Home School Education Registration and Support Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has form on this. I congratulate him on his determination, ever since he picked up the baton from my retired noble friend Lord Soley to rescue many vulnerable children. Despite the promises of the previous Government, nothing ever materialised, yet the number of children missing from school has clearly significantly increased, even though we do not know the exact number. So, alarmingly, has the number of children recruited on to county lines to deal in drugs under the intimidation and violence of criminal gangs. Was it not a dereliction of duty for the previous Government to abandon these children for so long without recognised education?

I should first say that it is still of prime importance to make it easier for all children to attend proper registered schools and thrive there. That has not always been so, and of course, as has been said, there have always been parents who educated their children at home well—often very well. Such parents have nothing to fear from the Bill, nor will the parents of children in registered religious schools. I hope that, in the interests of the large number of children who have massively missed out by being out of school, all parents will understand the need for the register.

This Bill will provide the lifeline of a proper education for some groups of children in particular. I first mention children of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, who drop out or are expelled or encouraged out of insufficiently inclusive schools in larger proportions than any other ethnic group. Their parents may have chosen home education because the bullying their children faced is intolerable, but they may not be equipped or have the time to home-educate properly.

However, there are also the children who have been made to attend those unregistered illegal schools whose narrow curricula and harsh punishments do not enable them to thrive. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found cases of physical and sexual abuse in some of those schools. This also needs to be dealt with

I have a few small concerns with the noble Lord’s Bill. In new Section 436D(1)(a), the obligation on parents to inform the local authority of home education may be impracticable for marginalised parents. Perhaps it should be the schools which inform the local authority, at least in the case of expulsion or the choice of elective home education. Also, I cannot work out what the difference is between new Section 436C(2)(j) and (k). That is only a detail, though.

Finally, a small number of families travel for work and in observance of cultural tradition, but local authority transit sites allow them to stop for only three months at a time, which disrupts their children’s education. They do not want that, but it predisposes them as a family to choose home education when they might not have the capacity. If the Department for Education were to continue its very welcome support for Open Doors Education & Training’s distance learning scheme, partnered with the Traveller Movement, this gap in home education could be filled. Can my noble friend guarantee that?

I hope that our Government can give this Bill a fair wind or provide their own version of its promise.

Education: Early Years Attainment Gap

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

With respect to services delivering healthcare, my noble and honourable friends in the Department of Health and Social Care are considering the implications and will bring them forward. I point out to noble Lords opposite that there is no point demanding improved provision and arguing for, for example, a childcare entitlement that will involve considerable additional spending—which this Government have found in last week’s Budget—while being unwilling to find the money necessary to fill the £22 billion black hole that we inherited from them.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a certain amount of research which shows that children who attended early years education thrived more. They had higher incomes and they certainly benefited from higher and tertiary education, and I think they kept out of prison a bit more. Will my noble friend keep an eye on the continuation of this research, which might even help her get more funds for early years care from the Treasury?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that investing money in our youngest children demonstrably improves their outcomes later in life. It is the most effective place in which to invest that money. That is why my honourable friend the Secretary of State has made it her number one priority for the Department for Education and why we were pleased to receive from the Treasury additional money to enable us to make progress in this last week. I will certainly keep an eye on the evidence that my noble friend identifies, and I am sure my noble friends—including my noble friend Lord Livermore sitting next to me on the Front Bench—will be keen to hear about it when they find additional resources for this very important area of work in the future.

Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I welcome this Bill, so comprehensively and eloquently introduced by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. It is indeed time to pay more attention to what citizenship consists of and what our society stands for. We benefit from a diverse society but its cohesion has deteriorated during the past years. The Bill would improve cohesion by affirming common and positive values. In general, it would give our children—and others—firm ground on which to develop the standards of behaviour that we need to live together peacefully and creatively. It covers the important elements that make our social norms.

I would like to highlight one provision. A principle from which we would particularly benefit from promulgating is that underlying the Bill’s inclusion of individual worth: the value of respect for and acknowledgment of the dignity of each of our fellow citizens. We have expressed this in our laws of human rights. They essentially enable tolerance; if we are to be tolerant, we need to be aware of what we tolerate and what the enemies of tolerance are. Both democracy and the rule of law underpin freedom but, without respect for individual worth, freedom is undermined and, in particular, minorities suffer from majority decisions. It is also time, I think we all agree, that respect for the environment took its place among our ideas of how we respect each other.

We should take pride in a degree of ownership of modern ideas of human rights. It is true that the ideas of respect and tolerance have an ancient pedigree—the code of Hammurabi and the edicts of the fifth century BC Indian king Ashoka are often quoted as the origins of human rights concepts; perhaps they are inherent in the way human nature has developed—but the European Convention and the post-war United Nations instruments have had substantial British input. Whatever some eccentric politicians might say, they have been universally adopted and underline our sense of common humanity. I would like to see the words “human rights” on the face of the Bill, therefore; I hope that, nevertheless, our Government can give it, or their own version of it, a fair wind.

King’s Speech

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I too shall underline the role of further education. I declare an interest as a past chair and current fellow of the Working Men’s College and a former chair of the Department for Education stakeholders’ group for the education of Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people. May I also say, after my new noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern’s inspiring maiden speech, how good it is to see her in Parliament again, and in one of her many areas of expertise: education?

The nation has voted for change. Adult and further education are essential to change. Closing the substantial gap in our level and spread of skills would go far to achieve the improvement in productivity that we need to fund services, security and well-being. Of course we need investment in technology itself but we need, crucially, investment in people. It is no coincidence that our competitors have better productivity, together with higher status and capacity for technical education. I welcome the comprehensive strategy for post-16 education in the Labour Party manifesto, referred to in the gracious Speech.

The British neglect of technical education is long-standing. Changing it requires a new mindset: parity of esteem in engineering, for instance, valuing design and all the skills which require problem-solving, collaboration and multidisciplinary approaches far more highly, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, noted. We were good at this when our great 18th and 19th-century inventors flourished—though, interestingly, few of them had an elite education—and we remain good at high-level scientific education, invention and discovery. But where technical education kept pace with scholarship on the mainland of Europe, here it lagged, perhaps outgunned by the prestige of classical public school education and ideas about the needs of governing an empire.

In further education, so we have inherited confusion, a welter of qualifications and a failing apprenticeship system. The new comprehensive approach should rely on destination data to monitor that it is getting people into the jobs we need for a modern, high-skill economy.

The personal satisfaction of worthwhile work, cited by our Prime Minister, is also a force for social cohesion. When I was chair of the Working Men’s College, the sense of achievement among students who were retraining, repairing the gaps in their secondary education, or bringing the motivation which moved them to emigrate to the United Kingdom to inspire qualifying for work, brought home how precious personal fulfilment is. Women who had never finished school were able to provide for their families; young men whose school education had left them apathetic and unconfident found their feet in society.

But education think tanks have estimated that a missing third never get on to the skills ladder. Further education can return them to the path to worthwhile work. For that, what goes on in secondary schools is crucial; early careers guidance for all, steering towards examination subjects, the essential ensuring of basic literacy and numeracy to gain entrance to the next stage, bringing back the children who have dropped out—all these are passports to personal fulfilment and economic contribution for the missing third. Can my noble friend assure me that the path to further education will start in schools?

Finally, a shameful reason for dropout is the alienation which comes from discrimination and prejudice. The proportions of some black and minority-ethnic groups who enter and complete further education are far below the numbers of their populations. This is starkly obvious for Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for her support for efforts to tackle their disadvantage. I have been working with the Association of Colleges on a campaign to widen access to all black and minority-ethnic people. Since April, 40 colleges have pledged action, which we shall celebrate in Parliament on 9 September. Will my noble friend join with me in congratulating those colleges and the association on a project which will improve lives and help to power our economy?