Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

This is not only a safeguarding failure but a financial and moral failure. Without a clear commitment from the Government to phase out unregistered provision, children will continue to be placed in these unsafe, inappropriate settings. Wales has already taken steps to end the use of unregistered accommodation. I suggest that there is no justification for England being left behind.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 119 would provide further opportunities for looked-after children, or those on the edge of care, to have access to boarding school places where appropriate. The principles of this amendment are the same as those of my Amendment 82, on children in or going into kinship care, except that the financial benefits may be stronger for non-kinship care. For example, kinship carers who care for children under special guardianship orders or child arrangement orders are not automatically entitled to the same financial support as foster carers. I do not want to repeat word for word everything I said on Amendment 82—both the Ministers present were in their places at the time—but I will give a brief summary.

Noble Lords participating in this Bill know the huge task that confronts carers when taking on children who are more often than not from broken homes and carrying the emotional scars of the unhappiness that has emanated from this breakdown. This is why I am keen to give so much more oxygen to the prospect of offering boarding school places to children in or on the edge of care. I gave the example of the report carried out by the Norfolk local authority in conjunction with the DfE when I was the Minister responsible for this area. I will not repeat everything that was said, but one of the most important pieces of data was that, of the 52 children who were tracked during the three or so years over which this study was carried out, 33 came off the at-risk register. That is the most tremendous result, and I suspect there are not many other examples of particular types of care delivering such a significant improvement in the welfare of those children.

There are two other advantages, one of which is financial. The costs are substantially lower than that of the foster care or care home route. Also, the educational outcomes in this study were better for the children than the national figures. This is one of those rare moments when a policy can deal with three problems at once and not cost any more money. Therefore, I am very hopeful that the Government will consider the amendment.

We heard on Amendment 82 the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in Liverpool. A tremendous amount of the noble Lord’s career has been spent in education. I am very keen to bring cross-party support to this, so I was very encouraged that he was supportive.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Regarding cross-party support, I am willing to indicate support, but I want to clarify a point the noble Lord makes in his amendment about a boarding school place

“in a state secondary school in their local authority area”.

Can he tell us that such schools exist in every local authority area? If they do not, how would this be put into practice?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, there are around 35 state boarding schools in the country, but there are also a number of private boarding schools that are ready to provide support, which is why I mentioned the Royal SpringBoard scholarships and bursaries that are available. I completely accept the noble Lord’s point—that people need to be kept, wherever possible, near their homes—but we need flexibility. We must not make the perfect the enemy of the good. If there is a good boarding school place that is reasonably accessible to the child’s home, but more importantly to the foster carer or kinship carer, then that is what matters. But I take onboard what the noble Lord said.

In her summing-up of Amendment 82, the Minister spoke about stability of setting, and she was very right. The Norfolk study showed that there was a very strong correlation between improvements in those children’s well-being and the length of tenure. The study showed that three years of continuity made a tremendous difference. I hope the Minister will consider this amendment.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, before speaking to my Amendment 129, to which the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Storey have added their names, I first add my very strong support for Amendment 144 by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I am sorry that I did not manage to add my name to it; it deals with such an important issue.

I was shocked to read a report by the Children’s Commissioner, which said that last September, there were 775 children in unregistered homes, including children under the age of 10, children who had spent over two years in those homes and children in entirely inappropriate unregistered settings such as caravans. Staggeringly, the average cost was over £1,500 a day, with an estimated total annual cost to local authorities of over £400 million. As the Children’s Commissioner said, and I very much agree with her, the use of these homes is a national scandal. Vulnerable children are being failed. We would not allow it for our own children, and we simply should not allow it for those for whom the state is corporate parent. Therefore, I very strongly support phasing out unregistered accommodation.

My Amendment 129 is closely linked to the discussion we had on the first group about children being placed far from home. It would amend

“the sufficiency duty to prevent children being moved far away from home”

when that is not in their best interests. We heard a lot of the arguments in the previous group, and I will pull out a few specifics.

In recent years, there has been a marked and shocking rise in the number of children in care who are moved far away from their support networks and communities. Last year, more than a fifth of all children in care were living more than 20 miles away from home. That might not sound far but, frankly, that is a long way from family and local support networks. In addition, more than 3,000 children were living more than 100 miles from home—that is 4% of all children in care—and more than 800 children under the care of English local authorities were living in Scotland and Wales. Although I accept that there may be legitimate reasons why children in care are moved far from home—safeguarding, preventing them being exploited or harmed, or their being moved to wider family networks—far too often it is simply because of a lack of appropriate local options.

As highlighted by the charity Become in its Gone Too Far campaign, being moved far from their family, friends and schools can have a significant and long-term adverse impact on children’s relationships, mental health, well-being, sense of identity et cetera—the sort of things we discussed in our last session on relationships.

Clearly, local authorities across the country have faced a number of challenges recently—that is why we have just had the discussion about regional care co-operatives —particularly in ensuring that there are the right number and type of homes in their local area to meet the needs of children under their care. The current sufficiency duty is not fit for purpose, and there is a lack of accountability and oversight regarding the extent to which sufficiency is being fulfilled.

That is the reason for tabling this important amendment, which seeks to strengthen the sufficiency duty by requiring local authorities to plan, commission and deliver provision and to take “all reasonable steps” to ensure that children in care remain living within or near to the local authority. The amendment builds on recent reforms by the Welsh Government, and we would very much benefit from taking it forward.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 83 seeks to address what is currently a series of gaps in the information that we have about the effectiveness of the virtual school head role. Clause 6 extends the statutory duties of the VSH role to children with a social worker and children in kinship care. The question is whether it needs to be put on a statutory footing and what resources are necessary to implement it effectively. As I understand it, we do not yet have the evidence that confirms the positive impact of that role, nor the emergence of value for money.

I take your Lordships to the interim evaluation, which was published in 2024. On page 11, it states:

“The evaluation of Phase Two follows a broadly cyclical pattern of data collection and analysis, alongside ongoing analysis of secondary national datasets … We assumed that there would not be only one way of providing effective support and that the aim at this stage was to support shared learning about potentially effective practice, rather than to conduct an effectiveness trial … The final report for this evaluation … will test whether there are any early signs of progress at aggregate level in attendance, persistent absence, suspension and permanent exclusion”.


I suggest to the Minister that the policy document for the Bill seems to overstate the impact. That policy document says:

“The evaluation of the extension shows early signs of improved educational outcomes … with several local authorities reporting improved attendance, reduced exclusions and enhanced collaboration between education and social care services”.


I am concerned that trends in attendance could be influenced by a range of other factors apart from the presence of the VSH. We therefore possibly have correlation rather than causation. I may have misunderstood things, but can the Minister please correct me if I am wrong?

I hope the Minister will look sympathetically at my amendment. It seeks to fill the evidence gap, both in terms of impact and in terms of resources, before extending the role of VSHs still further. Otherwise, the Government are at risk, in my opinion, of expanding and even diluting the impact of a role without the evidence that clearly demonstrates that it really can make a difference. I hope the Minister will look at this amendment sympathetically and in the spirit in which it is drafted.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 82 would provide further opportunities for children in kinship care to have access to boarding school places where appropriate. The Government should be applauded for their commitment to raising the profile of kinship care as a vital part of the ecosystem for children from broken families. As we heard earlier in the week from the noble Lord, Lord Russell, there are more than 150,000 children in kinship care in England. Kinship carers are unsung heroes, without whom it would be almost inevitable that the care system would buckle.

For most of Part 1 of the Bill, I have taken a back seat as I do not have direct expertise in the many complex areas that it seeks to tackle. However, for this proposal I was the Minister responsible for boarding schools, both state and private, when at the DfE. Noble Lords participating in the Bill will know what a huge task confronts kinship carers when taking on children, more often than not from broken homes and carrying the emotional scars of the unhappiness that has emanated from this breakdown. We have heard how the level of support for kinship carers is patchy at best and often almost non-existent. For many potential kinship carers the prospect will simply be too daunting, even if they might be the best solution in a given set of circumstances.

That is why I am so keen to give much more oxygen to the prospect of offering boarding school places to children in kinship care. Where it works for the child—and, of course, this is not always the case—it can provide a vital partnership to the carer in the upbringing of the child. At the simplest level, the day-to-day caring responsibilities for the kinship carer are reduced to around 16 weeks a year from 52 when boarding school is providing a home for the balance of the time.

I believe it is a dramatically underutilised resource. There is an unexplained squeamishness across many directors of children’s services to use it more. However, when I was the Minister in the area in 2018, we published a small longitudinal report showing just how impactful it could be. By coincidence, it was work led by Norfolk County Council, where I live, and the results were remarkable. We at the DfE then jointly published the report—it is no longer available on the DfE website, which is a shame. I urge the Minister to not only read it—I can send her a copy—but ask officials to put it back up again.

In essence, it tracked 52 vulnerable young people for between two and five years. Over that time, 33 of these young people were able to come off the risk register completely following placement in boarding school. Dr Claire Maxwell, who contributed to the report, then a reader in the sociology of education at UCL, highlighted three specific benefits. First, the setting can provide amelioration from risky emotional and physically stressful situations—for example, a circuit breaker from a local gang culture. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, a moment ago about the number of children from care ending up in prison—it is appalling. Secondly, there is improvement of educational outcomes. Thirdly, it is a more cost-effective solution than other forms of care intervention. Dr Maxwell’s view, and that of charities in the sector, was that successful boarding placements can help strengthen families experiencing significant difficulties. The longer school day that is part and parcel of boarding school life can provide a form of round-the-clock care and is part of the reason for the improved emotional and educational outcomes.

In this study, the 52 children were placed in 11 different boarding settings, a mixture of state and private provision. Some 21% of these children achieved a formal GCSE qualification in maths and English—above grade C, in old money. This compared with a national looked-after children pass rate in that year of 17.5%. These are not dramatic differences, but put alongside the substantial reduction in the numbers being removed from the risk register, it makes for a very positive story. This study also compared costs against more institutional forms of care beyond kinship. At the time of writing the report, the Norfolk Boarding School Partnership had an average cost between £11,000 and £35,000 a year, compared with £56,000 for a looked-after child in a normal or more standard setting. This translated into a saving of £1.6 million over four years for this group.

Obviously, kinship care is more affordable because carers get less support, but my argument is that if boarding was offered to potential kinship carers, the take-up would be much higher, therefore reducing local looked-after children costs. Today, the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation offers bursaries for looked-after children attending private boarding schools. We know that the educational outcomes for looked-after children remain way below the national average, and this is not a silver bullet—but, combined with the other benefits, as I have outlined, I believe it is a vital additional tool in the box to support these vulnerable children who never chose this harsh route into life. I hope the Minister will support me by agreeing to my amendment to provide more awareness of these opportunities.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I was pleased to be asked to speak to Amendment 82 by my noble friend Lord Farmer, who is unfortunately not able to be here today. As well as the evidence I will refer to, I was in your Lordships’ House back in 2014 when my noble friend gave his maiden speech. A Conservative Party treasurer perhaps brings a certain stereotype to mind. However, you could have heard a pin drop, as a globally successful metals trader spoke of being a young teenager in a chaotic home with an alcoholic single mother. But he went to the boarding house at the state-run Wantage Grammar School. It rescued him.

It made me reflect on the role of boarding schools. I was born and bred in Oakham and I have had to deal for many years with the annoyance of, “You’re from Oakham? So you went to Oakham School, then?” “No”, I reply, “there is a state comprehensive as well in the town, called Catmose College”—which was rated “outstanding” in every category in an Ofsted inspection in 2024, if noble Lords will forgive the shoutout for my state school.

This testimony by my noble friend is supported by the 2023 study by the University of Nottingham’s School of Education, commissioned by the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation, which found that children in or on the edge of care who attend state boarding or independent schools experience significant educational and financial benefits. They are four times more likely to achieve good GCSE passes in English and maths and five times more likely to pursue and succeed in A-levels, leading often to higher education. The study estimates that, for every 100 children attending boarding schools, lower social care costs and increased future earnings mean there is an economic return on investment of approximately £2.75 million. The report stated that, when vulnerable children in boarding schools were interviewed, they said such opportunities were life-changing.

This amendment would also make it significantly easier, as my noble friend Lord Agnew outlined, for kinship carers to step forward to offer a home to a child who might otherwise enter the state care system. Not every family will want or be able to house the child 24/7, 365 days a year. That can be a daunting task. They know of course that their own children will be greatly affected, and their house might not be big enough for that extra child. Kin altruism can be greatly aided and encouraged when a child can be educated in this way in the state boarding sector, giving the carer breathing space to attend to all their other responsibilities, while knowing that the child is safe and cared for in the state boarding sector. I hope the Minister will look at the evidence carefully in relation to this matter.

Free Schools and Academies

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Evans for securing this debate, and I note my interest in the register.

I am pleased to speak today, but of course hanging over us is the Damoclean sword of the schools Bill. Why does it matter? In 2010, approximately 5% of all state schools were failing or in special measures. By 2024, that figure had reduced to 1%—an 80% reduction over a period when academic standards became more rigorous. This heavy lifting fell largely to the academies programme. If a school was judged failing, it was automatically academised. The deal was simple, everybody understood it and it worked. Under this new Bill, that vital intervention is to be eviscerated. A major part of this Labour Government’s constituency will be the losers: children from less well-off families in areas of deprivation, because that is where failing schools are concentrated.

I know this because, over the last 12 years, the academy trust that I founded has taken on at least 10 of these kinds of schools and improved them, in some cases dramatically. The families and children that we met were at their wits’ end, often with no alternative route to state education. In some cases, these schools have been failing for decades. We took on one failing school in Great Yarmouth. It had never been rated “Good” or better since the creation of Ofsted in 1993; it is now rated “Good”. Why break something that works?

On free schools, a similar story exists. They have been an astonishing success in the vast majority of cases. Over 800 have been built, and where they did not work, we closed them or moved them to new management. Everyone knew the rules. In my trust, we have opened three free schools in Norfolk. Now, each one is outstanding. There are many trusts more successful than ours. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris. Take a look at the Star Academies Trust, which opened 23 schools: 17 have been inspected by Ofsted; 15 rated “Outstanding” and two “Good”. Last year, seven of those free schools were ranked in the top 50 schools in England for Progress 8, but this programme is now to be closed.

Why destroy a programme that has been painstakingly built by Governments of both political parties? In my time as academies and free schools Minister, I relied on the interventions that had been devised by noble Lords opposite—the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett, Lord Adonis and Lord Knight—and underpinning it were two watchwords which should prevail throughout all government-funded entities: transparency and accountability.

I give one small example. In local authority-run schools, it is almost impossible to understand what is going on financially, but an academy trust has to file an externally audited set of accounts every year within four months of the year ending. You will not find that in a local authority school. They do not even have audits every year. The best I could find when I was a Minister was every three years, and even I could not get copies of the reports, let alone the public. Transparency ensures that an academy’s resources are focused on where it matters, which is education.

The Bill will banish teachers who have not completed the nine-month teacher training programme, but there is an acute shortage of teachers. I believe that 13,000 teachers will fall foul of this rule. Where are the replacements coming from? The private schools tax is promised to deliver 6,000, but we will believe that when we see it. In the meantime, it will just make the job of improving schools far, far harder. Another government invention was Teach First. These wonderful people got only six weeks’ training and yet are some of the best in the system.

Overall, the Bill sends a strong signal to under-performing schools that they can dodge hard-edged accountability. Even though they fail their pupils, they can get away with it—and it will be the most disadvantaged communities who pay the price. Because there will be an opt-out for automatic academisation, schools will fight it.

There are some extraordinary clauses in the Bill, giving the Secretary of State the right to intervene on school uniform policy. There are 23,000 schools; that is crazy. There is a much simpler way: change the mandate of the members to include a responsibility to ensure that the cost of the school uniform for a pupil-premium child does not exceed, say, £25. In one fell swoop, we would deal with the problem. Members have powers essentially as proxies for shareholders—for example, they appoint auditors and can fire the directors.

These checks and balances were put in place by Labour. The improvements that I drove into the system were largely down to the Labour Government of the Blair era. Yet today, we managed to have four members of the Labour Party on the Benches opposite for this debate. If we care about the education of disadvantaged children, this programme should be strengthened, not weakened.