Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with a couple of things the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said, including that we have the great and the good of education gathered in this House today. There are many here who have been involved in education, and in the current education system’s construction, for a long time, and I look forward to hearing what they have to say. I have worked against some of them and I have worked successfully with others; they may have cursed me or praised me, but we have striven forward.

Part 1 of the Bill reads like the Government dealing with the hardy perennials of the care system. There is much in there that has already provided us with debate after debate, many of which were quite depressing. I thank the Government for bringing this forward so that we can all have a look at them. There are many issues which we have heard about in an untold number of debates, and they have not gone that well. The way that the Government choose to implement the passing on of information might be one of the most interesting issues, because often mistakes have arisen due to a lack of co-ordination. I look forward to seeing how we can advance and check that, as far as we can by debate, to make sure it is going to work properly. This is not an easy topic, as most people involved in it would accept. There may not be perfect answers, but improvement is certainly possible. We should have had a cohesive look at this, together, a while ago, so I thank the Government for bringing it forward.

Many of my noble friends, including my noble friend Lady Tyler, are going to weigh in on a lot of the Bill. Looking round at these Benches, I see others who I cannot imagine will be quiet. We have discussed this a lot, and I hope we can have an open mind, given the experience here in the House, as we go through the Bill.

I will be spending more of my time and consideration on Part 2 of the Bill. Before I go into that, I will say something about a matter that is not included. Anybody who has been in this House for any length of time would be very surprised if I do not mention special educational needs in a speech on education. Let us face it, at the moment, that area is a hideous mess. The primary beneficiaries of the system are lawyers and those who give expensive diagnoses. That is the definition of failure. My honourable friends in another place moved amendments on this matter; we should look at those again, and possibly propose more. We have got to see if, through the Bill, we can at least set the grounds for easier intervention.

We must look across the education system, at all its aspects. Academisation has not helped, as a school can now be a failing school because of low academic standards. I start with a declaration of interests. I am dyslexic and I am president of the British Dyslexia Association, and I am chairman of a firm for assisted tech, some of which is used in education. If we do not make it easy for structure and help to be given to schools, we are always going to have problems in this area. To a dyslexic, the emphasis on passing English felt, at times, almost like a personal assault. Pupils have to learn synthetic phonics—if I have got that right—but a bad short-term memory can mean that you sometimes get it wrong. The system does not work well for those with a bad short-term memory, but that is the way teachers are supposed to teach. A greater degree of flexibility in teaching methods, which will be a great strength, is important. If we can get guidance on the way that the national curriculum and the special educational needs structure is envisaged as changing under the Bill, I will be very grateful.

The system is almost certainly a contributing factor to the high number of pupils not in school. We will talk a lot about home education in the Bill, and the biggest group of home-educated pupils I first met were those whose special educational needs provisions were not being met. Those parents, often reluctantly, took their children out of school. It has now become a more acceptable way forward, but I remember papers on off-rolling, and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, getting passionate about the fact that it was breaking the spirit of academies. If the system is one in which your career, your school and your status can be destroyed by not having the correct pass rates, I might think about getting rid of undiagnosed or improperly diagnosed dyslexics and other neurodiverse groups if I was in that situation. A better identification process would be massively helpful, and we must make sure there is space for it.

Whatever the strengths of academies, they have to work with local authorities. We must look at moving this forward and getting it right. Academies are now the dominant group. Acceptance that we do not need wholesale change was reached when the previous Government decided that they would not go for compulsory academisation, as there were local authority schools that were doing a good job. The consensus now is that the converted academies—those that were forced to change—are the weakest group, if I remember correctly, although there is not too much in it. I welcome the fact that we are going to get them working together on matters such as the allocation of school places.

On school uniforms, specifying a few items is a little silly. Why not put a maximum budget on what you can charge for school uniforms? Encouraging second-hand school uniforms might be one solution.

When it comes to the much-vaunted breakfast clubs, I can say only this: the bus is occasionally late. In rural areas, making sure that the bus gets to school on time will be a challenge. How the Government propose to interfere with local transport systems will be an interesting discussion. We think that the extra calories should be given at lunchtime. There might be a compromise solution, such as school brunch—though I fear that sounds like a daytime TV programme. We applaud making sure that people are properly fed, but we think this is a difficult way to do it.

There is not much to say about the rest of the Bill, other than on the joys of Clause 63. Henry VIII has raised his head again. The last time we had a big education Bill, when the previous Government were in charge, the Henry VIII powers were up front; this time, they are tucked away at the back. If I am wrong about this, I look forward to the Minister telling me why I am wrong. Changes can be made by regulation, but we know how difficult it is to change regulations because we cannot amend them, only reject them all—and we are told it is a constitutional crisis every time we try to get rid of an order. Can the Minister explain how this will work, so that it will not be a case of the Secretary of State saying, “Thou wilt change”, with virtually no element of parliamentary oversight? I look forward to working through the Bill. There is no shortage of expertise to dig down into it. I hope we will come to a better conclusion.

I will make one final point—as I see the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, looking at me. Would it not be a good idea if we could find one little section in the Bill that encourages outside bodies such as sports clubs to enhance the activity of school sport, with same being done for drama and music? It would be a nice idea if we took the opportunity to correct that bit of the education system, because we all know—and it is proven—that if you do it only at school, you stop when you leave school. Maybe we can change that in this Bill.