Lifelong Learning
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this being my fifth appearance at this Dispatch Box in the last two days, I was feeling marginally jaded before this debate, but I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that I am certainly not grumpy. I have been inspired by the quality of the debate, which started, of course, with the ambitious and wide-ranging vision set down by my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth. I thank him for bringing forward this debate with the opportunity for inspiration it has given us.
I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Curran on her excellent maiden speech. I was pleased to hear her talk about her international work on women’s development and participation, on which I was able to work with her in Lebanon. I thought we had become friends, so I was a bit concerned about her comments about Chief Whips, which, of course, I have been in the past, but I feel absolute confident that she will make an enormous contribution in this, her third Chamber. I know that her family will be enormously proud of her for everything she has achieved and, I am sure, will achieve in this Chamber.
As many noble Lords have said, lifelong learning is the continuous, self-motivated pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, insight and skills. It is the joy of asking questions, the thrill of gaining new perspectives, the unquenchable thirst for understanding, and the satisfaction of personal growth. It is not merely the pursuit of knowledge, important though that is.
Noble Lords also emphasised the breadth of the benefits from lifelong learning. I will start with the economic value. Economically, the value of lifelong learning cannot be overstated. Indeed, as a Government whose number one mission is economic growth, we are clear that growth will allow us to fix the foundations and rebuild Britain. It will fund our public services, bring investment to hospitals and schools, provide good jobs for more people, and, most importantly, raise living standards for everyone. But that will require us to invest in the human capital, as several noble Lords have argued, as well as the physical capital. It will also require us to respond to the change we see in our economy. Several noble Lords have commented on how industries are constantly changing and churning. Old jobs are dying and new ones are sprouting. New technologies are springing up, societal norms are progressing and maturing, and the volume of information available to us is proliferating at an unprecedented pace, so we must prepare for the future of our economy, not just for today.
Even today, over a third of job vacancies are due to skills shortages and 5.7% of the workforce has a skills gap. With an ageing population—I noted the willingness of Members of your Lordship’s House to focus on the older end of the age range, but they are absolutely right—in an ever-evolving economy that is undergoing an acceleration of automation and artificial intelligence, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, identified, the ability to learn and adapt is not just a valuable skill but a critical necessity for survival and success. To reiterate that point, 7% of UK jobs face a high probability of automation by 2030, rising to a staggering 18% by 2035, so economic change is necessitating an ever-increasing need for lifelong learning—and quite rightly, I have suggested.
The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, the first Permanent Secretary who I worked with as a Minister, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, both rightly argued that the direct relationship between economic growth and a well-educated and skilled workforce means that we need to keep persuading our colleagues in the Treasury about the contribution that human capital and skills make to productivity. Noble Lords can be assured that that is a case that we make and will continue to make in the run up to the next spending revue.
We learned as well that longer life expectancy means that many people may need or want to work longer, and those who continue to learn and reskill will stay ahead of the curve, capable of meeting the demands of tomorrow. At this point, I have to give the noble Lord, Lord Bates, every good wish with his PhD and also the husband of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. It is creditable to see the way in which people are continuing to study as they get older.
To return to economic significance, that is why this Government are devising an innovative and fit-for-the-future industrial strategy. We will ensure that, alongside that strategy aimed at delivering and investing in the high-growth sectors that will enable our economy to grow, we will encourage our workforce to continually learn, develop and adapt. We will not just be investing in individuals and the specific occupations necessary for delivering that industrial strategy but also enabling our economy to grow in that ever-changing landscape to procure a prosperous future for our communities, economy and nation.
Several noble Lords also talked rightly about the social value of lifelong learning because it cultivates a vibrant community. Noble Lords will know—several cited studies that show it—that lifelong learning is associated with higher levels of interpersonal and social trust, social connections and community engagement. It leads to greater social cohesion and integration and an appreciation for different religions and nationalities. It fosters civic spirit, too, particularly regarding local involvement and volunteering and democratic participation, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. It has also been shown positively to improve individuals’ political understanding and engagement. There is also clear evidence of the links between improving levels of education and reductions in crime and anti-social behaviour. These benefits make lifelong learning a huge harvester of social value, bridging gaps and transforming the lives of the many who engage with it.
On the individual level, lifelong learning is a key ingredient for self-fulfilment and personal growth, as we have heard from many noble Lords this afternoon. It is the key route to ensuring that talent meets opportunity and that your success is not determined by your background. That is why this Government are determined to break down barriers to opportunity. It is not often that you get a riffing Lord and a reference to Mick Jagger in the same debate, but the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, is the Mick Jagger of our Chamber today. More significantly, he also focused on the need to ensure that lifelong learning benefits those who are most disadvantaged and furthest from learning. He was right to draw our attention to young people who are not in education, employment or training. Of course, this Government’s youth guarantee is an important way of ensuring that opportunities are available to reduce the number of young people who fall into that group.
Our opportunity mission is aimed at breaking the link between a child’s background and their future success so that whoever you are and wherever you are from hard work will mean that you can get on in life. Whether that is by the traditional academic route through a degree or by acquiring new skills or retraining, it opens doors to new opportunities and enables and empowers individuals to unlock their full potential.
Learning also leads to better outcomes, individually and socially. Indeed, according to the OECD, better educated individuals live healthier and longer lives, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Having a degree reduces chances of excessive drinking, smoking and obesity—although perhaps not during your time at university. Graduates have better physical and mental well-being, and lifelong learning fosters an individual sense of identity and resilience, helping to deepen a sense of one’s purpose in life. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who has apologised for having a booked train that he has to catch, made that case very strongly.
I also thank my noble friend Lord Blunkett, who has a proud record of focusing on lifelong learning and adult learning. I will come back to that in a moment. Along with the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords, he focused on the diversity of provision for lifelong learning. It is, importantly, about state-funded provision but it is also about a whole range of other provision. There is the contribution of faith, as the right reverend Prelate outlined, and of our trade unions—the noble Lord, Lord Monks, was right to identify the contribution of the union learning fund. At a time when employer investment in training is falling, it is important for this Government to think about how we can bring together the contribution of unions alongside employers to ensure more investment and more ability for people in the workplace to have the skills development they need. There is also the Workers’ Educational Association. At the end of his teaching career, my father enjoyed his contribution to teaching in the WEA.
All these points make us focus on what the Government can do to ensure that there is commitment to and investment in the development of lifelong learning. We need to ensure that children and young people in our primary and secondary schools can engage in a wide-ranging and multidisciplinary curriculum, which is the objective of the curriculum and assessment review. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, identified the importance of careers, and I thank her for her work in and leadership of the Careers & Enterprise Company, which is making an important contribution, helping this Government to deliver on our commitment to two weeks of work experience, and to 1,000 additional careers advisers to develop the National Careers Service to provide people with the information necessary, throughout life, to be able to make those changes and have that opportunity to learn.
We will bring forward a post-16 strategy, which will more broadly describe the post-16 education and skills system that we want to see. We will consider how we deliver the skills that our country needs, now and in the future, and how we build a stronger skills system where everyone is supported to thrive in life and work, with the right support for reskilling to meet the challenging needs of the economy. This will include how we create a culture of lifelong learning by building clear and coherent pathways for learners of all ages, and increasing co-operation among skills partners within a framework of clearly defined roles and responsibilities. We will publish a vision paper for this strategy shortly and engage widely with all partners across the system to make this vision a reality and ensure that we develop a culture of skills and lifelong learning.
I recognise the points noble Lords made about our wide-ranging and remarkably diverse further education sector. As several noble Lords mentioned, we often see our FE colleges as the heart of our communities and as a magnet for businesses, opening up partnerships with employers to develop skills.
Our internationally renowned universities—the UK continues to place prominently in the top 10 and the top 100 academic institutions worldwide—are important. They deserve the commitment this Government have made to a sustainable funding model and reform. Everybody, not only students, benefits from a flourishing higher education sector. But we need to make sure that we broaden access to and participation in HE.
Several noble Lords rightly pushed the Government on the development of the lifelong learning entitlement. Our ever-evolving economy and its dynamic workforce need a higher education system that offers different types of provision to suit different individuals. That is why, as part of the Government’s work, we are introducing the lifelong learning entitlement, which will deliver much-needed transformational change to the current student finance system.
Quite rightly, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Wolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, wanted me to reiterate our commitment to delivering the LLE, as announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. I can assure noble Lords that we are working to launch the LLE in the 2026-27 academic year. The slight delay will allow us to improve its impact and effectiveness by ensuring that the policy and design fully align with the Government’s vision. It will enable us to refine our delivery and implementation plans, including, as the noble Baroness said, the work of the Student Loans Company in preparing for it.
Importantly, in terms of innovation, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others, that this needs to be an opportunity to ensure that we are not simply paying for a longer period of time in the same provision, but that we are giving education providers the push and the time to prepare innovative ways for people to access higher education. That is the opportunity of the lifelong learning entitlement. It is one that I am determined that we should push higher education providers to fully recognise.
In relation to skills, we must utilise local skills improvement plans, apprenticeships, and the growth and skills levy, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Young, to equip people with the skills needed to not only survive but thrive. I am looking forward to bringing forward more information about how the growth and skills levy will provide some of the flexibility to enable more employers to use it and more learners to develop the skills they need from it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, made an important point about how we promote skills. I am sure noble Lords are looking forward to next week, which is National Apprenticeship Week, when we will be able to promote particularly the benefits of apprenticeships. As we discussed only yesterday, we are determined that Skills England will help us unify the skills landscape and ensure that the workforce is equipped with the skills required to raise economic growth.
We must foster adult learning through the adult skills fund—notwithstanding some of the difficult decisions that we are having to make about the funding of adult skills. We are absolutely determined that adult skills continue to bear fruit, not only in supporting adult learners to gain the literacy, numeracy, digital and vocational skills that they need for meaningful employment but to drive sustained economic growth and innovation and to deliver the health, well-being and pleasure that many noble Lords have talked about being a result of lifelong learning.
It is the case that we need more devolution so that the nations and regions can make effective decisions about education which best reflect their needs. This will ensure value for money in spending resources and enable localised benefits in the opportunities of adult learning.
I hope I can reassure my noble friend Lord Blunkett on residential colleges. We recognise the important contribution that these colleges make to our system. They will feature as part of our discussions with mayoral authorities.
I finish by thanking noble Lords for the enthusiasm that they have shown for lifelong learning throughout the whole range of areas that we have covered. I assure them of this Government’s absolute commitment to ensuring that lifelong learning remains and develops as an essential part of this country’s educational offer: to offer young people, adults and the older ones among us the opportunity to learn, upskill, retrain and develop throughout the whole of their lives.
School Accountability and Intervention
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for her recognition that this Statement represents the objective that, I believe, is shared across this House: to ensure that every child in every school is getting the very best opportunities to learn; and that, where there is a need to improve the provision being provided in a school, that happens as effectively and as quickly as possible. That is because every day that a child spends in a school that is not performing as well as it needs to is a day lost to that child at a crucial part of their life.
It is with that objective in mind, of course, that the Government outlined on Monday the consultation on the approach that will be taken to accountability, intervention and improvement, alongside the consultation being carried out by Ofsted on the revised inspection framework. The development of the report card will provide considerably more information, granularity and insight for parents in determining that most difficult of choices—where they want their child to go to school—and for the schools themselves and others to determine areas of improvement and where they need to see more work. As the noble Baroness said, one of the most important priorities is to able to intervene and improve schools as quickly as possible and appropriately. I will come to that in a moment.
The noble Baroness started with a reasonable barrage of statistics. I will do my best to respond to the suggestions that she made but I may well need to follow up some of those points subsequently in a letter. The first thing she said was that the number of pupils in underperforming schools was 500,000, not 300,000. To be clear, the figure of 300,000 was for those schools that are stuck in a period of persistent underperformance. This Government are unwilling to allow that consistent underperformance to continue and we have been clear that we need to have a wider range of improvement tools than has been the case previously.
The noble Baroness characterised the RISE teams as being within the department, but these are teams based in regions, made up of people who have enormous background in and experience of school improvement, many of whom come from multi-academy trusts and who are in a position both to support the turnaround of schools that are not performing adequately and to ensure that those schools that are not seeing improvements over a period of time are challenged and supported to make that improvement. To be clear, for those stuck schools, if, after two years of this targeted intervention, they were not improving, once again, the option of structural intervention and change would be considered.
What the Government are also proposing in this consultation is that up until September 2026, where schools would previously have been in categories of concern, where they are in what we might have thought of as special measures—in other words, where there is not the capacity of the leadership within the school to improve it—there will be immediate structural intervention, but where the leadership could enable that to change, they will be subject to immediate academisation. After September 2026, when we have the RISE teams fully up and running, for those schools where the leadership has the potential to change, we would expect the RISE teams to be focusing on and targeting them to make sure that there is improvement.
Of course, the reason for taking this more sophisticated approach to improvement is precisely because, while there is clearly evidence that being academised can lead to improvement, there is also evidence that in many cases, that can take too long, given the urgency of improving education for our children. Some 40% of academisations take more than a year to convert; 20% take more than two years. We cannot wait for those structural changes to happen, important and impactful though they might be. We need to ensure that children’s chances are improved as quickly as possible.
On the specific questions about the Ofsted consultation, it is important to emphasise that it is a consultation that builds on the Big Listen, which makes important recommendations; for example, about how the inspection will now focus, as noble Lords have said, on nine areas. This is a consultation, but I support the move from a single headline grade, where the emphasis was literally on a headline, which was of course very low in information for parents making that decision but very high stakes for schools, and very much did not encompass the nuance of where a school might be doing well, where it might be more challenged or where it might have exemplary practice that needed to be shared more widely. There is consultation on these areas, but I think the fact that they will now include absence, attendance and inclusion—to respond to the noble Lord’s point about the significance of ensuring that there are improvements around SEND, I think that partly covers that point—is important.
On the safeguarding point, I will write to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness about the specific questions about the proposals for follow-up visits. The noble Lord rightly mentioned the tragic death of Ruth Perry, and the campaigning work of her sister, Professor Julia Waters, has been important for ensuring that Ofsted thought carefully about the approach that it was taking. One of the issues highlighted there was the impact of the safeguarding measure on the overall headline grade. One of the reasons for the different approach to safeguarding that Ofsted is proposing is to avoid that position, where a failure on safeguarding would have the impact that it had in that particular case, while also recognising that it is important that schools are assessed on the basis of the quality of their safeguarding.
On the point about whether or not the Government should have a duty or a power to academise, we will of course have the opportunity, when the Bill comes from the other place, to look in detail at the intention of Clauses 43 and 44, and I look forward to doing that. I just push back against the noble Baroness’s suggestion that in some way or other there has been a pause in this Government’s commitment to intervening where necessary and to ensuring that all our schools are improved. In the case that both she and her right honourable friend in the other place identified, it is not as clear-cut as she says that there was a revocation of the decision to academise. In fact, that was a quite considerable change of circumstance in that particular case.
Let me respond to the point that the noble Lord made about the pressure on teachers. My experience as a teacher, having been on the receiving end of an Ofsted inspection, notwithstanding that it was some time ago, is that, yes, it is stressful, but no teacher wants to teach in a school that is not doing the best for its pupils, and having an improvement, inspection and accountability regime that ensures that teachers are able to successfully support the children who need it will be good for teachers, good for parents, good for schools—and, most importantly, good for children.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on giving so much attention to school standards and to some urgency on school improvement, but does my noble friend agree that by far the most important quality that is needed in any school is first-class teachers? Perhaps she could reassure the House that the consultation will not be just about Ofsted, although obviously there will be a lot of consideration of some of the issues about changing the Ofsted structure. What will be done to improve in-service training for teachers who are not achieving what they should be and who are neither inspiring, nor exciting, nor encouraging their children’s aspirations successfully? This needs to happen, especially for disadvantaged pupils. Can she tell the House a little about what is being done, apart from the RISE scheme, to improve both school leadership and the quality of classroom teaching?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point about teachers. In fact, probably less than an hour and a half ago, we were engaged in a discussion across the Dispatch Box about the significance of teachers. She is absolutely right. What I would say about these two consultations running side-by-side with respect to teachers really goes back to my final point in my previous response. I think it is valuable for teachers to have not just that headline grade that was previously the case with Ofsted, but the more granular understanding of where there are strengths within the school, where there are areas for improvement, where, as I said, there is exemplary practice that needs to be shared more widely—and, incidentally, how they can get access to that good practice in other areas, to improve their practice and their school.
My noble friend also makes an important point about training. We are as a Government working on how to not just recruit additional teachers but keep them in the classroom and ensure that they are able to improve and gain in competence and skill. That is why, in looking at and reviewing the national professional qualifications, we will want to consider those forms of training and opportunities for continuing professional development that will really focus on the areas that teachers need and that will make the most difference to the pupils they are teaching.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I apologise—twice: once for being late for this debate and once for being a bit keen. Ofsted is a real problem, and there is quite a simple solution. A friend of mine, who is a teacher, told me a story. They were told, “Ofsted is coming tomorrow. The school will be open all night”. That is not a fair reflection of the school or the teachers. If Ofsted goes in twice, the first time is a snap inspection. It sits down with the leadership and talks through where they are going wrong and where they are going right. Nine months or a year later, Ofsted goes back, and that is the inspection that gets published. That takes the pressure off everybody and gives a fair result. Will the Minister reflect those ideas back to the consultation? I think they will listen more to her than to me.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Given the noble Lord’s background as a teacher, I am sure that Ofsted will listen to his response to the consultation, which I hope he will make. While I have some sympathy with the concerns of teachers about the arrival of Ofsted—having experienced it myself, as I have already said—I am not wholly convinced that students can afford to wait nine months between the preparatory conversation and the point at which some judgment is made. Frankly, if things are going wrong, it is important for students and parents that those are identified at the appropriate time, and, if things are going right, it is important that those are shared as widely as possible.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, on the move from the duty to intervene to the power to intervene when a school is inadequate, the schools the Minister outlined that have taken a long time often have complicated land or financial issues, as I am sure she is aware. Trusts already go in before the legal status has changed, and for schools that go through the process relatively quickly, there are occasions when the fact that everybody knows there is a duty to academise speeds things up. The Minister will be aware that, by virtue of these contracts, the Department for Education is now a regulator; it regulates schools. Is there another example of a regulator, such as the Charity Commission or the FCA, that does not have a duty to intervene and merely relies on these powers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness will know from her experience that the ability to academise a school does not depend on a duty in every case, and nor did it do so under the last Government. The 2RI policy was a power for academisation to happen in those cases, not a duty. I am not sure I would characterise the department in quite the way she did; nevertheless, it comes back to this point: what is the most appropriate range of interventions that can be used to ensure that the improvement we see in the schools that need it is as speedy, well supported and appropriate as possible? For example, the distinction between schools that have the leadership capacity to improve themselves, and those that do not, is an important one. The RISE teams, with their targeted interventions for schools that need it, and their broader universal offer to direct schools looking to improve in the right areas, are an important addition to ensure that all our schools are improving quickly.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I remind noble Lords of my entry in the register of interests as the chair of the multi-academy trust E-ACT. My noble friend will know that some argue that the Secretary of State has oversteered back towards a model of school improvement based on fear. What reassurance can she give that Ofsted will go further to ensure that inspections are more consistent and more supportive, and when can we expect much-needed universal inspections of MATs, with a move to more risk-based inspections, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Importantly, as a result of the Big Listen, Ofsted is also publishing as part of the consultation considerably more information on how schools will be assessed. For example, publication of toolkits and the consultations gives schools much more of an opportunity to know the basis on which they are going to be inspected, and more of an idea about what counts as good and where improvement might be needed. My noble friend is right: that will be an important way of ensuring that balance between challenge and an appropriate way for schools to understand what needs to happen in order to improve. We are committed to introducing MATs inspections, and we will engage with the sector and bring forward legislation when time allows. This is an important area, like the Ofsted consultation and the department’s consultation, and we are genuinely open to ensuring that this works appropriately, gets the balance right and ensures that children’s education is being improved.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, the proposed five-tier report card for schools is receiving much airtime, but can the Minister tell us what is being done to measure the effectiveness of Ofsted inspectors? This follows on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Knight. Should there not be an appraisal system with report cards, bearing in mind the many negative anecdotes from headteachers about inspections that we have heard about during this short debate, and bearing in mind the sensitivities, particularly with multiple inspections, that affect headteachers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The quality of the inspections that Ofsted carries out is important, as is the capacity and training of Ofsted inspectors to provide that. That, of course, is the responsibility of the chief inspector and the structures in Ofsted, but I am sure that everybody takes the noble Viscount’s point that there needs to be quality in those who are inspecting our schools, as well as the expected quality in those who are directly delivering education.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
Further to the comments by the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Berridge, about the need for forced academisation, does my noble friend agree that there is no evidence that the only help available to an underperforming school is for it to become an academy? Support is available in the maintained sector—an issue we will come to in more detail when the schools Bill is developed—but it is a fallacy to suggest that that is the only hope for underperforming schools.
It is appropriate that the two consultations published this week were published on the same day, and that the consultation periods ended on the same date. However, I am a bit concerned about the Ofsted proposals. I know that the report is based on the Big Listen, but as I understand it, some aspects of it are already being trialled in certain schools. Does it not bring into question just how accurate it is to describe the document as a consultation, if, as it seems, some people have made decisions already?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I can assure my noble friend that, in both cases, they are genuine consultations. The objective of ensuring that all our children are in good schools is shared not just across this House but by parents, teachers, inspectors, school leaders and many others involved in the education sector, and that is why I can assure my noble friend that this is a genuine consultation. Here, trialling can sometimes be part of the consultation, to determine whether things are running successfully. Personally, I think it is possible to trial and pilot, and to consult, to get the broadest input into ensuring that the right decisions are made after that.
Recruitment of Teachers
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Barran
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve recruitment of teachers.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, teachers are the most important factor in a child’s education. We are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament. We have made good progress, implementing the 5.5% pay award and announcing £233 million for trainee bursaries. The best recruitment strategy is a strong retention strategy. We have increased early career retention payments and are reducing teacher workload and improving well-being.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, but could she be a bit clearer about the Government’s target of 6,500 new teachers? As she rightly pointed out, retention is extremely important. In the last year for which I think there is published data, there were just over 44,000 teachers recruited while just over 43,500 left the profession, leaving 469,000 in the profession—an increase of 27,000 since 2010. Can we be clear about the timing of the Government’s target of 6,500? Is that 6,500 more teachers net by September 2028 compared to September 2024? Will she also confirm whether those teachers will be going into shortage subjects in secondary or across primary, secondary and colleges?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The first thing we can be clear about is that this target was neither made nor met by the previous Government. Secondly, we are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament. Thirdly, she is absolutely right that retention is key. This is why the targeted retention incentive, worth up to £6,000 after tax per year for early career teachers, is being provided in key STEM and technical subjects, in disadvantaged schools and all FE colleges.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend will agree that the curriculum and assessment review will be a very important factor in recruitment and retention of teachers. Can she update the House on that? Does she agree that there is an earnest hope that the results of the curriculum and assessment review will lead to much greater teacher agency, which will in itself improve retention and probably recruitment?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I strongly agree with my noble friend. The curriculum and assessment review is important to ensure that teachers have a curriculum that promotes high standards in reading, writing and maths and is strong and knowledge-rich. It also provides the opportunity for innovation, expertise and, as she said, the agency of teachers to provide the absolutely best, broadest and richest experience for our children. That is a clear objective of the curriculum and assessment review.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has inherited a situation where we have the highest number of teachers leaving the profession and the fewest people wanting to go into teaching. As she rightly pointed out, we have a shortage of teachers of specialist subjects. Is it not time that we no longer look at sticking-plaster solutions but at the whole picture? If we are to make teaching a profession that people want to go into, we have to deal with workload problems, the salary and some of the problems that teachers face in terms of their role increasingly becoming one of social workers. If we do that, more and more people will want to become teachers.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I completely agree with the noble Lord about the challenges, not just that individual teachers have in the classroom, but that we have in attracting people to and keeping them in the profession. He has identified a range of areas that we need to make progress on as a Government and on which we are already taking action. I have mentioned some of the proposals around retention. The noble Lord is right about teacher workload and well-being. Our improved workload and well-being for school staff service, developed alongside school leaders, contains a whole range of resources to enable schools to review and reduce workload and improve staff well-being. On the other pressures that happen outside school but which children bring into school, we will have the opportunity during the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to consider the other initiatives that the Government are taking to support the most vulnerable children, strengthen our children’s social care services and, through a whole range of other provisions, make sure that children are able to arrive at school appropriately supported and ready to learn.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, two-thirds of modern language teachers are EU nationals. The shortage of qualified MFL teachers is second only to maths. Schools and teacher organisations have told the APPG on Modern Languages, which I co-chair, that the cost of a visa can be prohibitive and the process difficult to navigate. Would the Minister agree to look again at an overhaul of the visa system or a visa waiver, which would provide urgent relief in unblocking the supply chain of language teachers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
It is certainly the case that there has been a disappointing failure to address the shortage of modern foreign language teachers. That is why, for example, one of the things that the Government will do is extend bursary and scholarship eligibility to all non-UK-national trainees in languages. That means scholarships and bursaries worth a considerable amount of money. I note the noble Baroness’s point about visa costs. I think what is more important is that it is clear to domestic or international potential modern foreign language teachers that this is a country in which their efforts will be reasonably well rewarded and that they will be provided with all the other support necessary to carry out that important role of language teaching.
Baroness Fleet (Con)
My Lords, I do not think that the Minister has fully answered my noble friend’s question. Is it 6,500 more teachers by the end of this Parliament?
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, the House of Lords Select Committee on the future of seaside towns back in 2019 identified a real problem with the retention of teachers in coastal and remote communities. Could the Minister outline the Government’s approach to this issue now?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that there are clearly areas of the country where there are particular challenges, both for children and for the teachers teaching them. Therefore, this impacts on retention. That is why, for example, in terms of the targeted retention incentive, we are focusing it on teachers within the first five years of their career, which is the point at which many teachers decide if they will stay on or not. We are focusing on STEM subjects and on those teachers who come and are willing to stay in those areas and schools that are most disadvantaged. I am sure that some of the schools that my noble friend referenced would come within this category. Therefore, there would be support to retain teachers.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister will know, there is a shortage of teachers in the vital subjects of art and design and music. What plans are there to increase the level of the ITT bursary in those subjects, because they certainly lag behind others?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I certainly recognise the problem that the noble Earl identifies. I have to admit to not being completely clear about the bursary to which he refers; perhaps I could write to him further about that. All the provisions in terms of honouring the pay award, ensuring reasonable workload, flexible working and the retention payments that I have spoken about are the ways in which we can get people into the classroom and the ways in which we can keep them there.
Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]
Baroness Smith of Malvern ExcerptsWednesday 5th February 2025
(1 year ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Act 2025 View all Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 38-R-I Marshalled list for Report - (3 Feb 2025)
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all Members who have been involved in the consideration of this Bill for being willing to meet with me and share concerns. I am glad that people have recognised that we have made progress as a result of that process.
I think that we all agree that effective skills provision is critical to boosting growth and spreading opportunity to all parts of the country. Through this Bill, the Government are taking steps to enable the rapid development and delivery of high-quality training aligned to current and future skills needs. For this to be possible, we need to ensure that the processes for developing and approving training are sufficiently flexible to respond to diverse and changing skills needs across the economy and the wide range of different occupational specialisms. This Bill, therefore, introduces specific flexibilities intended to make the system more responsive and more focused on the needs of employers and other key stakeholders.
For those who argue, quite rightly, that we should listen to employers, I say that it is precisely because of what employers have told us about the need for speed and flexibility that we have introduced the provisions in this Bill. As I tried to do in Committee, I also reassure noble Lords about the absolutely central role that employers will play in the work of Skills England. Building on the work of IfATE, employers will continue to play a critical role in the design and delivery of apprenticeships and technical education. It is crucial that those reflect the needs of employers and that employers have confidence in them. Skills England will ensure that there is a comprehensive suite of apprenticeships, training and technical qualifications for individuals and employers to access, all of which will be informed by what employers and other partners tell us that they need.
As I have said on several occasions about the functions that are being transferred, and in response to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, the default position will continue to be that groups of persons, including employers, are responsible for preparing standards and apprenticeship assessment plans. In other words, what is proposed in this Bill maintains the same focus on employers as in the original Act setting up IfATE.
What is more, we have the experience of how Skills England has been operating in shadow form. We have Skills England’s first report, which provided a very important springboard for Skills England to engage in further dialogue between employers, unions, providers, experts, regional bodies and the Government to interrogate, corroborate and build our shared understanding of what skills the economy needs. The assessment of skills needs, including the needs of employers in different sectors, will be continued in Skills England’s second report, which is due in early 2025. In every case that noble Lords have talked about, I am absolutely clear—and we have already seen evidence from Skills England—that employers, representatives of sector skills groups and employer representative bodies should be, will be, and are already being, engaged by Skills England.
The question is whether these amendments act against the wish of the Government, and, I believe, of other noble Lords, to ensure that we are doing this in the most speedy and appropriate way. It is vital that the Bill does not lose its ability to deliver this change—the change to be more responsive and more focused on the needs of employers and key stakeholders—by taking on amendments which will slow down Skills England and, in some cases, make it slower and more cumbersome, with more prior requirements than IfATE’s current processes. Any such burden would impact the wider skills system and hinder its contribution to the growth and opportunity missions that are important to this Government.
In Committee, during the debates on Clauses 4 and 5, noble Lords raised concerns about the membership of groups of persons formed to create standards and assessment plans, as has been repeated today. I outlined how, at present, there are no statutory criteria that prescribe the make-up of these groups. In other words, it is not the case that IfATE already has in legislation specific named representatives that need to form these groups. However, IfATE is under a duty to publish information about matters it will consider when deciding whether to approve groups of persons to develop occupational standards and apprenticeship assessment plans. In this legislation, that duty is being transferred to the Secretary of State unchanged. That level of transparency, because of this Bill and the transfer of functions, will be part of the functioning of Skills England.
Amendments 1 and 2 would, however, prescribe in legislation that a group of persons that prepares an occupational standard or an assessment plan must include a representative from an organisation that is the representative body for a sector. I spoke in Committee about the risks of introducing new constraints on the structure of these groups with criteria in primary legislation. They would make the process for forming groups slower and more onerous. I do not think it is in anyone’s interest—not least learners or employers—to incur such delays. They could prevent the membership of the group reflecting specific factors important for its work. To specify sector representative bodies or any specific member of the group of persons would prioritise certain people or bodies over the expertise of others.
Clauses 4 and 5 create a power for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard or an apprenticeship assessment plan themselves, where satisfied that it would be more appropriate for them to do so than a group of persons. In Committee, noble Lords expressed concerns about this new power and how it will operate—understandably, given the arguments that have been made. In previous exchanges, I set out why it is important that this additional flexibility is built into the system: to respond to the particular skills needs of different occupations. I also set out that, in practice, it will remain the default for groups of persons to prepare standards and apprenticeship assessment plans.
However, I recognise that this flexibility must also be balanced against transparency. In Committee and today, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran, Lady Garden and Lady McGregor-Smith, and the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare, Lord Hampton and Lord Addington, all spoke on the clauses about the power for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard or an assessment plan. I listened carefully to the points made. As such, and in recognition of arguments put forward by noble Lords during the passage of the Bill to date, government Amendments 3 and 6 will be proposed today.
The amendments will create new duties on the Secretary of State to publish information about matters they will take into account when deciding whether it would be more appropriate for them, rather than a group of persons, to prepare occupational standards and assessment plans. These amendments will result in powers in the Bill being subject to equivalent transparency as powers being transferred to the Secretary of State from IfATE. To reiterate the point I made earlier, there will not be less statutory requirement for employer engagement in the Bill, but the equivalent to what is in the legislation governing IfATE.
The amended Bill therefore provides for consistent transparency throughout. It will mean that the Secretary of State will be under a duty to publish information on the matters that will be taken into account when making decisions in three areas: first, on whether to approve a group of persons to prepare a standard or assessment plan; secondly, on whether to approve a standard or assessment plan; and, thirdly, as a result of government Amendments 3 and 6, on whether it is more appropriate for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard or assessment plan, rather than a group of persons.
Amendments 4 and 5 would create that statutory duty on the Secretary of State to have due regard to the reasonable requirements of employers and those who may wish to undertake training when considering whether to approve occupational standards and assessment plans, where they have been developed by a group of persons. The Secretary of State is already subject to a general public law duty, which requires them to take into account all relevant considerations before taking decisions relating to the functions for which they are responsible. There is therefore already a requirement that, when executing the functions described in the Bill, the Secretary of State considers and balances factors such as those outlined in the noble Baroness’s amendment. In fact, the public law duty includes, but is broader than, the factors listed in the proposed amendment.
I recognised the concerns of noble Lords that we were more explicit about the aims, objectives and governance of Skills England. That is why I reference again to noble Lords Skills England’s first published report, the documents published and the exchanges made during the passage of the Bill, including the draft framework document that I shared with Members of the Committee who had particularly focused on this. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, says that it is just a draft; it is, because the framework document itself needs to be approved by the board of Skills England, but it is a pretty full draft and very much aimed at reassuring noble Lords about the approach Skills England will take and the nature of the organisation, which is what I was asked for more information about. We have also been clear that a fundamental part of Skills England’s role is to ensure that technical qualifications and apprenticeships meet the needs of both employers and learners.
The amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, are therefore well considered but, we would argue, duplicative of existing duties on the Secretary of State, commitments made about the purpose of Skills England, and the further evidence in additional information I have provided for noble Lords. The existing duty to take into account all relevant considerations will be fulfilled by Skills England and through the considered approach to create Skills England as an executive agency, which we will return to in the next group of amendments, when I hope I will be able to respond to some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, as well.
I therefore hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and other noble Lords are reassured that her concerns are already addressed. I hope she agrees not to press her amendments, so that we can ensure that flexibility and speed of response to the skills challenges that our country faces and enable Skills England to start doing that as quickly as possible.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank Minister for her remarks and thank all noble Lords who spoke in this short debate. I followed some of her argument but not all of it, so I will ask for a little clarification. First, on my comments about the framework being a draft, it is clearly a long document, and thought has gone into it. I was just trying to make the point that, when you look at the CEO responsibilities, it talks about responsibilities to other groups but not employers. The fact that it is a draft—I hope the Minister might give a little here—is also an opportunity to use some of these amendments, which could be woven into a final draft.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
If I remember rightly from my previous reading of the framework document, the first or second page of the current draft explicitly mentions employers. Although the noble Baroness is right that that is not necessarily reiterated in the formal functions of the chief executive, their role is of course running the organisation and delivering the aims and objectives. Obviously, there will be reiterations in the framework document. I am sure that Skills England itself, and the board when it is set up, will want to ensure, as will those with whom they are agreeing the nature of the framework document, that the explicit role of employers is properly demonstrated within that. The framework document will then be a public document that people will be able to look at and hold Skills England to account on—through myself as the Minister and through the CEO and others—in its delivery and its relationship with employers.
On the point about the other amendments, my argument was that they duplicate in a narrower way duties that already lie with the Secretary of State by virtue of her public law duty, and therefore there is already a requirement that those functions would be executed and that the Secretary of State would need to consider and balance those factors in making decisions. I hope that the noble Baroness feels that that is sufficient assurance and feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I feel a bit reassured, but not entirely clear. To the extent that the framework document is a public document, it is much easier for anybody reading it, rather than talking about public law duties, to talk about having due regard to employers and people who undertake the training, et cetera. The Minister is nodding, so I am going to take that as an encouraging sign that, when we see the next draft of the document, it will be a bit more explicit on that point. With that reassurance from her, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(4A) In subsection (7), after paragraph (a) insert—“(aa) information about matters that the Secretary of State takes into account in deciding whether it would be more appropriate for a standard to be prepared by the Secretary of State than by a group of persons for the purposes of subsection (3A);”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish information about the matters that will be taken into account in deciding whether it would be more appropriate for a standard to be prepared by the Secretary of State than by a group of persons.
“(5) In subsection (10), after paragraph (a) insert—“(aa) information about matters that the Secretary of State takes into account in deciding whether it would be more appropriate for an apprenticeship assessment plan to be prepared by the Secretary of State than by a group of persons for the purposes of subsection (6A);”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish information about the matters that will be taken into account in deciding whether it would be more appropriate for an apprenticeship assessment plan to be prepared by the Secretary of State than by a group of persons.
“Report on exercise of the Secretary of State’s functions(1) Within the period of six months beginning with the day on which section 3 comes into force, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament and publish a report about the exercise of the relevant functions.(2) The report must include information about—(a) which of the relevant functions are being exercised through an executive agency known as Skills England, and(b) the impact of the exercise of the relevant functions on apprenticeships and technical education in England.(3) In this section “the relevant functions” means the functions conferred or imposed on the Secretary of State by sections 1 and 4 to 7 and Schedule 1.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament and publish a report about the exercise of functions conferred or imposed on the Secretary of State by this Bill. The report must be laid and published within six months of the abolition of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, I start our consideration of this group of amendments by re-emphasising, as I did in the first group, the urgency with which we need to tackle the skills gaps in our economy. They are holding back growth and opportunity, which is why we intend, as a priority, to establish Skills England as an executive agency of the Department for Education.
I know that, quite legitimately, in Committee there was a challenge about the nature of the executive agency, questions about whether that was an appropriate form for Skills England, and concern about the fact that the nature of the Bill meant that there was no mention of Skills England. I hope that, in the amendments that I propose and through some of the other reassurance that I have provided to noble Lords, I have addressed those issues.
The executive agency is a widely used model of arm’s-length body, of which there are many examples which play important roles, including the Met Office, the DVLA, and the Standards and Testing Agency. I provided more information about the functioning of executive agencies in the letter that I circulated. It is certainly not the case, as was suggested at Second Reading or at some point in Committee, that somehow Skills England would be in some cupboard in the Department for Education. This is a serious and well-used way in which to create an arm’s-length agency in government, which has been used by Governments of all persuasions in recent years.
Executive agencies have clearly defined status and must be established and governed in line with official Cabinet Office guidance. To summarise, the guidance states that executive agencies are identified as appropriate for the delivery of specialised functions, separate from a primarily policy-focused department but within a policy and resources framework set by that department, and the delivery of services to other parts of central government using specialist skills. The executive agency model therefore provides a strong fit for Skills England.
As I have emphasised, it is imperative that Skills England is fully operational as quickly as possible, designing and delivering high-quality training that reflects employers’ needs. Compared with a non-departmental body, for example, the executive agency model can be up and running much more quickly.
Following what I hope is the successful passing of this Bill, Skills England can quickly take on functions from IfATE, alongside those it has already begun to deliver while in shadow form. The executive agency model provides Skills England with the independence to focus on the delivery of its functions at arm’s length from the Department for Education, while ensuring sufficient proximity to the department, so that Skills England can quickly and efficiently inform decisions on skills policy and delivery.
Noble Lords have expressed concerns that pursuing this model will mean that there is insufficient transparency around exactly which functions are being transferred to the Secretary of State from IfATE and those which are to be executed by Skills England, as well as around the impact that Skills England’s responsibility for and execution of its functions will have in practice on our apprenticeships, technical education and the objectives that I know noble Lords share to improve our skills system.
Similarly, noble Lords have queried what the executive agency model means for how Ministers will be held to account for their decisions as related to these functions, and how Skills England will be held accountable for its performance. I assure noble Lords that, as with other executive agencies, Skills England will be required to have robust governance arrangements and clear lines of accountability, including to Parliament. Ministers, the principal accounting officer and the chief executive will be accountable to Parliament, and are usually those who, for example, appear before Select Committees as required.
Skills England will be overseen by a board, headed by a non-executive chair. As I said in Committee, I assure noble Lords that we have borne in mind the necessity to have strong credibility with employers in choosing who the non-executive chair will be. I hope that we can soon introduce them not only to noble Lords in this House but more widely to employers and others engaged in this activity. This board and chair reflect Cabinet Office guidance that executive agencies should be led by a board where there is a need for a significant level of independence from a department to carry out its functions effectively, or where they are of sufficient size and importance to require independent assurance. The board will advise on strategy and deliverability, maintain high standards of corporate governance, ensure that controls are in place to manage risk and scrutinise performance. Working with the board, the chair will provide the strong and independent leadership, support and challenge needed for Skills England to deliver its objectives.
The broader governance arrangements for Skills England, as we touched on in the previous group, will be set out in a framework document. This is a core constitutional document that must be produced in line with guidance from the Treasury. Skills England’s framework document will be agreed between its board and Ministers, as I have already suggested. Once finalised, it will be published online, and I will deposit a copy in both Houses. I have written to noble Lords with more information on what the framework document will likely set out, including the detailed sponsor relationship between Skills England and the Department for Education, lines of accountability to Parliament, and Skills England’s purpose, aims and duties. Noble Lords can see examples of such documents for other arm’s-length bodies online, as all are published by the Treasury.
Noble Lords have expressed an interest in understanding more about Skills England’s future reporting arrangements. I can provide assurance that the reporting arrangements of executive agencies are clearly defined. They must produce an annual corporate plan and an annual report, both of which will be published in respect of Skills England, subject to any commercial considerations in the corporate plan. These will, together, support Skills England’s accountability, including to Parliament, by providing transparency over its strategic priorities and performance. Again, my recent letter to noble Lords sets out more detail on what guidance dictates that corporate plans should include, such as—I know noble Lords have raised this point—key objectives and performance targets, and assessment of current and recent performance against those targets.
Taken together, I hope that the steps I have described here—namely, compliance with clear and detailed Cabinet Office guidance on the role and purpose of executive agencies; appointment of an independent board; and publication of a framework document, annual corporate plan and annual report—demonstrate that Skills England is being set up in a way that ensures transparency about its work and accountability for its performance.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 7 in the name of the Minister, Amendment 8 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Aberdare, and my Amendment 10. It feels a bit churlish not to welcome a report on how Skills England is discharging its functions, and it is even more troubling to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, since I have obviously made it a policy always to agree with him. However, I genuinely think that this amendment is rather odd.
The first thing is the timescale. The amendment says that the report
“must be laid and published within six months of the abolition of”
IfATE, which means the department will need to start writing it within a few weeks of the Bill passing, since I imagine that the sign-off process is similar to the example the noble Lord, Lord Storey, read out, in terms of complaints. What will it be able to say at that point about the exercise of its functions—that it has just got started? What impact will a few weeks of work have on apprenticeships and technical education in England, particularly given how many other moving parts there are in the system, with the proposed introduction of the growth and skills levy? I genuinely worry that, with the best will in the world, the report risks being rather thin and without any real substance, and that it will not be the kind of state of the nation report the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, suggests is appropriate.
In contrast, Amendment 8 sets a more realistic timescale. It is much more tailored to the specific points the Minister has heard repeatedly across the House, which relate to skills and technical education policy and strategy. I guess that it is a backdoor way of trying to get a bit more policy into the Bill. The serious point, which so many of our debates have centred on, is that the Bill is not clear on the Government’s specific policy approach. I urge the Minister to consider Amendment 8 as a helpful way of starting to sketch this out and perhaps to commit in her closing remarks to including at least parts of it in the next draft of the framework document.
I draw attention to two particular points in the document—which I am so glad that I read, otherwise I would have been found out by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. At 26.2, where the document refers to the annual report and accounts, it says that it will include the main activities and performance during the previous financial year. The Minister has obviously memorised it—we could have “Mastermind” on this. At 26.3, the document says there will information on the financial performance of Skills England. So, some of the points in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, could be used to flesh out those statements.
I am very grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Hampton, for their support for my Amendment 10. We have already debated the point of principle that the framework principles for the new executive agency should be in the Bill, and my amendment does this in a way I had hoped would not be controversial for the Government—although I am not terribly encouraged by the Minister’s opening remarks. I would be very grateful if, when she winds up, she could be absolutely clear on whether the public law duties which she says cover all the points in my earlier amendments and this amendment apply to IfATE. If they did apply to IfATE, why was that original drafting chosen and why was it part of the legislation passed by both Houses?
Like Amendments 2 and 5, this amendment takes the text from the original legislation, puts it in the Bill and applies it to Skills England. It is clear that Skills England will need to have regard to the quality of education and training, and the Minister said that that was in the aims. She can put me right if I have missed it, but I have to say that I cannot see it anywhere in the aims, so maybe she could commit to including that. It is also clear that it must represent good value in relation to funding and be efficient and effective, and it needs to prepare an annual report and lay it before Parliament. Paragraph (c) makes it clear that the Secretary of State can write to Skills England setting out
“other matters to which it must have regard when performing its functions”.
It gives the Secretary of State the flexibility for the focus of Skills England to evolve over time, which I am sure it will, naturally and rightly. The aim of this is not a straitjacket for government; it is just trying to get a balance between transparency, focus and flexibility.
I laid my amendment before the Minister shared the draft framework document and her letter, and I have a couple of concerns arising from those. Of course, if these principles are not in the Bill, Ministers can change at will the focus of the agency. I know that is not the Minister’s nor the Secretary of State’s intent—or I assume it is not—but the Minister’s letter to your Lordships says that there will be a review in the 18 to 24 months from inception, and a very wide range of options will be looked at, which seem to run from creating a different body to putting Skills England on a statutory footing. I know that this is not the Minister’s intention today, but it is what the letter says, and it underlines the point that a number of noble Lords have tried to make on more than one occasion.
Secondly, as I have said already, there is a lot of detail on page 7 of the document—it is page 7 of my printed version, although the printer of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, obviously uses different page numbers. It is the section on aims. It is not explicit in the same way about the importance of quality, it does not talk directly about the need for education and training to represent good value, and it does not talk about efficiency and effectiveness. I appreciate that there are generic references—boilerplate text—in the document, but it would be helpful if the Minister committed to amending this to reflect those three principles, which she confirmed in her opening remarks she definitely accepts.
The list on page 7 risks highlighting some of the issues we have debated at length, with specific government policies included in it, such as the Government’s mission to become a clean energy superpower. Of course, those priorities could change, and it would be entirely appropriate to put them in an annual letter from the Secretary of State to the agency. I am just surprised they are in the framework document. Perhaps I am being overly picky, and the Minister can correct me if I am, but it feels odd for an independent agency to use the term “superpower”—it does not feel quite right.
I very much hope that when she sums up, the Minister will be able to say how much of the text and the spirit of my amendment she will be able to put into the next draft of the framework document. It is more workable and much clearer than the current text in the section covering purposes and aims, and it is obviously more rigorous to have those principles in the Bill, but if the Minister commits to using that text in the framework document itself, I absolutely trust her. It is a workable, albeit less satisfactory option. If she cannot do that, when we come to call this amendment, I will test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank noble Lords once again for their interest and probing. As my noble friend Lord Blunkett said, there is a shared commitment to ensuring that Skills England lives up to the challenge of improving our skills system in the way in which this Government have set out.
As I commented in Committee, considering that noble Lords spent a fair amount of time then—as did the noble Lord, Lord Storey, today—complaining that the Bill did not enable them to talk about Skills England, they nevertheless managed to talk about it. We have continued that discussion today, which I am pleased about. I understand the frustration of noble Lords who have not had the benefit, as I have, of seeing the development of Skills England and of knowing the plans for its future, and their fear that the legislation does not, in its scope and interest, live up to the ambition that the Government have for Skills England. However, the proof of legislation is not in the words on the page; it is in the action, ambition and impact that Skills England will have.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
I congratulate my noble friend. I have taken part in “Mastermind”, and I lost.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I do not think that any of us here will make any further appearances on “Mastermind” with our specialist subject as the framework document for Skills England.
Nevertheless, it is more interesting than some have suggested, particularly its purposes, aims and duties. I will undertake to reflect very carefully on the points that have been made by noble Lords about what more should be included in the draft, while trying to resist the idea that this document will be written by committee in this Chamber. However, some strong points have been made by noble Lords about what could be included in the next draft, including the point about the role of local government, which we will come to in a later group of amendments.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised a point about public law. It was necessary to give general duties to IfATE in statute because it was a statutory body, and therefore all its functions needed to be laid out in statute. Skills England is not a statutory body, as we have discussed at length, so the Secretary of State carries out the relevant functions and is already subject to the broader public duties. Because of those functions being carried out by the Secretary of State, the public law issue arises in this case.
In finishing, I hope that noble Lords feel that we have responded to concerns around the scope and narrowness of the legislation; the fact that we did not describe Skills England in the legislation; and the understandable requirement for accountability and reporting, which I hope I have described clearly. I absolutely share my noble friend Lord Blunkett’s view that, while the legislation may be mouse-like but important, the actions of Skills England will roar like a lion.
Baroness Barran (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, I wonder whether she can clarify something. She said that she would think about putting references to local government in the framework document. Can she commit to making explicit reference to quality, value for money, efficiency and effectiveness in the early pages —the purposes and aims section that she referred to? Some of it may be implicit in her mind, but can it be explicit?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
That is a fair suggestion. With the proviso that this is a draft that will have to be agreed to by Skills England’s board with Ministers, I nevertheless share her view that Skills England will need to be focused on those things. I think that we could make progress on that in the next iteration of the framework document.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I support both the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness. Lady Barran. I will try to keep my remarks brief about Skills England, the aims of which I think we all support, and which are crucial to the Government’s growth strategy and missions, the industrial strategy and all the things we would like to happen. Above all, it must pull together. The Government have talked about a post-16 education and skills strategy, and I assume that Skills England will be at the heart of that.
In order for that to work, Skills England will need to be co-ordinating skills policies and activities across government departments, because every government department needs skills and has shortages; across regions, local areas and nationally, including the devolved nations; across industry sectors; and across policy priorities. The “state of the nation” was probably the wrong phrase: what I am really looking for is, “What difference have we actually made at Skills England in tackling the very real problems that we all recognise in the skills area?” That will happen only if someone is ensuring consistency and synergy between all the complex elements involved—no doubt with a strong need for consensus-building, if not actual knocking of heads together. This lion needs not just to roar, but to have a few teeth. Whether or not it is a statutory body, it should at least have the right authority and powers, and the right chair and CEO. It is disappointing that we do not know who the chair is going to be, although I know the Minister was hoping to be able to let us know before Report.
The Minister mentioned some of the other executive agencies, and it seems to me that none of those—the Met Office or the DVLA—has the breadth of roles, responsibilities and relationships that this body needs to have. Of course, while it is doing that, it has to undertake the practical functions, transferred from IfATE, of preparing standards and apprenticeship assessment plans. It would help if the Government had some time to concentrate on getting Skills England up to speed in all those areas, so that it can build on its encouraging first report and get on with sorting those things out before the IfATE transfer completely overwhelms its capacity. For those reasons, I support Amendment 15, in particular, and will support the noble Baroness if she decides to push it to a vote.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, establishing Skills England is a manifesto commitment. The Prime Minister announced the creation of Skills England in July last year. He set out the Government’s approach to delivering our growth and opportunity missions in the Plan for Change. This change is already under way, and Skills England’s creation is a key part of that change. I set out in the second group of amendments the need for the Government to respond urgently to critical issues within the skills system by establishing Skills England.
For too long, the skills system has not provided enough young people with the right pathways through education and into employment; it has not responded to some of the issues outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf; and it has not provided sufficient roaring or teeth, in order to make sure that we are addressing the need for our skills structures to boost skills, productivity and opportunity. That is why, in Skills England, we are bringing coherence to the skills system, combining new functions with improvements to existing ones.
On the points made about the delay in bringing IfATE’s functions into Skills England, the point of Skills England is that it will enable us to build on the work of IfATE, which, during Committee, I have commended. I have said that I think that really important work has been done there, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, bringing employers into the heart of developing standards and apprenticeships. Nevertheless, the function of IfATE has been narrower than the challenge of skills development now needs. We will be building on the work of IfATE, but putting it in the context of a much larger and more significant organisation that will be able to identify where the gaps are in our skills system; that will be able to work alongside employers, trade unions, providers, local government, the mayoral authorities and others to identify where those gaps are; but that will look to where those gaps will be in the future, and use the functions transferred from IfATE to develop the technical education and apprenticeships to help fill those gaps. It is really important that those two functions operate together.
With Skills England, we are not starting from scratch here, as I have frequently emphasised: Skills England is already operational in shadow form and doing that important work to identify skills gaps. As I spoke about at some length in the previous group, our belief is that the executive agency model for Skills England is the best fit to enable it to get fully operational as soon as possible.
The amendments in this group would, I am afraid, delay the establishment of Skills England. I understand the points being made, but I am more confident about and more ambitious for the speed with which we can move than other noble Lords. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, this is not simply a policy statement; Skills England already exists in shadow form and is engaging with employers. It is already advising the Government and publishing its state of the nation analysis, and it will be facilitated to do that through the bringing across of the functions currently vested in IfATE.
Amendment 9 would impose a requirement on the Secretary of State to establish Skills England as a statutory body with a separate legal identity. I might be being picky but, to come back to the description by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others of Skills England being absorbed within the department, I have gone to some lengths to explain the nature of the arm’s-length body that we are setting up in Skills England as an executive agency and the way it will operate, appropriately independently from the department while still being close enough to feed into important policy developments.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I very much support Amendments 11 and 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and welcome the approach that he has taken. It feels so practical and so grounded in his own experience, with that focus on planning and implementation, as he mentioned. It also highlights the sophisticated choices that need to be made in skills policy between what is needed locally, regionally and nationally. It sounds as though the Minister has already been listening, but I hope that she can give the House further reassurance that she will take these amendments very seriously.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for his amendments and for the conversations we have had about the reasoning behind them, which I accept. We had a meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on this issue as well. He is right to draw attention to these two very important issues, namely the crucial need to boost the availability of green skills and the need to ensure that high-quality training is available to—and designed in line with the needs of—all parts of the country.
As set out in the Invest 2035 Green Paper, published ahead of the forthcoming industrial strategy, delivering long-term sustainable growth is inextricably linked to our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. It is critical that the skills system is set up in the right way to deliver on this mission. I will return to that in a moment. Meanwhile, our English Devolution White Paper makes clear the Government’s commitment to spread growth and opportunity to all parts of the country and sets out the route to delivering much-needed change. It will not be possible to deliver on these priorities without building the evidence on the scale and nature of green skills needs in the economy and ensuring that there is a comprehensive suite of training that aligns with the identified needs and is available for people to access up and down the country. Therefore, Skills England must have a central role in driving the change that is needed on both issues the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, has highlighted. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to set out in more detail the work that Skills England will do—and indeed has already begun—in this space, and hope that this will be sufficient to persuade the noble Lord not to press his amendments.
Amendment 12 would create a duty on the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament, within six months of the passing of the Act, a report which assesses the co-ordination of local skills improvement plans, assesses the impact of the functions transferred to the Secretary of State on those parts of the country without a devolution deal and determines the scope and level of investment of the growth and skills offer in meeting national, regional and local priorities.
As set out in Skills England’s first report, working together with partners on the ground to ensure that regional and national skills needs are met is a central function of Skills England. While in shadow form, Skills England is already working closely with a range of key organisations at local and regional level to ensure that we are laying the foundations for joined-up decision-making and information sharing, which will ensure that we develop the highly skilled workforce that our economy needs in all parts of the country.
Skills England is collaborating with mayoral strategic authorities, as well as local government in areas which do not yet have devolution arrangements, to shape the delivery of skills provision. It is also working with a wide range of regional organisations, such as employer representative bodies, to help them contribute to the construction of skills systems that reflect and feed into both local and national priorities. As noble Lords have mentioned, local skills improvement plans support this objective by providing an ongoing mechanism through which local employers, strategic authorities, providers and other stakeholders come together to identify and resolve skills needs and issues. LSIPs will be overseen by Skills England, helping to ensure that all parties play their part and take action where needed, such as increased support through dedicated relationship managers.
I take the point made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, that there is a complexity in the relationship between the national priority setting and action, and the regional and local environment. We have already worked on this and I commit to ensure that we work further. Skills England is clear about the way in which it will create co-ordination between those levels, particularly with respect to those areas which do not have some of the devolved arrangements that, for example, the mayoral areas have.
Our reformed growth and skills offer will enable employers to fund training that meets priority skills needs identified by Skills England, in addition to apprenticeships, recognising the importance that high-quality work-based learning has in our skills system. The new offer will be aligned with the industrial strategy, creating routes into good, skilled jobs in growing industries, such as construction, digital and green skills.
It is by drawing on evidence from, and working with partners across, the system that Skills England is developing—and will continue to develop and publish—authoritative analyses of national and local skills needs. In its first report, Driving Growth and Widening Opportunities, published last September, it provides an assessment of the key skills challenges that limit growth and opportunity, and an initial assessment of the skills needs in the economy. Building on that, Skills England will publish a further report in early 2025, providing more detailed sector-specific skills assessments and analysis of the agreed set of priority sectors defined by the industrial strategy.
Given the centrality of the local and regional dimension to Skills England’s work, the public reporting and governance arrangements I have described previously—those being a published framework document, the annual report and corporate plan—would include an assessment of its impact on delivery against these aims, including in respect of LSIPs, areas not yet covered by devolution deals and the growth and skills offer. It is for this reason that I hope that the noble Lord will feel that his amendment would duplicate the existing reporting requirements that I have outlined and is therefore unnecessary in light of those requirements.
Amendment 11 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to report on how, in their use of functions transferred to them, they are supporting the development of green skills. Extensive work to identify and address current and future green skills needs is being prioritised under this Government to ensure that the UK workforce is prepared to deliver the clean energy superpower mission. Reporting on green skills has already started, ahead of Skills England being fully established. Skills England published an initial assessment in its first report in September of last year, which included a description of the scale of the challenge and some of the key skills needs of the green economy, as well as those specific to clean energy. Skills England will build on this in its second report, which will provide sector-specific skills assessment of priority sectors, including the eight growth-driving sectors identified in the Government’s industrial strategy and those pivotal to delivering the Government’s missions, notably net zero and clean energy.
In recognition of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and acknowledging the importance of green skills and meeting necessary climate targets, I will ensure that the Skills England framework document includes specific reference to Skills England’s role in developing green skills. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has already noted that we have included that in the framework document—albeit not quite in the terminology that the noble Baroness would have wanted to see. In respect of Skills England’s local and regional work, I would also expect information on its work on green skills to be included in the annual report and corporate plan that Skills England will be required to publish, given its vital importance. The Department for Education is already required by the Environment Act 2021 to report on progress on green skills through the annual carbon budgets delivery audit.
As such, I hope the existing requirements and the commitments I have made here in respect of green skills will be sufficient to deliver on the aims of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, which I do support and have been pleased to engage with him on. For the reasons I have outlined, I hope that the noble Lord will be assured of the Government’s commitment to these vital issues and that he will therefore see fit to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I listened very carefully to what the Minister had to say, and I am very pleased with what she said. There was a lot of reassurance on areas without a devolution deal, particularly within the reporting requirements for Skills England and how it will engage with regional and local bodies, which answered the original intent of my amendment.
We have reached an excellent compromise on green skills as well. Having the detail in the framework document —the way it has been mapped out, particularly in referencing our targets—is a really important step forward to properly integrate it with the delivery of green skills and our climate and environment targets.
I thank the Minister again for her approach and collaboration in the meetings she has undertaken with us to get to this position. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Schools: Citizenship Education
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, teaching about democracy and elections already forms a central part of the national curriculum for citizenship at key stages 3 and 4 and can be taught as a non-statutory topic in primary schools. We will consider the citizenship curriculum in the context of the curriculum and assessment review, and we see the potential of lowering the voting age to help boost young people’s engagement with citizenship and democracy.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be well aware of recent polls showing the levels of disillusion young people have about our current political institutions. Part of the argument for lowering the voting age to 16 is to get young people engaged in our institutions and voting before they leave school. The informal conversations I have with my grandchildren and the grandchildren of friends tell me that, frankly, the level and quality of citizenship education in state schools is pretty awful. Unless there is action to improve it considerably, this will not be a success.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right about the challenge of engaging young people in politics—a challenge that rests with the political parties represented around this Chamber as well as with our schools and broader civic society. I was very proud to be the Minister, under the leadership of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, who introduced citizenship into the curriculum in the first place when I was last in government. The noble Lord makes a fair point about the need to ensure that there is sufficient quality of resource and teachers to make sure that it is effective in our schools. I and my colleagues in the department will certainly bear that in mind.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise for jumping the gun, but the experience of my grandchildren does not tally with those of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, since they seem to engage in quite a lot of citizenship— but maybe that is to do with the school, which is a comprehensive. Does my noble friend agree that one of the elements which might bring more 16 year-olds into full participation in our democracy is to educate them in our shared culture of human rights? There is something in it for them and something in it that they can do.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that, although there are challenges, many schools and teachers are facilitating an enormous amount of knowledge, discussion and consideration of a wide range of issues under the heading of citizenship. She is also right that we should include knowledge about our human rights and our responsibilities as citizens within that. Not only is that part of the curriculum but it is being delivered in the very best schools—and, in fact, broadly across schools.
Lord Hayward (Con)
Will the Minister consider extending citizenship classes to not only schoolchildren but all adults, from the Prime Minister downwards, in order that the Prime Minister can correctly define the term “key worker” where it relates to Covid cases?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The issues around citizenship, promoting engagement in our democracy and ensuring that young people feel it is worth their while are not served by using the Chamber in that way.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that people need maturity as well as education to vote responsibly and that, at 16, people might have a very good education but are unlikely to be mature? Does she agree, therefore, that the voting age should not be reduced to 16?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
It was a manifesto commitment of this Government to consider that. The evidence demonstrates that young people take on quite a lot of responsibilities at 16. Following on from the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, starting voting earlier seems to ensure that people will be more engaged in democracy throughout their lives.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness is answering on citizenship, but does she accept that, in this day and age, citizenship requires young people—indeed, all people—to have a much better understanding of and a greater ability in critical thinking to address and respond to the misinformation and disinformation with which they are peddled all the time? Will critical thinking be seen as a fundamental part of the curriculum?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a good point. That is part of what we have asked the curriculum and assessment review, which is currently in place, to consider. Critical thinking and the ability to identify the use of misinformation in media, and to distinguish it from proper sources of information, are critical elements of what young people deserve as part of their education.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, in view of the demise of many youth clubs across the country, does the Minister agree that citizenship education must be professionally taught at both primary and secondary school level by trained teachers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The ability to take part in citizenship education in both primary and secondary schools, as the noble Baroness says—of course, in secondary school it is a compulsory part of the national curriculum—is an important part of ensuring that young people are engaged. On her first point, the need for broader support of and engagement with young people is the reason why the Government launched plans in November 2024 to create a new national youth strategy for and by young people, as part of our mission to improve opportunity.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, debate in your Lordships’ House in recent weeks has often focused on the issue of poor mental health, particularly among young people. In general, we know that it is good for your mental health to have agency and control over your own present and future. Would the Minister agree that bringing in votes at 16 or younger would be good for mental health and that education to accompany that would be excellent as well?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is not going to tempt me to suggest that we should have votes below the age of 16, but I agree that agency and being engaged broadly in social action as well as being able to benefit from active citizenship, which is often part of citizenship education in schools, is good for young people in a whole range of ways.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, the Minister rightly talks about the importance of the quality of education in citizenship and all other subjects. Would she agree with me that, given the pushback from practically every educational quarter on the new Ofsted framework and the removal of deep dives, it will be almost impossible for parents to know the quality of the education that their children receive?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I do not agree with the noble Baroness. This Government were right to remove the single headline measure, which was low information and had high stakes for schools, and to embark on the consultation launched on Monday, which included an excellent speech from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, on an approach that is about ensuring rigour of inspection, information for parents and appropriate accountability for our schools.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, we warmly support lowering the voting age to 16. To follow on from the second part of the question from the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, can the Minister say how the recruitment of citizenship teachers is going, because in past years it was very difficult to recruit them?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that there is a challenge in the reduction of the number of specialist citizenship teachers in our schools over recent years, which is why this Government have placed a focus on recruiting more teachers and ensuring that they have—whether it is through pay or other conditions—every reason to stay in the classroom and ensure that young people can benefit from their knowledge.
Primary Schools: Mental Health Problems
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with mental health problems in primary schools.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this is a particularly pertinent Question as it is Children’s Mental Health Week. The Government are committed to setting every child up for the best start in life and, as part of our ambition for high and rising standards in schools, helping every child to achieve and thrive. We will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, so that every young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate.
Lord Storey (LD)
I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. It is important that children and young people have access to mental health support, but of course the reasons that cause mental health and well-being problems need to be carefully considered, whether it is bullying or online problems. Every school needs to know how well children are doing, but I would suggest to the Minister that maybe the pressures that key stage SATs put on 10 and 11 year-olds can at times be very harmful indeed. Would the Minister consider looking at how we might alleviate those pressures, by perhaps considering having standardised teacher assessments or ways that make it much more enjoyable rather than a frightening experience for them?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am afraid that I think it is important that we maintain both the check on students’ progress and the accountability for our schools that key stage tests enable us to have. So, no, I will not be taking the noble Lord up on his suggestion of fundamentally changing those any time in the near future.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, for children and adults, feeling sad and unhappy is a normal human experience. Recent polling found that 84% of GPs think society’s approach to mental health has led to the normal ups and downs of life being seen as medical problems. However, family breakdown—one of the causes that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, did not mention—is an underrecognised driver of children’s poor mental health. How are the Government guarding against overdiagnosis of mental illness in children and also helping parents understand that parental splits profoundly affect their children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes some important points, based of course on his long experience of supporting families to support their children. I am clear that clinical support should be sought for children only where it is appropriate. Schools need to seek the right source of support at the right time for social and emotional needs, and that is where mental health support teams and other professionals can assist in making those decisions. On the important point he makes about family breakdowns, I completely share his view that it can be enormously difficult for children when their parents split. I am sure he will be pleased to hear that the Ministry of Justice provides support to help individuals to make child arrangements and find emotional support, for example. Resources are also available for that on the Cafcass website.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, the recent health visiting survey suggests that there is an inadequate service in the majority of England compared to the other three countries. It also shows that there are exemplars of good practice, such as in Manchester, but that families are sending children to primary school having had no health-visiting support prior to going to school because of the paucity. How is the Minister’s department working with the Department of Health and Social Care to look at the provision of health visitors?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes an important point about the support available to children at the very earliest age. This and developing the healthiest generation of children are key objectives for my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. We have set a clear objective in our Plan for Change to ensure that we increase the proportion of children who arrive at school with the development to enable them to then learn and make a success of the rest of their lives. I am sure that this will play an important part in achieving that.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, the Rural Mental Health report produced in the other place highlighted that
“NHS mental health services are often not fairly accessible for rural communities”,
with services largely centred in towns and cities,
“creating barriers to access, compounded by the limitations and weaknesses of rural public transport and digital connectivity”.
I declare an interest because 65% of small, rural primary schools across England are Church schools. When developing plans to improve mental health provision in primary schools, how does the Minister intend to ensure equity of access and quality for students in small, rural settings?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point about the challenges for schools in rural areas to access the mental health support that we will make available. He identified the considerable difficulties for young people who really need child and adolescent mental health services in accessing them. That is why this Government will fund an additional 8,500 mental health workers to support both children and adults. As we continue to develop the policy to ensure that there is access to a mental health professional in every school, we will certainly bear in mind the important points that he made about the particular needs of rural schools.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me—going back to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised about bullying—that children with observable mental health problems, or who are on the autism spectrum, are very often vulnerable to bullying in schools, and sometimes that will exacerbate the challenges that they already have? In what way are the Government supporting schools to ensure that children who have those difficulties are supported, particularly in the playground?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
That is an appropriately wide-ranging question from my noble friend. First, on the topic of bullying, it is enormously important that every school has a strong policy and strong action to tackle bullying and to support children. She raised the issue of children with autism and other needs, and we are making progress there with the national framework for autism assessment services. We are also very clear that no child should need to wait for an assessment to receive the necessary support from schools. That will include support with learning and, as she rightly said, support for them to play a full and safe part in the life of the school.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the increasing evidence of the correlation between smartphone and social media use and an increase in children’s mental health problems. According to a recent survey done by Teacher Tapp, just over 75% of teachers surveyed who worked in primary schools reported that mobile phones had to be handed in at the beginning of the school day, but that fell to 48% in secondary schools. Given the mounting concerns that we are hearing, particularly from health professionals, about the impact of smartphones on children’s mental health, will the Government think again and follow a precautionary principle in banning mobile phones in schools until we have the evidence that they are safe?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
As the noble Baroness knows, there is strong guidance to schools to develop appropriate policies with respect to smartphones —in my view, ensuring that children do not have access to smartphones during the period of time that they are in school—but there is a whole range of ways of ensuring that that happens, and I think it is appropriate to leave it to head teachers to follow that guidance and ensure that their children are protected from any impacts of smartphones and enabled to achieve and thrive in their schools.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the first thing we need to do is to make sure teachers know when they should start to access extra help and support, even if it is available, because without that guidance, you really are going to waste a lot of time and money?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that a key part of our special educational needs and disabilities programme needs to be to ensure that teachers have the continuing professional development and initial teacher training to be able to identify at an early stage those children who are in mental distress and need support. That needs to happen even earlier, which is why children’s mental health and well-being is also an important part of the early years curriculum, and why we have provided support to early years practitioners to be able to identify that early as well.
Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clause 2, Schedule 2, Clause 3, Schedule 3, Clauses 4 to 13, Title.
Children’s Rights
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask His Majesty’s Government what role children’s rights will play in their plans to improve children’s wellbeing and opportunities.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, children are at the heart of this Government’s ambitions. We will deliver lasting change for all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. From April 2025, we are nearly doubling investment in preventive services, with over £500 million to deliver family help and child protection reforms. Children should remain with their families, and where they cannot, we will support more children to live with kinship carers or in fostering families, helping to ensure their rights to loving families.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the renewed commitment to child-centred government, although I am disappointed that my noble friend said nothing about children’s rights as such. In view of UNICEF UK’s statement that children’s rights should be central to plans to improve children’s well-being and opportunities and of the many criticisms made of the previous Government’s record by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, can my noble friend say what steps are now being taken to implement that committee’s recommendations to better protect and promote children’s rights and, in particular, its call for mandatory child rights impact assessments to improve policy-making and legislation relevant to children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that we must consider children’s rights in all our policy-making, and the Government recognise the importance of considering children’s rights in that way. That is why, in the department, we are continuing to encourage policymakers across government to carry out children’s rights impact assessments when they are making policy changes and, with respect to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we have conducted child’s rights impact assessments where children are directly impacted by the policies, or where there are particular groups of children and young people more likely to be affected than others, and we will publish those child’s rights impact assessments.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the most recent UN assessment of the UK’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child expressed concern about the large number of children living in food insecurity and recommended
“increasing social benefits to reflect the rising cost of living”?
In light of this, why has the value of free school meals not risen in line with the cost of food? In real terms, it is now worth 16% less than it was in 2014.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that, for many families and children, the availability of free school meals is very important. That is why we continue with the programme for all pupils in reception, year 1 and year 2 to be entitled to universal infant free school meals. In addition to that, 2.1 million disadvantaged pupils receive free meals on the basis of low income. This Government will also introduce breakfast clubs in every primary school. We will keep our approach to free meals and the quality and amount of them under continued review, including through the work of the Child Poverty Taskforce.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, the most fundamental right of a child in this country is to be protected from abuse and exploitation. Time after time, all the reports about this indicate that the collaboration between the front-line services has deteriorated markedly in recent years. Can the Minister assure the House that, in looking to the future, a great emphasis will be placed upon the different public services working collaboratively in the interests of the well-being of the child?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord has an important and distinguished history in challenging Governments and safeguarding children, and he is absolutely right that we must protect children at risk of abuse, particularly by stopping vulnerable children falling through cracks in services and ensuring that we always know where they are if they need protection. That is why, for example, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we will support professionals to keep children safe, in particular by making provision for a consistent identifier for every child and for a requirement to establish multi-agency child protection teams for each local authority area, ensuring, as he quite rightly asked, that staff and agencies are working closely together to protect children most in need of that protection.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, we have one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in the world: in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is just 10, and in Scotland it is 12. Troubled children are children in need, not criminals. Will the Minister consider a potential review of those ages to make those children less vulnerable and better able to be protected by agencies and authorities in the future?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
In line with the UNCRC, we recognise the age of a child in the UK as being under 18 years of age. In that way, children are treated differently from adults. However, we do have an age of criminal responsibility of 10, and we do not intend to change that at this time.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises the fundamental right of all children to a free primary education and access to different forms of secondary education. Noble Lords may know that 1 million children are educated in Church of England schools at the moment, and the Church of England’s vision for education is rooted in a Christian ethos for the common good and the holistic well-being of every child, including those of all faiths and none. The Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools framework, which informs best practice in church schools, has a strong and effective focus on children’s rights in accordance with Article 28 in the UN convention. Will the Minister ensure that the substantial and compelling learnings from church schools can be highlighted and shared within her department’s ongoing review of potential reforms to current accountability measures?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is right that there are very many children receiving excellent education in schools run by and sponsored by the Church of England, including the school that I attended—although I think that the accountability and inspection regime has probably been updated since then. I can certainly assure him that we will want to learn from good-quality inspection and accountability, such as he has outlined, in taking forward our reforms.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, the Minister talked about the use of child rights impact assessments for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I want to raise the issue of the very concerning rise in deprivation of liberty orders for children, particularly their increasing use for very young children, apparently as young as seven. There is currently no age differentiation in the Bill and, unlike in the case of secure accommodation, a child can be deprived of their liberty without the authorisation of the Secretary of State. Can the Minister respond to that, and to the calls from the Children’s Commissioner that the legal framework should be strengthened to protect those very vulnerable children, particularly those with disabilities and at risk of exploitation?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that the lack of suitable provision for children with complex needs, as well as some secure children’s homes, is a very key part of the reason why there has been a big increase in the number of deprivation of liberty orders. That is why our programme of work, including the legislative changes and capital investment, is focused on improving the outcomes for those children. We will, as she identifies, be looking at the legislative framework for deprivation of liberty orders, and I will take on board the point she makes about the particular challenges for very young children. I am sure that we will have the opportunity to debate this in more length and detail when the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill comes before this House.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, another right a child has is to have a good education. The number of absences, especially among young children, is becoming seriously worrying. Will the Minister—I know that she cares about these matters—assure the House that, in moving forward, real attention will be given to attendance at school, because it is in the law—since 1948? We have had a law for attendance for a long time in this country. Please make sure it happens.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right that we have a crisis of absence. Children cannot be properly taught, and in some cases they cannot be properly protected, unless they are attending school. That is why we have a wide-ranging set of policies to address that: the better use of data; the revised guidance; and a more granular focus on those schools that are doing well and those schools that are doing less well. The introduction of breakfast clubs in every primary school will also help to encourage children to arrive earlier in school and to be provided with the support to perform better when they are there.
Children and Young People: Literacy
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the National Literacy Trust’s 2024 annual literacy survey showing that children and young people’s reading for enjoyment has fallen over the past year to an all-time low, and of the link between this and the fall in the number of secondary schools with a designated onsite library area.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, reading for pleasure is hugely important and has many benefits. The department has implemented a range of measures to support reading for enjoyment, including through the English hubs programme and the reading framework. Head teachers have the autonomy to decide how best to spend their core schools funding, including how best to provide a library service for their pupils. Given this autonomy, the department does not collect information on the number of secondary school libraries.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer but, notwithstanding it, reading levels among school age children have plummeted recently. That is not just because of the prominence of mobile phones, because comparable-aged children in comparable EU states have higher reading levels. I believe it is very much the case that the closure of school libraries has an important impact on that. While school leaders do indeed have the right to decide the best delivery of library services, as my noble friend said, for whatever reason it is not working. I suggest to my noble friend that, if figures are not collected on school librarians and libraries, they ought to be, and that school leaders need to be reminded of their role in encouraging reading for pleasure, to assist with children’s development and literacy and oracy skills.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I share my noble friend’s view about the importance and contribution of school libraries. Perhaps the additional core school funding being provided, or the quite particular advice that is now available in the reading framework—on things such as how to organise a school library, book corner or book stock to make reading accessible and attractive to readers—may well help to ensure that the opportunity is available for more children, as he rightly argues for.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, reading achievement for 10 year-olds in England is higher than the international average, and the last Government are to be congratulated on all their efforts towards achieving this. However, as we have heard, England ranks in the bottom third of countries for children enjoying reading. Does the Minister agree that, although the mechanics of reading are of course a vital foundation, it is the enjoyment of reading that gives transformative benefits across mental health, creativity, imagination and attainment across the curriculum? What will her department do to encourage partnerships with cultural organisations locally, which can help deliver projects and programmes that will bring reading to life and help deliver enjoyment to young people, rather than just the mechanics of reading?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that we have seen significant progress in the teaching of early reading, and I congratulate all those involved in that. I remember how in 2006 the then Secretary of State, Ruth Kelly, adopted the recommendations of the Rose review on the teaching of early reading, especially phonics. The noble Baroness makes an important point that, although the ability to read is a fundamental basis for all children, it is also important that we find a range of ways, including using other partners in the creative area and elsewhere, to engage a passion for reading. That also has to start before children even get to school, with the support of family hubs and some of the campaigns that are already available there.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, following on from the answer that my noble friend has just given, does she agree that the most important starting point for children to allow them to go on to enjoy reading in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, described, is if they are read to when they are very young? Nearly all of us probably had that experience and have probably gone on to deliver it to our children and grandchildren, if we have them. What efforts are the Government making to explain more clearly to people who might otherwise not understand the benefits of reading to children how important it is, and how important it is to start really early, long before children can speak?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. I still remember my mother’s excellent Winnie the Pooh voice, my children—I think—benefited from my reading to them, and I very much hope that at some point I will be able to read to some grandchildren. My noble friend is also absolutely right that we need to provide support as early as possible to parents who perhaps do not find it as easy to understand how to do that. That is why, alongside services in family hubs, the development of the campaign Little Moments Together, which is providing that sort of advice—including to those who perhaps have not received it from their own parents—is important in order to support children’s early development and that joy of reading, which is so important.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, following on from the general theme of the importance of very early reading, what emphasis is given in primary schools to ensuring that primary children enjoy reading?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, one of the important roles of the English hubs programme, which the Government are supporting with a further £23 million this year, has been to ensure that both access to high-quality reading and elements of reading for pleasure are provided for teachers across primary schools, and that includes the opportunity for continuous professional development, specifically in reading for pleasure, for teachers.
Lord Kamall (Con)
Why waste an opportunity?
Touching on the Answer from the Minister earlier on, she will be aware of the many reading charities that help adults and children to improve their reading skills, or actually learn to read in the first place. Can the Minister tell us a little more about the work that her department does with many of these civil society organisations and charities to increase literacy, not only for children but for adults?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a very important point. Going back to the Little Moments Together campaign that I was talking about earlier, we have provided grant funding for early years voluntary and community sector partners, including the National Literacy Trust, to work with families on that campaign. As I said earlier to the noble Baroness, there are also ways in which we can look at the relationship with other organisations, particularly creative and arts organisations, to help to ensure that the joy of reading is available to all children, whatever their background.
Lord Hampton (CB)
And the noble Lord will be marking my homework later.
The National Literacy Trust says that one in seven primary schools in the UK does not have a library, and in London it is one in four. It has a ready-made Libraries for Primaries campaign set up with Penguin. Will the Government think about sorting this out now?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
As a fellow teacher, although from quite a long time ago, I can say that the noble Lord makes a very good point. It builds on the earlier point about how we can work alongside the National Literacy Trust and others, along with the Government’s reading framework, to make sure that schools know and have the information and best practice available to them to develop libraries if they do not have them, and to make the most of them if they do.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, some of the findings from the National Literary Trust report are particularly striking in relation to reading. Only half as many boys as girls in secondary schools say they enjoy reading, but the trust also has interesting findings on the drop in the enjoyment of writing. We know from many experts in the field how important writing is for a child’s development. Can the Minister reassure the House that writing will retain at least the same importance in the curriculum and assessment review, and is she able to update the House on when we will see that interim report?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that there is a lot of important information in the National Literacy Trust’s annual literacy survey. She is also right about writing, which is why the terms of reference for the curriculum and assessment review are clear that it should seek to deliver an excellent foundation in the core subjects of reading, writing and maths, as well as the broader curriculum that readies young people for life and work. I believe that the interim report will be available in the early spring and I know that many people will be looking forward to it.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend the Minister would like to take this opportunity to thank Frank Cottrell-Boyce for the sterling work that he is doing to promote the fact, precisely as my noble friend said, that reading begins not at the door of the school but when parents and carers share books with children in a safe, warm and comfortable environment. It is that that inculcates the love of reading and the love of books.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right, and I praise the intervention of Frank Cottrell-Boyce and of course of other writers of excellent children’s literature who promote the joy of reading. She is also right, as I have previously said, that that needs to start almost as soon as children are born. We will do what we can through the development of family hubs and our plan for change to ensure that children are prepared when they get to school, to make sure that that includes a love of reading and the ability to experience it in all families.
Free Schools and Academies
Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, on securing this important debate and thank noble Lords for the excellent contributions we have heard from across your Lordships’ House, drawing on a wide and long experience in education. Several noble Lords have suggested that I will find it difficult or unpleasant to respond to this debate, or that I may even become grumpy about my requirement to do so. Far from it—there is nothing I like to do more than to recognise and champion the achievements of great schools and trusts, as we have been doing this afternoon.
Many of your Lordships have referred to the reforms the Government are introducing through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I am looking forward to debating the specifics of the Bill when it reaches us from the other place, not least because it will give us the opportunity to set right some of the misconceptions that I have heard during this afternoon’s debate. I am confident that we will get further with this Bill than the 2022 Schools Bill, in which the first clause contained so many restrictions on academies that they nearly ran out of the alphabet for the subsections, and the Government Benches, let alone the education system, could not reach a consensus. So let us move away from some of the more extreme comments that have been made about this Bill and on to a serious and informed consideration of what we can all do to ensure the highest standards in schools that will enable all children to achieve and thrive.
Let me be clear on this Government’s mission, which is to drive high and rising standards in all schools. Over the past few decades, before the pandemic, attainment improved in some areas. There is also a wide consensus on evidence-based approaches that have been proven effective, which some noble Lords referenced, including phonics, a knowledge-rich approach to the curriculum and ordered classrooms where children learn and thrive, as was identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. We are committed to building on what has worked, including the excellence and innovation from our best schools and trusts.
I agreed with almost all of the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which was very measured. I do not think there is much difference between us, even if there is with some of the other comments in the debate. Part of that is because, before addressing further points made by noble Lords, I would like to be crystal clear that multi-academy trusts and free schools are partners and often leaders in delivering our mission. As many noble Lords have said, trusts and free schools have contributed, and continue to contribute, much to the richness of our school system. Labour is the proud parent of the academy movement, and I was there at, and soon after, the birth.
Since then, there have been some remarkable examples of existing schools being transformed and new free schools flourishing. The federation founded by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is just one example of how the academies movement has made a real difference, and I commend him for the passion that he has shown today and for the work he has done to transform schools and the lives of children within them. Before Christmas, I was able to visit the Arrow Vale school, an academy in my former constituency of Redditch—a school where I started my teaching career—that had gone through tough times and is now part of a strong academy trust and is outstanding. Similarly, many free schools have achieved strong attainment, progress and Ofsted results.
Far from one of the charges that has been made, I am pleased that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be meeting with Katharine Birbalsingh to talk about the success of the Michaela school. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, knows how impressed I was by the UTC in Aston, when I was able to visit. We want this to continue; academies and free schools are here to stay. We want high-quality trusts to grow— in fact, we need only look at recent statistics, which show that this Government are currently supporting 781 conversions, a higher number than at any point since 2018.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly argues that it is not the time to rest on our laurels and say that the job is done. Our system is not working well enough: a third of children leave primary school without fundamental reading, writing and maths skills. Dis-advantaged children are too often being failed and children with special educational needs and disabilities are left without the support they need to excel at school. Since the pandemic, average attainment is down, the gap for disadvantaged children has opened up and we have an absence crisis, with more than one in five children missing a day of school each fortnight, fuelled by fewer and fewer children feeling they belong at school. This needs to change.
High and rising standards must be the right of every child, delivered, as noble Lords have said, through excellent teaching and leadership, a high-quality curriculum and a system that removes the barriers to learning that hold too many children back, all underpinned by strong and clear accountability.
As many noble Lords have said, part of the success of high-quality trusts and free schools has been the flexibility to innovate, to change long-standing practices and to try something new—but these have been available only to academies. When the academies movement began, much of this innovation was experimental, even disruptive by design. But now, 20-plus years later, 60% of our schoolchildren are enrolled in academies, most in multi-academy trusts. We need to build a school system that builds on those successes—a system with a floor but no ceiling, enabling healthy competition for all schools, for the new disruptors and for the new innovators, so that we can promote and support innovation.
This is why we have introduced the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: to give every family the certainty that they will be able to access a good local school for their child where they can achieve and thrive, regardless of where they live. It is also why, through our wider reforms, we are designing a school system that supports and challenges all schools to deliver high standards for every child.
The national curriculum will benefit all children, based on high standards and shared knowledge. This will be a starting point for the innovation I mentioned, which will allow brilliant teachers to inspire their pupils. We will restore the principles established by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who, when the national curriculum was introduced 35 years ago, expected almost every state school, including grant-maintained schools, to deliver it—and I do not believe the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has ever been accused of being a proponent of classic socialism.
This national curriculum will be delivered by expert teachers, with all new teachers with or working towards qualified teacher status on a journey that allows them to grow, develop and transfer their qualifications as they move between schools. We hear the passionate and informed comments of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and others, about the range of people working within our schools. I would like to reassure the noble Lord that the requirement for qualified teacher status will not apply to any teacher who was recruited and commenced employment with a school or trust prior to the implementation of this measure. We want to work with trusts, such as Harris, to ensure that we are not undermining the excellent staff who are doing some of the specific and particular roles he talked about. We will work more on ensuring that this is the case.
We will deliver a minimum core pay offer for all teachers, while also enabling all state schools to create an attractive pay and conditions offer that attracts and retains the staff our children need. We will create a floor but no ceiling there as well. We know the challenges that schools face regarding recruitment and retention, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, outlined, and we want the innovation, excellence and flexibility that we have seen in the academy system to be available to all schools.
Pay and conditions are a crucial component of ensuring that teaching becomes a more attractive place for graduates and those seeking to combine work and family life. That is why my colleague the Schools Minister announced earlier this week that we have heard feedback from the sector that what this means for teachers’ pay and conditions could be clearer. That is why we are tabling an amendment to clarify the clauses on pay and conditions, which will set a floor on pay for all teachers in state schools. Academies will have to have due regard to the rest of the terms and conditions in the STPCD, but we will remit the School Teachers’ Review Body to build more flexibility, so that there is no ceiling on pay and conditions and so that all schools can benefit from flexibilities in that core role of recruiting and retaining the very best people into our teaching profession.
We have also heard noble Lords rightly identify the work that has been done across the system as schools collaborate, work with others and take control of those that are failing in order to drive improvement in our system. As I suggested earlier, we need to go further in terms of that improvement, and we are doing so to make that improvement better and faster, because we know that too many pupils are in schools which have not improved or improved enough in their current structure.
I am afraid that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, is wrong: we are not scrapping sponsored conversion. We will continue to move schools that do not have the capacity to improve to strong trusts. However, under the previous Government, schools did not always get the support to improve when they needed it. Between September 2022 and September 2025, 40% of all schools in a category of concern took over a year to convert into sponsored academies, and 10% took more than two years. The previous Government attempted to address this problem by funding turnaround trusts, but the model was ineffective and those trusts took on only very small numbers of schools. We need more tools to ensure that improvement.
We are strengthening the tools that we have to give support and tackle failure with our new RISE teams. For schools which require more intensive support, we will draw on strong multi-academy trusts and other sources of capacity in the maintained sector to deploy those new RISE teams, which are led by experienced and successful senior school leaders who know how to improve schools and who have done it. They will work alongside struggling schools, including those stuck in a long-standing cycle of underperformance, to share their knowledge and bring the best of school improvement capacity to bear. They will have funds to help the schools implement the improvements they need. The names of the first tranche of these advisers will be announced shortly, but I can inform noble Lords that many of them come from the academies system that we are rightly celebrating today. We are confident that RISE will be effective, but we will not shy away from changing a school’s governance if there is no improvement.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly raised the issue of those vulnerable children who are let down by our system. We need schools to collaborate in the wider community to ensure that the system delivers for every child across an area. That is why we are introducing new duties for schools and local authorities to co-operate on admissions and place planning to ensure that decisions reflect the needs of the community, especially in the placement of vulnerable children, and why we are providing in the Bill for local authorities to be able to direct that a pupil out of school who has a nominated school properly allocated to them is duly admitted. They already have that power with respect to local authority-maintained schools, and it does not make sense for local authorities to continue to need to ask the Secretary of State to make such a direction for academies; every day lost in a child’s education is one that they cannot get back. But that power will rightly come with appropriate protections to guard against misuse, which will include a clear and transparent route for academy trusts to appeal to the independent schools adjudicator where they disagree with a local authority direction notice.
Just as we are committed to growing strong trusts, we will continue to open pipeline free schools where they meet local need for places and offer value for money. But although we celebrate the good schools that have been created through the free schools programme, substantial funding has been allocated to new free schools, which has often created surplus capacity. This can result in poor value for money and can divert resources from much-needed work to improve the condition of existing schools and colleges. An NAO report in 2017 found that half the 113,500 places planned up to 2021 would create spare capacity. That is why my right honourable friend announced a review into mainstream free schools last October. We have engaged closely with trusts and other key partners to gather the latest evidence, and we will also take into account whether projects would provide a distinctive curriculum, for example at post-16 level, and any impact on existing local providers.
In thanking noble Lords for this debate, I also recognise that many noble Lords have paid tribute to the achievements of high-quality academies and free schools over many years. I am and the Government are happy to join them in that and want to build on that success.
This Government will build on what works and fix what does not, so that the system works for all children—levelling up, not down—with a core offer for all parents, with no ceiling on what staff and pupils can achieve and with higher and broader expectations for children. We are taking action to ensure that parents, wherever they live, will have a good school for their child and be confident, as all of us would wish, that they will achieve and thrive.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I listened very carefully to the Minister’s remarks and welcome many of them. We all violently agree on having the highest possible aspiration for our children; the question is how we get there. I will give one example of where we do not agree, after listening to other noble Lords with so much experience across the House in delivering education for our children. When we talk about flexibility, the Minister gives the example of giving the STRB more scope to offer flexibility. That is a centralisation of flexibility. Everything that we have heard is about centralising, whereas everything that we look at which is working is about trusting leaders in our schools and in our trusts to make those decisions about the flexibilities that they need for their children. I urge the Minister to listen not to me but to those behind me and across the House.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I do not believe that the noble Baroness is arguing for the end of the STRB. The STRB is responsible for setting that framework for pay and conditions and can be instructed in its remit to consider how to remove some of the inflexibilities that exist currently for academies but not for other schools. That is the intention of these proposals.