Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will attempt to sum up this very diverse group—

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I apologise, that was my fault. I rise at the end of a very interesting group and look forward to the summing-up. One amendment has rather disappeared in the context of these important issues, but I strongly support it—Amendment 432B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Until she tabled this amendment, I had not looked very carefully at Clause 39.

Clause 39 sets out a whole long list of things which will constitute a material change in the nature of an independent educational institution. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to this amendment because that would generate a lot of pointless work. It is also a classic example of how, in a large Bill, things slip through on the nod, on auto drive, and have certainly slipped past MHCLG. It says that there will be a material change, among other things, if there is a change of the buildings occupied by the institution and made available for student use, which the noble Baroness’s amendment would strike.

Going a little further down the page, you discover that “building” means any

“building … part of a building, or … permanent outdoor structure”,

that the circumstances where a building is “occupied” may be just

“part of a school day”,

and that it is “for student use” if it will be “routinely used by students”. I do not expect the Minister to give me a clear reply on this immediately, but it strikes me that this means that the proverbial bicycle shed, if it was changed into a building in which students kept things in lockers, would constitute a material change for that institution. That is bonkers.

I draw your Lordships’ attention to this, even though it is in a group which is dealing with much more important matters. I would be very grateful for a reply on this from the Minister, because it is easily corrected. A Government who are genuinely committed to reducing regulatory burdens and to making planning processes more easily arrived at has let something slip in a way with which we are all too familiar.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Following what the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has just said, I want to speak to my Amendment 432 in this group and say that it is worth going that bit further than Amendment 434, which the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, is proposing. We are very much looking in the same direction. We want this to be an effective system.

I also lend my support to Amendment 433. On the practicality of understanding, the nomenclature changes all the time. In getting to know a child, you find things out about them, and a decent school immediately wants to do something to provide for that child. It should not have to go through layers of bureaucracy before doing that. As my noble friend said, there should be an immediate reaction and dealing with the consequences of it afterwards.

It is important to deal with the consequences. As my noble friend will remember, there was an excellent school called Stanbridge Earls School, which died because it started to take on children whose SEN it did not really understand. It did not make proper provision. The whole school collapsed as a result. It is really important that these things are properly done, but the immediate reaction to looking after one child should not get in the way of that process.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, second time lucky. This is a very diverse group of amendments and there are one or two that certainly caught my eye. First, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on change of use; that seems to be something the Government could quite easily make a small change on—I do not know how they would do it, but I do not think they would make many enemies if they accommodated that.

Schools have to be inspected, and if you have a consistent system doing that across the board it will be helpful to all. The issue of independent schools which are substandard has been raised, and my noble friend has raised it on many occasions. We should know what we are doing: if something is defined as a school and it is functioning as a school—well, if it walks like duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Let us make sure that they are all inspected to a similar standard. You will have to have flexibility in approach and some knowledge, because if they are doing different jobs, especially in the independent sector, different approaches will be needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, made a very good point about special educational needs. It is incredibly easy to miss co-occurring conditions, and then the one that comes to the fore gets labelled, although it may not be what is causing most of the problems. I say that as a dyslexic who has worked in the field for a long time; co-occurrence is almost the norm. People with dyspraxia are very often co-occurring, and the dyslexia is spotted first because they check your spelling first. They do not realise that you cannot write because you do not have the muscle memory, and your arm is breaking down in the physical movement, but it is going through. Something that allows a change to be made is sensible and practical and will save the child a great deal of distress—and the school too, although make sure you are dealing with the child first. The inspection regime has to have some consistency across it; otherwise, we will have a variety of competing groups with competing standards chasing their tails and blaming each other.

I hope the Minister can give us some assurance that we will get to a more coherent position in the future, but it has to be one which accepts that you are dealing with a variety of different animals.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke in this group, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for moving Amendment 427BA. The group considers amendments to the clauses relating to independent educational institutions. These clauses amend the Education and Skills Act 2008 and the regulatory regime which applies to independent schools. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, eloquently made clear, it is a diverse group, so I ask noble Lords to bear with me while I go through the diverse responses.

As noble Lords will be aware, academy schools are independent schools in law, which is why the regulatory regime in Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 applies to them. Among other things, this means that academy schools are regulated by the Independent School Standards guidance. Vital issues, such as safeguarding, are covered by these standards. Due to their state-funded status, academy schools differ from other independent schools by also being accountable to the Secretary of State via their contractual funding agreements. This long-standing arrangement is not intended to change. Instead, Clauses 36 to 44 are principally intended to change how privately funded schools are regulated.

Amendments 428, 429A and 427BA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and to which a number of noble Lords spoke, including the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, concern the relationship between the Education and Skills Act 2008 and academy trusts and their schools. They would mean either that valuable parts of the Education and Skills Act 2008 will no longer apply to academy schools or that these powers would need to be recreated via funding agreements. This would be expensive and time-consuming, with no immediate benefits.

Amendments 431A and 506D seek to require a review of the predicted impact of the powers relating to the suitability of proprietors and the requirement for proprietors to have regard to guidance. It is absolutely right that we can prevent unsuitable people from running schools. We already have a robust process in place, including requiring new academy trust chairs or trustees to complete a suitability check. Our approach to due diligence is already transparent. We do not expect the process to be significantly different or burdensome under any regulations made using this power, so a review is unnecessary.

To respond to the noble Baroness, the power to require independent school proprietors to have regard to guidance is limited to matters already covered by the independent educational institution standards in Section 94(1) of the Education and Skills Act 2008. It is right that academies, as publicly funded schools accountable to the Secretary of State, should be required to have regard to guidance issued.

I turn to Amendments 429 and 433, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood. If I have understood, the noble Lord’s concern is, first, that the Bill puts too great an imposition on the independent school sector and, secondly, that it represents an unnecessary fettering of its freedoms. On his first concern and Amendment 429, this new regulation-making power is limited to standards about matters already covered by Section 94(1) of the Education and Skills Act 2008. On his second concern and Amendment 433, the current requirement is that it is a material change to admit any pupils with special educational needs. This is too low a threshold and unnecessarily burdensome for institutions. Under Clause 39, it will matter to the Secretary of State whether a setting is a special institution and, if it is, what special educational needs it caters for. We do not intend to require a school to submit a material change based on the needs of individual pupils. Officials will test this further to ensure that the drafting does what is intended. I trust that this gives the noble Lord and others the assurance he is seeking.

Amendment 432, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and Amendments 432A and 434, tabled by my noble friend Lady Blackstone, make changes to the suite of inspection powers proposed to be given to Ofsted. To respond to my noble friend Lady Whitaker, the Bill contains measures to increase Ofsted’s powers when investigating only the specified relevant offences; for example, suspected unregistered and therefore illegal independent schools.

On Amendment 432, I agree with the noble Lord that unregistered independent schools are unsafe. Ofsted should have the necessary powers to investigate these settings and support criminal prosecutions against those responsible. That is why the Bill introduces a new suite of investigation powers available to inspectors in this situation. These achieve the same ends as the noble Lord’s amendment.

The amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Blackstone and spoken to by my noble friends Lady Morris and Lady Whitaker and the noble Lords, Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Nash, both seek to further strengthen the new investigatory regime. Amendment 432A introduces two new offences in this area. These may criminalise a landlord who is wholly unaware that their property is being used for illegal purposes, or a parent who innocently pitches in to support the running of a school which is not registered. The existing offence in this area of “conducting” is already broad and should capture and support our aim of prosecuting anyone running, controlling or managing an illegal school. Amendment 434 would allow inspectors to search any premises without a warrant. While I understand my noble friend’s concerns, this would be too intrusive. The Bill already strikes a good balance between allowing inspectors to act as they deem appropriate and introducing necessary safeguards which protect the rights of those subject to the investigation.

Amendments 432B and 433A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would make changes to Clause 39. It may help if I outline why the Government believe that Clause 39 is necessary. A setting seeking to register as a new private school is tested against the Independent School Standards. The noble Baroness asked whether schools would need to apply for material change if, for example, they added a bike shed. To be clear, we want the focus to be on buildings that are commonly used by pupils and, therefore, the places where risks to them might often arise. We have examples of settings that put pupils in entirely inappropriate buildings, including buildings with dangerous chemicals or exposed wiring, buildings that the public can enter freely and buildings in a state of disrepair.

In relation to the point on bike sheds, officials are testing the current drafting to ensure that its scope is not overly broad; and that the focus is on buildings that would be commonly used by pupils and are, therefore, the places where risks to them might arise most often.

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[Lord Nash (Con)]

I support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lady Spielman and support the sentiment behind them. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that we should not rush to this, because I think Ofsted inspectors will need some training on it. Many of them still do not really understand MATs, and I am a little worried about boasting too much about organisational structure; it is more the results that count and educational outcomes, the support from the centre, personal development, safeguarding, careers, enrichment et cetera. Of course, it is fairly easy to inspect for value for money by reference to comparable statistics, so that could certainly be done. In principle, I support this concept and welcome the very eloquent intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is said that, if you have all-party support on education in the House of Lords, you should probably run with it. We have it on this occasion.

There is a major part of the education system that we are not looking at: we are not inspecting the academy trusts properly. There are some successes there, and some that are not doing as well; that is inevitable, but it is an accepted part of the system now. We should be looking at what works and what does not.

My question to the Minister is as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked: if not now, then when? If we are going to do something along these lines, getting an idea of the structure and when it is coming in would be very helpful, because it is a very important part of the structure. Whether we accept that with a sigh or a smile does not matter; it is there and we should be inspecting it. I look forward to hearing the Government’s plans in this department very soon.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendments 436ZA and 436ZB in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I declare my interest as honorary president of COBIS which, as the noble Lord said, is a member of the British International Schools Safeguarding Coalition.

As the noble Lord set out, these amendments would close an important safeguarding loophole by extending the jurisdiction of the Teaching Regulation Agency to accept referrals of misconduct committed by UK-qualified teachers working overseas, and strengthening prohibition checks to ensure that individuals cannot exploit name changes to evade detection.

Prohibition checks are essential to identify individuals banned from teaching due to misconduct, safeguarding concerns or professional incompetence, and yet none of these misdemeanours committed at international schools overseas can be referred to the TRA. Indeed, as the noble Lord stressed, the current system does not even provide an option for them to report such concerns to the TRA online, creating a clear gap in the information that it holds. The loopholes in the current system mean that a teacher who is returning to the UK, for instance, and should have been referred to the TRA due to potentially serious child welfare issues committed overseas cannot be reported and so no prohibition order can be made. As a result, the individual would pass the statutory check, which schools rely on as evidence that an individual is safe to work with children. In practice, that could mean a teacher dismissed for misconduct abroad would have a clear result on their prohibition check and could subsequently be hired by a school in England that had no idea of their previous behaviour and allow the teacher to resume teaching.

I am sure the Minister agrees that this situation is clearly unsatisfactory and should be addressed. I hope she is able to accept these sensible amendments, which are supported by the Safeguarding Alliance and six UK Government-recognised British school associations and would undoubtedly help further strengthen the UK’s reputation as a global leader in safeguarding.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I say, briefly, that these seem to be incredibly sensible amendments, and I hope the Minister can accept them.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak only briefly to these amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. The misconduct regime covered in these clauses is clearly very important for the protection of schoolchildren and maintaining the highest standards both in the classroom and outside, in public perception. His Majesty’s loyal Opposition welcomes what is new in these clauses because it is right and proportionate that employers and authorities should have the ability to take action regardless of when or where an incident took place, and whether the individual was a teacher in the profession at that time.

We welcome online and independent educational settings being brought into scope in addition to the possibility of investigating a suspicion or an incident regardless of how it came to light. Ensuring that this regime applies fully and is not open to exploitation by those who seek to identify and use loopholes is critical, and the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, highlight this.

We hope that the Government will take this opportunity to assure the Committee that there will be no gaps in this section of the Bill. How will the Minister ensure that these eminently sensible amendments are addressed rigorously?

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[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as a secondary school teacher, I admit that I am conflicted by this group of amendments. Noble Lords have highlighted the benefits of getting industry experts to teach in schools. At our school, we use architects to teach the architecture programme. I recently went to a UTC that gets employers to come in and set projects for students. The employers then regularly come in to look at the projects so that the students get real-world, real-industry training. It is unrealistic to expect these employers to get teaching qualifications.

I am afraid that I cannot let Amendment 438 go. I have admired the optimism and creativity of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and I acknowledge the sterling work that the elective home-schooling community is doing. Like many in this Committee, I have undertaken formal teacher training. I have QTS, which does not appear to be the gold standard any more, I am afraid. I had one disastrous attempt at home-schooling during lockdown, when I tried to teach my primary school-aged daughter maths. She is still shouting at me even now.

To say that somebody who has experienced only home-schooling can go from that to teaching 32 boisterous students in the last period on a Friday, without any formal training, and impart any knowledge at all is optimistic at best. The noble Lord, who is sadly not in his place, unwittingly belittles two years of pretty intense training for mainstream teachers.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Sater, in saying that physical education is one of those things that we all decry and think somebody else should be doing. The fact of the matter is that there are certain physical skills that you need. In racquet sports, for example, you need to know how to move your feet, how to hold the racquet and so on; I say that in front of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, with, shall we say, a degree of fear. There are certain basic skills that you will need to get the best out of a sport and to see whether you have any potential for it—if you do not have them, you are not going to find out.

When it comes to how to integrate those abilities into PE lessons, you need some training and structure. If you turn around and say to your outside agency, “This is possible, so please make sure that it happens”, you are taking a step further forward. So a degree of knowledge is required.

We have just mentioned the fact that special educational needs are a factor. I have managed to make a couple of speeches without mentioning them, so I shall revert to the norm. If you have special educational needs but somebody who is trying to teach you does not understand what they are about, chances are you are going to fail. They may say, “Everybody take some notes”, but you may have one person who is dyspraxic so cannot do that easily and two people who are dyslexic so will not be able to read them back and will not get everything down in time. You have to have some degree of knowledge to reach them—and those are fairly commonly occurring conditions. You will need some training somewhere in this.

I do not say that the existing pathways are always there because, if they were, I would not be making this point in the first place. However, we need to have that degree of training—or at least the awareness to say, “Right, I don’t know how you do this. Can you defer and find me another pathway?” That would be very helpful. I look forward to exploring this matter, both in this Bill and in future Bills, to make sure that we get something in place that means that more teachers can become teachers of special educational needs—not just saying that they are, because more of the same does not work. What they have at the moment is failing them.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

I want to come in on this group to inject a note of pragmatism into the discussion. First, I observe that the current freedom does not seem to have created significant problems in practice. To ask that classic question, “What is the problem that the clause in the Bill is trying to solve?”

Secondly, it is absolutely right that there are excellent programmes—the noble Lord, Lord Knight, described them—to encourage people to move from instructor and teaching assistant roles into qualified teacher status. Those are excellent—they should exist and people should be encouraged, of course—but the pragmatic point is to think about all the people who might choose to be teachers but choose instead, for example, to go off and be tutors, lavishing their skills and expertise in a very small subject on children whose parents can afford to pay. They are then lost to the state system because they simply will not go down that path.

For that reason, I support the amendments put forward by my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew—as well as the pragmatic amendment proposed at the start of this group by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich—as a way of making sure that the potential impact of this clause is not the opposite of what I am sure the Government intend. It is absolutely right to want both to upskill teachers and to make sure that as much teaching as possible happens with qualified teachers, but it would be desperately sad if many subjects and a lot of the potential school experience for millions of children were diluted for that purity of principle.

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[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502D, which stands in my name. I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for his support. This amendment seeks to make financial education a mandatory part of the primary school curriculum from year 1. Why do we need it? Its aims are simple but important: to ensure that children begin to develop the knowledge and skills needed to understand and manage money from an early age.

In a world of increasing financial complexity, where our children encounter such things as targeted advertising, digital payments and online scams, often before they have even reached secondary school, it is more important than ever that financial literacy should not be left to chance. While financial education is a statutory part of the secondary school curriculum in England, it is not a requirement in primary schools. This creates a gap at precisely the stage when children begin forming lifelong money habits, and it stands in stark contrast to the rest of the United Kingdom, where such education is embedded in the national curriculum at an earlier age than in England.

The Money and Pensions Service has found that these habits develop as early as age seven, yet we wait until secondary school to introduce compulsory learning. Without embedding financial education from year 1, we risk missing the most formative opportunity to equip our children with the tools that they need to manage money with confidence and make good financial decisions throughout their lives.

According to a research report from Santander UK, at the beginning of this year, out of 2,000 pupils aged 18 to 21, only 26% reported receiving any financial education at school. Without a fundamental understanding of money management, our young people are increasingly turning to online sources for financial guidance and information, especially social media—that comes with its own risks—as they step into an age of financial independence. This cannot be right.

RedSTART Educate, a charity for primary school children that delivers financial education through progressive learning, which has now merged with Money Ready, is a long-standing campaigner for financial education to become statutory in the primary curriculum in England. It tells us that levels of financial literacy in the UK are low and falling, and highlights how awareness of debt, saving and investments needs to begin in primary schools. It is hard to believe, yet the data show, that from their programmes in primary schools 90% of children say that they now understand how budgeting can help them achieve goals and 80% of children can explain the difference between lending and giving. This is surely sufficiently compelling for financial literacy to be taught in primary schools; importantly, it will assist in dealing with the significant inequalities that exist across the country.

However, as the Social Market Foundation highlights, for financial education to make a difference, it is important to start young. Socioeconomic inequalities in financial understanding can be seen at the age of 11. According to Young Enterprise, which has called for financial education to be a core subject in primary school, only one in three primary-aged children receives any financial education, and where it is taught the provision is patchy. In other words, it is a postcode lottery.

This amendment is about establishing consistency and equity, and recognising that financial education should not depend on where a child lives or which school they attend. The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, has called on the Government, as a minimum, to place financial education on the national curriculum for primary schools within PSHE, and the APPG on Financial Education for Young People, of which I am a vice-chair, has recommended that it be embedded in the primary school curriculum.

We also cannot ignore the link between financial literacy and mental well-being. According to the Mental Health Foundation, money worries are the single biggest cause of stress and anxiety in the UK. The earlier we can equip children with the tools to understand and manage money, the better their long-term financial resilience and emotional health will be. I acknowledge that the national curriculum is under considerable pressure, but financial education cannot be seen as an optional extra. It is a vital life skill, essential for preparing our children to live fulfilling and stable lives in an increasingly complex financial world. That is why I believe this amendment would be a valuable addition to the Bill.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 441, which is tabled in my name. It is not the most elegant amendment that I have ever tabled, but it is designed to get the Government to set out their thinking on supporting those with special educational needs through the use of assistive technology.

I have a couple of obvious interests. The one I should declare is that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which makes adaptive technology for the workplace and education. More importantly—I show off how bad a dyslexic I am—I cannot function or deliver a letter without using it. Let us take English and somebody who is dyslexic. If you are bad enough, you will not achieve in English without having someone to dictate to unless you use assistive technology. You will fail at learning a language using the modern processes because the language-processing parts of your brain and your short-term memory do not work that way. You may have a choice of failing dramatically or just simply failing, but you are not going to achieve. Using assistive technology means that you can access that part of the curriculum, get through and possibly hand in work without having somebody else there. You have your independence.

I was trying to get the Government to set out their attitude towards this, which is a great way of addressing some of the problems of special educational needs. Get in early and get them away; they can maintain themselves and will be adaptive. If we could know about this in this part of the Bill, it would help us in the future. I hope that the Government are friendly to it.

There are all sorts of things attached to this. For instance, there are great things about not having mobile phones in school, but they are a very good platform on which to carry some of this technology. This may not be the only way forward—there may be other ways—but getting some idea of the Government’s thinking on this would probably help the forthcoming debates. It may not be a silver bullet, but it is certainly something that can help. I would be very grateful to hear what the Government’s attitude is.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 443 in my name. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for supporting it. The amendment would provide that an order or regulations made under or by virtue of any provision of the Bill that would amend primary legislation shall not apply to an academy school.

Academies’ proven success has been based on their freedom to depart from the national curriculum and to apply a curriculum tailored to their pupils’ needs. This Bill, however, is making a far-reaching change to the way that academies work, because the Government will, in future, be able to control the content and application of the national curriculum to academies. As I pointed out at Second Reading, this will be done not by primary legislation, as one would expect, but by secondary legislation that amends primary legislation. Yes, it is our old friend Henry VIII who lives on in these draconian powers, which raise real questions as regards compliance with the rule of law.