policy of the devolved Government. There has been a report on children's services from Professor Eileen Munro, and the important Green Paper on special educational needs. Dame Clare Tickell's review of the foundation years will be out soon. All these government-commissioned documents demonstrate the determination of this coalition Government to get things right for children. What we need to know now is how the Government are going to respond to all this well-evidenced advice, and I look forward to hearing about that from my noble friend the Minister.
There is an enormous amount of evidence which shows that the prenatal and first three to five years of a child’s life are the most important. This is because of the biological fact that the human brain is so complex and so large that we have to be born three years premature. In other words, our brain is not fully developed at birth. It reaches 85 per cent of its potential at age three, and development goes on into the teenage years. During this development, the brain is extremely vulnerable to trauma and responsive to the child’s experience.
Several studies show that it is possible to predict things about a child’s future from as early as 22 months. The Prime Minister himself is clearly aware of this. He said to the Local Government Association in 2007 that if you,
“ask a primary school teacher with a class of 5 year olds, which ones are likely to be in trouble”—
with the law—
“in 5 or 10 years’ time—and chances are, the teacher will be able to tell you with total accuracy”.
It is not just the law where effects will be seen. Education, health, working life and relationships will all be affected. A number of important longitudinal studies all point to the fact that, if we get things wrong in the early years, the results will be long-lasting and expensive.
So what do we mean by early intervention? The word “early” can be ambiguous. It can mean intervening early in a child’s life or early in the genesis of a problem that develops at any stage. All the evidence shows that, if you do enough of the first kind, you avoid the need to do a great deal of the second kind. It is also more cost-effective, bringing returns of £7, £9, £12 or even £19 for every pound invested in various programmes. A £600 family programme can save £45,000 to keep a child in custody for a year.
Some countries are leading the way—notably Sweden, where they start very early indeed with prenatal care. Nearer home, in Scotland, the Finance Committee of the Scottish Parliament has concluded a six-month investigation into preventive spending. It ended with the unanimous cross-party conclusion that a shift to investment in early-years preventive spending should be a priority for action by the Scottish Government, and that it should be carried forward in a non-partisan, all-party manner not just during the next Parliament but over the next 20 years. I believe that we should do the same in the rest of the UK because the problem extends well beyond today’s generation of children. Graham Allen said:
“Those who are dysfunctional have to be assisted not only because of the problems they create in the here and now for themselves and society, through their involvement in crime, drugs and violence. Even more importantly, they also need to be assisted because in their role as parents such problems will impact adversely on newborns and be perpetuated intergenerationally”.
Therefore, we need to take action now for the sake of future generations.
The economic costs of falling behind are enormous, and we are falling behind other countries. UNICEF’s Report Card 9 has a league table of inequalities in child well-being, which shows the UK in 21st position among other OECD countries. The consequences of this include the risk of poorer health and nutrition, more frequent visits to health services, impaired cognitive development and educational under-achievement, reduced linguistic ability, lower skills and aspirations, reduced productivity and adult earnings, higher rates of unemployment and welfare dependence, increased behavioural difficulties, crime and antisocial behaviour, and a greater likelihood of teenage pregnancy and drug or alcohol dependence. The significant costs are borne by business and the economy as a result of lower rates of return on investment, greater expenditure on social services and the justice system, and lower productivity and tax revenues. There is also a price tag on social cohesion and the overall quality of life.
Our Government are relying on growth to improve our economic situation, and growth relies on the abilities of the workforce. A recent report by the Nobel prize-winning economist, James Heckman, on the crucial importance of the pre-school years for skill formation, and the critical role of skill formation in programmes to reduce inequalities, shows that gaps in achievement are primarily due to gaps in skills; skills determine success; families are major producers of skills; gaps emerge early; and investment in the early lives of children in disadvantaged families will help to close achievement gaps. He points out, too, that the skills needed for success require more than cognition and IQ; also important are soft skills such as conscientiousness, perseverance, motivation, ability to work with others, and so on.
Frank Field has outlined the link between child poverty and achievement. He acknowledges the massive amounts of money that the previous Government spent on trying to get families out of poverty but accepts that they had limited success. He now believes that the spending was not sufficiently targeted at the early years and recommends that Governments concentrate not just on supplementing incomes but on providing services to support families. Poverty contributes to educational failure, family stress—which in its turn leads to poor child development—mental health problems, family separation and often violence, so its effects are not just about how big a television you can afford or even whether you can buy good, simple food.
So when and how is it best to intervene? The Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, Harry Burns, concluded that there are four key periods when one can make the greatest difference—pregnancy, age zero to one, pre-school, and the transition from primary to secondary school—and that we should focus investment on interventions for each of these periods based on the strongest evidence.
The Graham Allen report talked about a virtuous circle of interventions: a prenatal package, a postnatal programme, Sure Start children’s centres, primary school follow-on programmes, anti-drug and alcohol programmes, and pre-parenting education through PSHEE in schools for teenagers before they become the next generation of parents. He is right to start with the period before birth. Professor Michael Meaney from McGill University recently explained the important physical changes that take place in the brain as a result of early life experiences and that some of these changes persist throughout life. He did this via the science of epigenetics, which explains how the early life environment changes the function and structure of our very genes, such that twins with identical parental DNA could end up with very different effective DNA. He claimed that early family environment is correlated strongly with many health problems. He said that the child’s experiences affect messenger RNA—a substance through which DNA has its effect on our cells—and that the effects of various chemicals produced during abuse and stress affect the development of the brain and the personality. He emphasised the critical importance of protecting mothers from stress during pregnancy. Pregnancy is the peak period in relationships when domestic violence occurs. Whereas outside pregnancy men mainly hit their partners on the face, during pregnancy the principal target is the woman’s stomach. Therefore, in the argument between nature and nurture, nurture wins and it is the only one that Governments can affect.
All the evidence leads to the importance of fathers as well as mothers and the benefits of investing in parenting programmes. However, there is compelling evidence from the charity Relate that programmes that do not include work on the relationship between the parents are not as effective or enduring in their effect. It tells us that 70 per cent of relationships deteriorate in the first year of a child’s life and that 20 per cent break up. However, trained counsellors and health visitors can and do offer help, so Relate is calling for all health visitors to receive training on the importance of the parental relationship to child development and on how to identify and address the problems.
We can have effective early intervention only if we identify problems early. Here, I should like to mention my concern at the reduction in posts for educational psychologists, who play such an important professional role in identifying not just educational problems but many other mental and emotional problems. There are many effective interventions. Other colleagues will speak about the importance of early intervention in autism, speech and language therapy, child safeguarding, special educational needs, children in care, literacy and counselling in schools.
Getting children into high quality early education is vital, especially for the disadvantaged two year-olds who are now about to receive free early years provision. I am proud to tell the House that, even during all the budget cuts that local authorities have had to endure recently, not one Liberal Democrat authority has closed a single Sure Start centre. It is a matter of priorities and they have made the right decisions. When children get to school it is important that there are follow-on programmes which involve their parents. School Home Support and the FAST programme from Save the Children both help parents to get involved with their children’s learning. Programmes which help children to develop emotional resilience and relationships are also essential. I believe that the SEAL programme and a high quality PSHE come in here.
Where do we go from here? Graham Allen proposes a national assessment centre to do research and evaluate initiatives. Personally I feel that we already have plenty of evidence and need to get on with it. There is, of course, the need to measure the value for money of programmes so that local authorities have a good evidence base to help them to choose on what to spend their money, but that evaluation must be done well. There must be a political will, such as now exists in Scotland and Wales, and there must be money up front. But Graham Allen is talking to the banks about that.
In conclusion, we cannot affect the genes that a child receives—that is up to his parents. However, we can affect how his mother is treated and supported when she is pregnant. We can affect the information that parents receive about what babies need. We can set up a system to identify and work with families that need extra help and support. We must do all that or continue to fail our children.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I thank my noble friend and all those who have taken part in this debate today. Our two maiden speakers proved the truth of the saying that it is not just what you say, it is who you are when you say it, because we would not have had such respect for what they said without our knowledge of the experience that they bring to their opinions.
I take away a number of particular points from today's debate. My noble friend Lady Benjamin has given me a new mantra: a hug a day keeps the doctor away. I shall stick to that. The noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, reminded us what 4Children has said so perceptively; the Minister reflected on the need for a culture shift. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, reminded us of the importance of food for thought; perhaps we should bring back school milk, orange juice and cod liver oil. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, brought us up short in a serious debate by reminding us that childhood is a time for happiness and fun.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, made an important point about early-years staff and our ridiculous upside-down funding. Only this week, I was told that staff who work with the early years are paid half what teachers of five to 18 year-olds are paid. Does that not reflect the value we put on their work? There really is a need for a culture shift. I look forward very much to the statement, to which the Minister referred, in the summer of the Government’s early-years strategy when no doubt we will debate it again. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Education Maintenance Allowance
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with the noble Earl about the importance of children in care. It is a consideration that the Government will have to bear very much in mind as they work out exactly how to deliver targeted help. I accept in full the force of his comments.
Baroness Walmsley
Does the Minister accept that for young people in rural areas the cost of transport to and from a sixth form or college can be very high? Is that one of the priority areas that the Government are considering while studying what to put in place of the EMA?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I accept completely my noble friend’s point about the element of transport costs, particularly in rural areas where it makes up a proportionately larger amount of the costs a young person might have. It remains the case that local authorities have a statutory duty to make arrangements—either through provision or funding—for transport for those groups. As she will know, currently the discretionary fund operated by colleges does not allow payment for transport. While one does not want to get to a scheme whereby all the discretionary fund goes on transport, or to relieve local authorities of that statutory duty, nevertheless we are looking at the point she makes about the importance of transport, particularly in rural areas.