Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts(2 days, 7 hours ago)
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Baroness Longfield (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 450 on managed moves, as well as Amendment 453, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey.
The amendments concern a group of children who are literally moved between schools. At the moment, they are pretty much out of the spotlight and are not in any way accountable within the system. Mine is a very practical amendment: it seeks to provide a framework that is consistent, fair and transparent, so that we do not lose these children. It would ensure that we know where they are and that the moves are in their best interests. Managed moves relate to permanent changes of pupils on a school registration where the move is not the result of a permanent exclusion, transfer to a special school, school closure or movement between educational phases. They are currently unmonitored and unregulated in many areas.
While some local authorities have very strong protocols and partnerships that mean that managed moves operate well, the lack of appropriate guard-rails, to ensure moves between schools are in the best interests of the child, has allowed some problematic practices to emerge. In the current system, frequently neither the local authorities nor the Government know where, or even if, the child is being educated following a managed move. The Who is Losing Learning? report this year uncovered a deeply concerning trend: it estimated that, for every child that was permanently excluded, there were 10 more invisibly being moved around the system behind that. There are also reports that, sometimes, children can almost be traded between different schools and systems within this process. Some children will spend a lot of time out of school as a result, and others are moved time and time again.
The solution proposed in my amendment is very practical. It would bring managed moves in line with suspensions and exclusions. It proposes that they are put through the existing fair access protocol and that local authorities report on its use to the Department for Education. This would subject managed moves to a collaborative peer review and set out what knowledge and oversight the appropriate local authorities and the Department for Education have. It would be important that discussion of, and application to, the fair access protocol should happen before the move is initiated, to ensure that the child’s education does not get disrupted as a result.
We want local authorities to keep good records, as we must be clear on where responsibility lies for that child as they move between schools. We also want a stipulation that this does not apply to a child when they move from one school to another because of a change in the child’s residence. There is a real need for a definition of managed moves and for all those managed moves then to be reported back to the department, with an annual report on the numbers and nature of those moves.
There is an opportunity here to draw on the really good practice that occurs in many areas and to create a standardised approach that would be fair, transparent, accountable and, ultimately, in the best interests of the child. This speaks to the ambition that we all have for increasing opportunities for all children while also strengthening inclusion—that is what we all want to see. The provisions are practical and doable, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I speak in support of my Amendments 452 and 454, on the control of admissions into schools. This is a fraught issue for parents trying to get their children into excellent schools that lack sufficient places, so rationing—that unpleasant word—has to apply. Where the shortage of places is structural, outstanding schools can be and are supported to expand their facilities. In my trust, we have an outstanding school that started out with us in special measures over 10 years ago. It has nearly doubled its cohort size over that time, and I am grateful to the local authority and indeed to the DfE for supporting that expansion in physical terms. This year, it was the highest-performing secondary school in Norfolk at GCSE, and I am incredibly proud of the staff who have achieved that. But, more relevant for this legislation, it shows that the system can work well and responsibly.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have seen some of the most significant improvements in outcomes for pupils in our free schools, with schools such as Michaela and Ark Greenwich in London, Eden girls and boys, part of the Star academy trust in Birmingham, and the Mercia School in Sheffield, to name but a few, achieving remarkable results. I know that my noble friends Lord Harris, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew are very likely to add to that list of exceptional free schools that they have been part of creating.
Free schools have been a mechanism for the injection of new ideas, new energy and improving models of education into the state system. Free schools respond to parental and community demand; they provide parents with choice over their child’s education and they have driven up standards. Free schools are usually part of a strong multi-academy trust that has a track record of delivering high-quality education and the back-office capacity needed to support smooth and financially sustainable operations across HR, finance, IT, premises and more. Local authorities do not have and never have had the same capacity and ability to provide tailored support to schools.
The reason for the change in policy in the Bill to allow local authorities to open free schools in future is given in the policy summary, which says that the measure better aligns
“local authorities’ responsibility for securing sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools”.
Again, to loop back to the previous group, on which the Minister did not commit to write—I am sure that her officials noted my request for data—can she share the evidence that there really is a gap in their ability to secure sufficient school places and cite any instances where a local authority has been unable to meet its sufficiency duty as a result of a lack of applications from suitable trusts to establish a new free school? Certainly, during my time in office, there were always multiple applications for new presumption free schools, both mainstream and special schools.
My worry is that this is an example of bureaucratic tidiness being prioritised over outcomes for children. The English system is not tidy: we have voluntary-aided schools, voluntary-controlled schools, foundation schools and many other models. On paper, it might look messy, but we have still been able to rise significantly up the global league tables because we focused relentlessly on outcomes over bureaucracy. This clause feels like we are putting a bureaucrat’s diagrams first—even, I add before the Minister growls at me too much, a bureaucrat with a big heart and a lifelong commitment to children. All of this will change—and to the detriment of pupils.
It will also create higher costs for the Government. In an interview with Schools Week in April, Rachael Wardell, the new president of the ADCS, said, on the range of new responsibilities that councils will be given in the Bill, that
“part of our ongoing dialogue with government is going to be about, if you want us to do these things, then we’re going to need to be resourced accordingly”.
Can the Minister give an estimate of the additional funding needed for local authorities to fulfil their new duties, including in relation to free schools?
This proposed change creates a fundamental conflict of interest for the local authority. It will both invite proposals for a new free school when one is needed and be able to propose one itself, and it will then decide which proposal to approve. That is hardly a system designed to build confidence. We are told that, where it puts forward its own proposal, the Secretary of State, through the work of the regional directors, will be the decision-maker; however, this introduces an additional layer of work and, dare I say it, bureaucracy in a system that is currently working reasonably well. Organisations such as the New Schools Network have been critical in supporting trusts, establishing free schools and building capacity in the sector. We therefore think that the change in policy created by Clause 57 is a fundamental mistake and unnecessary, and I hope that the Minister will think again.
My Amendment 480 seeks to unblock the pipeline of free schools, which have been put on hold since the election. I think that 44 free schools are on hold, including some that bring high-quality 16-to-19 education to areas of very high deprivation, such as those with a high percentage of white, working-class boys, which the Secretary of State has recently focused on. Surely this is a way to demonstrate that focus and unlock those applications now.
The Government have, so far, spent twice as long reviewing the free schools pipeline as it took to open the first 24 free schools in 2010. The time between that election and the opening of free schools was 142 days; in contrast, the time between this Government’s announcement of the review in October 2024 and today has been about 288 days. Overall, it feels like the whole programme has been delayed, and I hope that the Minister can reassure the Committee that this is not the case and put some numbers on how many places will open in the next three years, in both special and mainstream schools.
Finally, I express my support for Amendment 481, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, which would bring greater transparency to the accounts of maintained schools. I am sure that my noble friend, like me, is tired of being told that there is not enough transparency around academies, even though there is actually no financial visibility for maintained schools. I beg to move.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I will address my Amendment 481. This group is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think that my amendment is relevant and important, as it seeks to level the playing field by ensuring that there is a high level of financial governance for local authority schools compared to academies. Yet again, the credit must go to a previous Labour Government for setting out such strong foundations to underpin the governance of academies; comparing academies and local authority schools is like light and day.
I have a reputation for being something of a martinet when it comes to the disciplined management of school finances. Various people have made fun of me over the years, which does not trouble me in the least, because every pound I have saved from wasteful and poor management in schools is then available to go to the front line in improving the education of children. The Minister might even want to call me a bureaucrat, because I have been so assiduous in that part of the system. I would love to see the overall schools budget at a much higher level, but that will not happen given the parlous state of our country’s finances. We therefore have to work with what we have.
In the meantime, the level of accountability and visibility of LAs’ oversight of their own schools is murky at best. An academy trust has to complete a full external audit of its finances within four months of the close of the academic year—that is, between 31 August and 31 December. The accounts have to be filed with Companies House on that date. At that point, the full record of the trust’s financial affairs is available for public scrutiny for the year ending only four months earlier. You can get that information on any trust in England with about four clicks of a button. There is a red list in the DfE—I hope the Minister has seen it —of any trust that misses this deadline. When I was there, any trust more than a month late was immediately placed on a risk register. If schools’ managers or trustees cannot get the money right, how can they ever get the education right? It really is that simple.
But what visibility is there for local authority schools? There is virtually nothing that is easily accessed. Even as the Minister for the school system, I found it an endless battle to get this sort of information. Although LAs would complain frequently about not having enough money, they were rarely forthcoming about how they were spending what they had. This is a very unacceptable state of affairs. If we look at some key categories of oversight and compare the levels of transparency, I hope noble Lords will see why this very unbalanced situation needs correcting.
First, there is the accountable body. For academies, it is the board of trustees and the members sitting above that. The DfE Academy Trust Handbook sets the rules. These board members and the members themselves are on every academy’s website. For local authorities, they are their own accountable body—and try talking to that person.
Secondly, there are audited annual accounts, which I have already explained. But there are no requirements for anything similar for local authority schools. It is even worse that the average frequency of an internal local authority audit of its own schools is about every three years, and it is virtually impossible to see a copy of those reports. I failed consistently when I was in the department.
Thirdly, there is internal auditing. For trusts of a certain size, this is another annual requirement. For noble Lords not familiar with the term, an internal audit is not exactly as it says on the tin. An internal audit is conducted by external specialists but looks at different areas of schools’ operation beyond straight finances, such as deep dives into cyber vulnerability, payroll, the condition of the school estate and so on. There is no such requirement for local authorities.
Fourthly, there are financial returns. Academies are required to submit annual accounts to the DfE and indeed a three-year budget forecast. They also need to demonstrate compliance with their chart of accounts. For local authorities, again there is no standard national chart of accounts, and they are not required to submit three-year forecasts.
Fifthly, there are monthly management accounts. Academies are required to ensure that the chair of the board of trustees sees these at least four times a year. My noble friend Lady Barran actually reduced it. I had it at six, but she was right; my bureaucratic obsession probably had got the better of me. But this is not required for chairs of governors in local authority schools.
Sixthly, there is related-party transaction reporting. Academies have to comply with specific rules, such as needing independent authorisation from the DfE for larger sums. It was £20,000, but my noble friend—she might correct me—lifted it to £50,000. Again, there is nothing like that for local authority schools.
Seventhly, there is the publication of salaries. Academies have to disclose all salaries above £100,000, but local authority schools do not. This is required only for LA officers at LA level. Estimates I have seen indicate that there are over 1,000 staff in local authority schools across England who exceed that threshold, so any defence that it is not a material number of people in receipt of public money does not wash.
Eighthly, there is website reporting. Academies are required to publish their audited accounts on their website. There is no requirement for local authorities to publish their school accounts.
Ninthly, there is the accounting officer. Academies have to appoint an accounting officer with—I stress—personal responsibility for accurate and timely reporting. No such thing exists in local authority schools.
Given that LAs are facing an unprecedented financial squeeze, with some virtually bankrupt, such as Birmingham, there should be no excuse for them not to up their game. The costs—which will of course be the reflexive defence for not doing anything—would be trivial against the improvement in the spending going on inside the LA schools and would be recouped many times over the cost of the audit fee.
Every time I have taken over a local authority school, we have eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of wasteful expenditure, which is then focused on teaching. In every secondary school inside my trust, because of the very tight financial management, we have been able to extend the school day by three hours a week. If a child spends the full five years of his or her education in one of those schools, it is the equivalent of receiving another year’s education. That is what is at stake here. Norfolk is not a well-funded local authority; it is about middle ranking. We are not getting any handouts. It just shows you that, if there was more rigour in the system, it would make an enormous difference to the children in our country.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, among several interesting amendments in this group, I support in particular Amendments 432A and 434 in the names of my noble friends Lady Blackstone and Lady Morris of Yardley. My reasons are exactly as I set out in our discussion of the previous group, so I will just sum up to my noble friend the Minister that we need to have an effective grip on unregistered schools, because of the undoubted harm to education and well-being being done—by some of them only—with impunity.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 432A from the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Blackstone, who spoke very well. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, is not here. He spoke very movingly, but I do not believe that any group in our society should be given the right to entirely exclude themselves from mainstream British life.
I was the Faith Minister for a time. I was assiduously courted by them; they are very good at that and were charming people, but I had to fight with them to get them to speak and teach in English, let alone all the rest of a broad curriculum that allows one to function properly in our society. For the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey—I am not sure that she is here—to compare it with an easy-going Sunday school feels disingenuous. Sunday school is unlikely to be 10 hours a day, and these yeshivas are of course running for 10 hours a day, five days a week.
This is an important issue and I hope the Minister will look at it carefully, because otherwise, we will be setting a very dangerous precedent.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, I add my support to what my noble friend has just said, and the comments made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Blackstone. It is a matter of balance, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, between the needs of the religion and the needs of the child to receive a broad and balanced curriculum sufficient that, when they are adults, they can make choices. Certainly, when I was a Minister there were a number of unregistered settings where the children were attending very full-time, and the organisations were pleading home education as their defence. There was no way, frankly, that there were enough hours in the dark day, or the energy, for that to plausibly be happening.
I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran. Can the Minister say why it is necessary to have these powers and these changes in relation to academies in the Bill? In five years as the Academies Minister, at no time did I feel that I needed any more powers—either those in this group or those we will discuss later—to sort out problems. Of course, we now know why these powers are in the Bill, even if we do not know why they are necessary: because the unions want them. We know that because the Secretary of State for Education told us so yesterday at the TUC conference. I must say that I admire her honesty. The unions have made a number of excellent comments recently about the dangers of smartphones and social media, because they know that they are creating considerable problems in schools for children and for their members. The fact that they have been so current on this and so strongly outspoken is very impressive, and I commend them for that.
However, it is my perception that the unions are still very anti-academies, which I suggest is an out-of-date attitude. It is clear that a teacher in a good multi-academy trust has far greater career progression opportunities, far greater CPD and far more support than they could possibly have in a single school. I therefore invite the unions to consider their antipathy for academies a bit more in the context of career progression, and to support for their teachers.
Of course, these powers are a power grab not just by the Secretary of State but by civil servants. I personally believe that academy, school and MAT leaders are far better placed to decide how to run their schools than officials micromanaging a system from Whitehall. We know that officials’ first pass at mass academisation after 2010 was not well managed. Having said that, there are currently a number of senior officials in the academies and regions teams in the DfE, as my noble friend Lady Berridge has alluded to, who are very experienced and for whom I have a great deal of respect, but they will not be there for ever. Given the Civil Service’s penchant for moving staff around far too much, such that they never build up any serious domain expertise, I believe that handing so much power to officials is dangerous. The Government would be far better off leaving things as they are because they are working perfectly well—we all have funding agreements and we all understand the deal—so that they can bask in the success of the academies programme, which, after all, was invented by the Labour Party.
I turn to Amendment 436B specifically. New subsection (2)(g) in Clause 39(5), to do with premises, appears to say that if a school wanted to change the use of a classroom from teaching pupils to a crèche or nursery, because of a drop in roll, it would have to ask the DfE. Really? Is that what is actually meant? I ask the Minister to clarify that, please.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I speak strongly in defence of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and his Amendment 435, supported by my noble friends Lady Barran and Lady Spielman, which is long overdue. When I was the Minister in 2017, it was the first thing I tried to do, and I ran into a turf war between Ofsted and the department. It was as simple as that. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, asked why nothing has been done about it. It is because the bureaucrats were fighting each other.
The excuse then was that there were not the sufficient financial skills in Ofsted to look at the financial framework and capability of the MAT. I think that is nonsense; I think we could train a small number of Ofsted inspectors very quickly to understand the basic principles. For example, GAG pooling, which is one of the big advantages of multi-academy trusts when they essentially have one bank account. Only about a third on MATs do that. I am a huge fan of it, although I do not think my noble friend Lord Nash is. That is fine; that is part of the flexibility that the system has created, but the Ofsted inspector would need to understand that.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, made a point about it freeing up resources, and I completely agree. In the three years since I have been back as the chairman of my trust, I have had to sit through, I think, 12 interviews with Ofsted inspectors. Some 80% of what I tell them is exactly the same every single time: we have a joined-up curriculum across the whole trust and we have GAG pooling of all the money. That is all happening; the heart and brain is at the centre.
Therefore, having inspectors going round all these peripheral schools, where they will get the same answer time after time, is a tremendous waste of time. Go to the centre and, and if you are then worried about the messaging or the data you are inspecting, take a deeper dive into individual schools. If you did a single MAT inspection every three years, you would not have to go into every school.
I really cannot understand why there would not be huge support for this. Would it not be wonderful if we could bring the Committee together with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lady Barran, and agree an amendment that the Minister can work with? I promise noble Lords that everyone would benefit .
Lord Lucas (Con)
My noble friend of course runs a good academy trust. Where things are not so good, you can get a lot of variability between the schools that append themselves to a trust. So this has to be judged on the occasion: you cannot just say you we will inspect the middle and not the outside; if the middle is not functioning well, the outside can really be very up and down.
I will add a couple of thoughts. First, I do not like the idea from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of local authorities appointing. The way you gather good people together is by having a few excellent people in the middle who want other excellent people around them. Then you have Ofsted, or whoever, saying “Is this working?”. Local authorities just tend to appoint anybody, and those people do not turn up or know enough. Where I have seen local authorities appointing boards, it has been uniformly a disaster.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I would like to explain my Amendment 437A, which relates to qualified teachers, and to offer a different point of view from the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted—although we are both trying to achieve the same thing, I think.
The first thing to establish, if one does not unquestioningly accept the bureaucratic definition, is what exactly a qualified teacher is. We have drifted into accepting that the postgraduate certificate in education, or PGCE, is the gold standard. With the reforms made by the previous Government to the teacher training standards, the new inspection framework and the accreditation exercise, it has got better, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Is it really the kitemark that we should use as the standard for good teachers?
I put to noble Lords two hypothetical but frequently occurring sets of circumstances. A newly qualified graduate with a degree in, say, maths or one of the sciences decides that they would like to spend a year or two teaching the subject in which they have specialised. Across the corridor, a person of the same age who completed an undergraduate degree in sociology or politics but has completed their PGCE asks to teach maths. All other things being equal, who would you rather have teaching your child the specialist subject? I know which one I would choose; that is the brutal reality.
Anyway, what business is it of the DfE, sitting remotely over 22,000 schools, to be imposing rules like this? I have met heads who support both sides of these arguments. Why are we not letting them be the judge? For example, in some parts of England, such as London, it is easier to recruit PGCE graduates than it is in the provinces. How can bureaucrats in the DfE possibly know how to run a school better? We touched on that earlier. We have a mixed economy at the moment—and thank goodness we do, for reasons I will come on to in a moment.
I do not want noble Lords to think that I am dead against the PGCE. The coalition Government introduced the concept of SCITT—school-centred initial teacher training—and I have just finished my term as a trustee of the National Institute of Teaching, which is supporting SCITTs across the country that have been set up at the behest of the DfE. It has helped increase the number of graduates entering the SCITT programme; indeed, we have one in my academy trust, and we end up hiring many of our PGCE students to teach. So why fiddle around with this? What are the Government seeking to achieve, other than mouthing slogans about the need to have qualified teachers in the classroom? It is insulting to those who have studied demanding degrees and have acquired skills that are so badly needed in schools to be called “unqualified”, particularly when most of these young people could go into other, more highly paid jobs.
We turn next to the elephant in the room: the shortage of teachers in the state system. The most recent DfE data that I could find tells me that, in 2023-24, there were 22,700 postgraduate trainees, of which 21,210 achieved QTS status. However, that was down from 22,437 in the previous year and 29,715 in 2021-22. Of those 21,210 trainees, 15,900 are teaching in state schools—a drop from 21,971 in 2021-22. The data is inviolable, but perhaps the Minister has more up-to-date data.
On teacher shortages, the DfE data tells me that, in 2024-25—the most recent year—against the 21,210 to which I referred, the estimated need was for more than 33,000 trainees. Secondary recruitment was at only 62% of the target. In secondary, there are acute shortfalls in maths, physics and computing, respectively hitting only 31%, 37% and 43% of the DfE’s targets. Again, perhaps the Minister can correct me on any of this.
The next bit is what really breaks my heart; it shows, perhaps, that I have common cause with the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. Teacher shortages are especially acute in schools with disadvantaged pupil intakes—that just breaks my heart. I came into politics 15 years ago to go for that, but it is just getting worse. There are more vacancies and they remain open for longer, so it is the poor kids who suffer. The National Audit Office tells us in its April report that teacher recruitment targets have been missed every year but one in the last 10; the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, said that it is over two decades. This is a structural problem. The DfE has missed its targets in 13 out of 18 subjects in the most recent year, despite a DfE recruitment budget of £700 million. It will be interesting to see whether that level of funding is sustained in this autumn’s Budget with all the other pressures that the Government face; I would be grateful if the Minister could enlighten us on that.
This is not about having a swipe at a Labour Government—we struggled too—but they have no credible plan to turn the tide. Forcing through this new measure will just make the job harder for everyone on the front line, with children being the losers. It will deter potentially excellent teachers, particularly in specialist subjects, from spending a few years in the teaching profession if they have had to spend nine months training—and probably paying for the privilege, although I accept that there are some bursaries.
The NAO adds that the percentage of less-experienced teachers in the most disadvantaged schools is far higher than in average schools, which goes to our earlier point. They have higher staff turnover and a higher percentage of unfilled vacancies. In the interests of time, I have not talked about retention, but, broadly, one-third of secondary teachers leave within five years of joining the profession, so we need to keep filling the funnel. The only way to hold on to teachers for longer, in my view, would be to pay more in the early years—that is not really practical in the current circumstances—and to support schools in taking much stronger action on bad behaviour. From my experience, that is why many teachers, in particular female ones, leave—and can you blame them?
Then we have the cherry on the cake: Teach First. It is another great Labour invention and is responsible for pumping thousands—around 16,000—of superb teachers into the state system over the past 20 years. Some 150 are now head teachers and the proportion of Teach Firsters who go into senior leadership roles is seven times higher than for comparably qualified teachers.
What training do they get? They get six weeks and then they are on the front line. When some of these facts were presented to the Government, the best they could manage was saying, “Oh, well, you can stay, so don’t worry”. So where is the intellectual coherence? My amendment is very straightforward: it would widen the definition of what a qualified teacher is to include degree-qualified professionals who teach in this area of specialisation.
This clause is a classic example of why I get so frustrated with many parts of the Bill. We have had hundreds of hours of debate on things like this that will only make it harder for the people who are trying to improve education, particularly for disadvantaged young people.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 495, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and to which I have added my name. This amendment, after Clause 62, seeks to insert a new clause on teacher training reviews. I declare my interests as president of the LGA, chair of Sport Wales and chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which is actively looking at enrichment around the school day to help children develop more skills that will help them across the whole of their lives.
It feels like we have been discussing teacher training for sport and physical activity for years. Quite often, certainly around primary-age teacher training, only about four hours of instruction are given on how to deliver physical education. It is a very difficult subject to teach because, even at the youngest age, there is a huge range of capability in children. The amendment is important because it is not just about finding a new set of Olympians and Paralympians but about developing physical activity for life. The amendment is required because of the state of inactivity in England and in the UK.
Women in Sport data shows that 80% of women are not fit enough to be healthy. The organisation ukactive has published lots of research on obesity rates in children, which seem to be creeping up and up. While I acknowledge that the school cannot do everything around encouraging children to be fit, healthy and active, it can play a huge part.
If we look to another subject, we do not expect children to be able to do trigonometry without teaching them the basics of maths; there is a path to follow. However, we expect children to play sport without teaching them the basics of physical literacy. It is really important that we learn from elsewhere. In Wales in 2012 and 2013, we came very close to giving physical literacy the same status as literacy and numeracy in schools; it would have been part of the teacher training and measured by Estyn. This is important because it is about a healthy mind, body and spirit and about developing a certain level of activity. We know people’s relationship with physical activity: they drop in and out, and girls especially drop out at the ages of 18 and 13. We have to do something to change that pattern of behaviour.
This is also really important for disabled people. Quite often, PE teachers, through a lack of experience, will still send disabled children to the library—and that is happening more and more. You would think that, on the back of some amazing Paralympic success, there would be better attempts at inclusion, but that is not happening. A number of parents write to me to tell me that their children are being excluded from PE lessons under health and safety rules. Alternatively, they are told that, because there is not another disabled child in the class, they cannot participate or play sport with anyone else, so they are excluded.
His Majesty’s Government already offer support through the Inclusion 2028 programme, which is a step forward. They have worked with the Youth Sports Trust and 50 lead schools to develop this knowledge. I would be interested to understand how that is developing. We have to develop much wider support to ensure that the patterns of inactivity are broken and that we have a fitter and healthier nation.