Education: Art and Design

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage the teaching of art and design in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government want children to be taught a broad and balanced curriculum up to the age of 14. During this time, children should be exploring the widest possible range of subjects, including art and design. Ofsted is currently reviewing its inspection arrangements and launched a consultation yesterday on proposals for a new inspection framework. These proposals will place a strong emphasis on schools providing a broad and balanced curriculum for all their pupils.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, from the decline in arts teaching in primary schools, as described in a new Fabian Society report, to the EBacc’s exclusion of the arts, students are increasingly not receiving the balanced education that they deserve and is necessary for the future of our creative industries. Art and design is under the additional pressure of not attracting ITE bursaries, unlike other subjects which exceed their trainee targets. Will the Government address that unfairness?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we clearly need to prioritise our bursaries budget so that we can incentivise applications in subjects where it is hardest to attract applicants. The vacancy rate, though, for art and design teachers as a percentage of teachers in post is lower than for music; indeed, over the last two years we have seen an increase in the number of applicants for both art and design and drama.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that GCSEs in design and technology have fallen by 30%, which is disastrous? I therefore welcome the support for university technical colleges because our 14,000 students do technical subjects at 16 to 18. Does he welcome the new Ofsted policy from Amanda Spielman, under which in the future Ofsted will concentrate less on exam results and more on a broad and balanced curriculum? This is good for art, music and design and technology.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree with my noble friend and section 26 of the consultation document addresses inspections directly. It will accelerate inspections where concerns are identified about the breadth and balance of the curriculum. Paragraph 155 says that inspectors will consider the extent to which the school’s curriculum sets out the knowledge and skills that pupils will gain at each stage. Ofsted will also consider the way that the curriculum selected by the school is taught and assessed, to support pupils to build their knowledge and apply it as skills.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, high-quality arts education as part of a broad curriculum has been shown not just to support our creative industries but to improve academic achievement and enable children to look at problems in different ways. In the light of Ofsted’s consultation on its new framework, which looks at quality, intent and impact in the curriculum, will the Minister say how this Government will ensure that there is no reduction in pupil funding in real terms? Good art education requires good teachers.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The right reverend Prelate is quite right that a broad and balanced education, which includes the arts, is crucial to prepare children for their future lives. I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in congratulating Harris Westminster Sixth Form today, where 37 Oxbridge offers have been announced. That is the most incredible performance when we consider that 13 of these children were on the pupil premium, two have been in care and 14 were from ethnic minorities. A major reason in their being able to get there was that they had a broad and balanced education on the way through.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, in his answer to the noble Earl, the Minister referred to vacancy rates in music and drama. Can he tell the House how many schools in the maintained sector no longer have a specialist music or drama teacher of their own? If he cannot tell me, perhaps he could write to me with that information.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am happy to write to the noble Baroness on that specific subject, but I reassure her that, in primary schools, broadly the same amount of time is spent teaching arts as is spent teaching history and geography. Indeed, the number of pupils taking GCSE art and design was broadly the same last year as in 2009-10: 26% then compared to 27% last year.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister consider that we are having to import people skilled in design and technology? Art and design is the gateway qualification, particularly at GCSE. Would it not be in the nation’s direct interest to make sure that we up the number of people taking examinations at this first step?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we have seen a decline in the number taking design and technology specifically, but there has been a major restructuring in the way that exam is taught. We have replaced it with a new food preparation and nutrition GCSE, examined for the first time in 2018. D&T food technology accounted for nearly 30,000 entries in 2017, and a greater number of pupils took food preparation and nutrition and design and technology combined than took design and technology in 2017. So the numbers are not as bad as they look. We offer a bursary for teachers of design and technology of £12,000 for those with a 2.2 or higher, which has been increased from £9,000.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

Is my noble friend encouraged by the continuing growth of partnership schemes between independent and maintained schools? Has he noted that there are now over 1,200 partnership projects in drama and music? Does he agree that independent schools can do more to make their skills and facilities available to their colleagues in the maintained sector?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. One of the things I have prioritised in my discussions with the independent sector is how it can improve and increase its support for the state education sector. Harris Westminster, which I referred to a moment ago, would acknowledge that it received a lot of help from Westminster School in the extraordinary outcomes it got—but there is always more to be done.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to hear from the Minister that Ofsted is to look at this, because arts subjects are compulsory in the national curriculum only at key stages 1 to 3. As the noble Earl said, referring to the Fabian Society report, even there they are in decline. Arts subjects in state schools are being squeezed out by the English baccalaureate, yet the artistic, creative and technical sectors of the economy are worth around £500 billion a year and need just such skills in our young people. Will the Minister accept that the English baccalaureate is the problem here, not the issues he raised previously? Will he commit to fundamentally changing that so that—as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said—the broader curriculum can be performed, allowing us to serve the future needs of our economy?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am afraid I do not accept for one moment the claims made by the noble Lord. Indeed, in 2009 150,000 pupils took art and design, while 141,000 did so in 2018—that with a cohort of 50,000 fewer pupils in the system for that phase. The noble Lord always seems to avoid the number of subjects we stripped out of the curriculum we inherited from the Labour Government. We took out over 3,000 useless subjects that children were being taught, including fish husbandry, practical office skills and nail technology services. We have brought back rigour to the education that children are learning. In 2009 only 365,000 pupils took science. Last year it was 499,000—that is 130,000 children getting a much better education.

Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Nash for calling this debate to provide the opportunity to speak about the successes of the free schools programme and the contribution that they have made to improving educational standards across our country. I thank my noble friend for his continued commitment to the free schools programme and the dedication he showed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the School System before me. I acknowledge his work with Future Academies, the trust responsible for establishing Pimlico Primary, a free school that has been rated outstanding.

The free schools programme was established in 2010, with the first ones opening in 2011. The Government invited proposers to take up the challenge of setting up a free school—groups which were passionate about ensuring that the next generation is best placed to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Now, eight years on, the benefits of their hard work can be seen across the country. As of 1 January this year, 444 free schools are open, which will provide 250,000 places when at full capacity. To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, 121 of 152 local authorities now have at least one free school in their area, and we are currently working with groups to establish a further 265 free schools, currently at different stages of pre-opening.

I agree, obviously, with my noble friend Lord Popat that the free school story is a positive one. There is a growing body of evidence to show that free schools are improving educational standards. I will come to that in more detail later. I am pleased that my noble friend highlighted in particular two free schools in Harrow: Pinner High School and Avanti House. These schools are a credit to those involved in setting them up and the teachers who work there.

Ofsted’s latest information shows that, of those free schools that have been inspected, 85% are rated good or outstanding. This is a fantastic achievement, and I congratulate the proposers and teachers who have worked so hard to achieve this. The performance data of free schools speaks for itself. Free schools are among the highest- performing state-funded secondary schools, with pupils at the end of key stage 4 having made more progress on average than pupils in other types of state-funded schools in 2018.

In 2018, four of the top 10 provisional Progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools: William Perkin Church of England in Ealing, Dixons Trinity in Bradford, Eden Girls’ School in Coventry and Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn. The latter two were opened by Star Academies, which has grown, through the free schools programme, from running a single school in the north-west to running 24 across the country, made up of nine academies and 15 free schools, and it has approval to open two more free schools. Of the 10 free schools that have been inspected by Ofsted, every single one has been rated outstanding. In addition, Dixons Trinity Academy achieved extraordinary results in 2017 and last year with its first set of GCSEs, placing it among the top schools in England for progress achieved by its pupils. Strikingly, the progress score for disadvantaged pupils was higher than for the whole school, including their more affluent peers.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, asked about some longitudinal analysis on the impact of free schools. I have offered data here and I can offer some more, but I will write to him to bring all these strands together. On a personal note, I happened to be at that lecture at Pimlico Academy six or seven years ago. I was as inspired as the hundreds of children listening to the noble Lord that day. I speak as someone who failed chemistry O-level, but the noble Lord brought that subject alive to me that night.

My noble friend Lord Kirkham and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about disadvantage. There are numerous examples of free schools helping to improve outcomes for these children. There is the Reach Academy Feltham, which opened in 2012, which is a small all-through free school set up by a group of teachers in an area of high deprivation. Ofsted rated it outstanding in 2014. It was one of the top-performing schools nationally for progress in 2017, with disadvantaged pupils making more progress than other pupils. In 2018, provisional results show that the school has a progress score well above the national average.

I join my noble friend Lord Hill in publicly thanking my noble friend Lord Harris for the achievements of his trust. In just one example, Harris Westminster, which opened in 2014 and with close ties to Westminster School, 40% of its pupils are from disadvantaged backgrounds and 18 pupils got into Oxbridge last year. These schools show that the socioeconomic background does not need to be a barrier to excellence. To reassure my noble friend Lord Kirkham and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the whole of the country is benefiting. Last year, 16 free schools achieved outstanding judgments from Ofsted. Eleven of those were outside London, including Birmingham, Lancashire, Slough, Leeds, Coventry and Stockton-on-Tees.

Free schools have challenged the status quo, injecting fresh approaches. We are drawing on the talents and expertise of groups from different backgrounds, giving local communities and parents more freedom and choice so that every child can go to a good school that suits their child’s needs, whether that be a mainstream school with a specialism or an alternative provision or special school. Indeed, I give public credit to my noble friend Lord Baker for his tireless work in creating the UTC programme. In 2016-17, 21% of UTC key stage 5 pupils went on to an apprenticeship, which is three times the national average.

My noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy made the crucial point that this is all about creating more good school places. This is not the only route, but it is leading the way through social entrepreneurship. Many noble Lords in this debate have played a crucial role in the free school programme, but I can safely say that my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy has to be one of the godfathers.

My noble friend Lady Stroud also asked about disadvantage. It is important to stress that nearly half of all open free schools are in the 30% most deprived areas in the country. We are proud of that fact. Results also show that when disadvantaged pupils attend these free schools they perform well at key stage 4. However, we know that there is more to do to ensure that free schools reach out to pupils in these areas, and with the most recent free school wave, Wave 13, we targeted the third of local authorities with the lowest standards and lowest capacity to improve, putting free schools in places most in need of good schools. We are currently evaluating those bids.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, is concerned about the cost of school buildings, but it is important to point out that we have reduced the building cost per square metre by over 30% from the framework that we inherited from the Labour Government. My predecessor, my noble friend Lord Nash, created LocatED as a specialist buying agency for property sites for free schools and it is already showing data that it is acquiring sites below the red book value, which is the benchmark for the cost of buildings.

I turn to special schools and AP schools. Our ambition includes children with special educational needs and disabilities, and children in alternative provision. We want them to be able to do their best in school, reach their potential and find careers leading to happy and fulfilling lives. To help achieve that ambition, as of 1 January this year we have opened 34 special and 41 alternative provision free schools. This includes the Pears Family School, which achieved an outstanding rating from Ofsted in 2017, with inspectors noting the high-quality therapeutic care and teaching alongside the strong progress made by its pupils.

My noble friend Lady Finn pointed out that we have now opened two maths schools in partnership with highly selective maths universities, King’s College London Maths School and Exeter Maths School. The aim of these schools is to prepare our most mathematically able students to succeed in maths disciplines at top universities and pursue mathematically intensive careers. We have two further maths free schools in pre-opening—one with St John’s College Cambridge and the University of Liverpool Maths College.

At the other end of the educational spectrum we have in pre-opening the London Screen Academy, supported by Working Title, which last year was the inaugural recipient of Screen International’s outstanding contribution to UK film award. This new school will provide film industry-focused vocational training for 16 to 19 year-olds alongside a broader curriculum. I give that as just one example to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy of the innovative groups still becoming involved. We are certainly encouraging free schools to be part of MATs to draw on the central support that they offer. This is simply part of the evolution of the programme and addresses the problem mentioned by my noble friend Lord Polak about school collaboration.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I take the point that the Minister is making, but will he address the point about parental involvement and the decreasing number of free schools being established at the behest of local parents?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord will be aware that any academy needs to have an academy council that must include two parental representatives.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

That is not the same point.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

No, I accept that, but we review all bids and they are selected on merit. One of the lessons that we have learned from the programme is that free schools are better inside MATs. Being inside a MAT does not mean that it is one size fits all. I speak as someone who set up four free schools myself inside a MAT. There is a wide range of different practice inside those schools. To reassure the noble Lord, just because a free school is in a MAT does not mean that it is outside parental involvement or input.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I remember a time when members of the Labour Party were against free schools because they involved parental interest. They were opposed to free schools because they thought that parents would not be able to take on the running of free schools. Now they seem to be saying that they are not in favour of free schools because they do not involve parents enough. I do not know if there has been a change in the policy in the intervening years.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I rather agree with my noble friend that the Opposition seem to have gone on a journey. When free schools were originally mooted under my noble friend’s tenure we were told that no one was capable of creating one other than the Government. We have put paid to that myth.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

How can the Minister say that when he inherited an academy programme introduced by the Labour Government, which had the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and other people sponsoring schools, not local authorities? It is an inaccurate description of what went on.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

There were 200 out of some 22,000 schools. My noble friend Lord Harris was not a parent. We certainly built on the early foundations that Labour created in the academies programme, but there was not a great deal of evidence in those early 200 of parental involvement in their creation. Specifically, the programme went on after very experienced, dedicated people such as my noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Harris, became involved. They were well beyond parental age at the point.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

This is a really important point. I pay absolute tribute to the Labour Party for the academies it set up, which were obviously based on the CTCs and on a principle of autonomy at school level, of competition of choice and variety and innovation. But it must be pointed out—it is a while since I opened a free school or applied to open one—that you physically had to go round to parents, even if you were not a parent group yourself, and get them to commit to send their child to your school. It was baked into the creation of schools in a way that has never been done in this country, regardless of the nomenclature of free schools, academies or anything else. That alone is one of the unique and extremely welcome features of the free school movement that must continue to play a critical role in whatever form. I agree with my noble friend that the security of being in a multi-academy trust can be helpful, but that parent-driven demand is critical to its success.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned off-rolling and picked out a single school, the Hewett school—which strikes a slightly raw nerve, as I was the chairman of the trust that took it over. That school was a wonderful example of what we were dealing with in the reforms that we brought to education. The school was built for nearly 2,000 pupils and run into the ground by a local authority. At one point it was the largest secondary school in England, but the local authority hung on to it, delivering appalling education until, finally, when my trust took it over, there were fewer than 500 pupils. It was in chaos. Sorting out such situations, where a trust inherits protracted and entrenched failure, is no small undertaking. That ex-local authority school is a classic example of why the nirvana of so-called local democracy is meaningless in many cases.

We want to go further, to make sure that no one is left behind, by extending the programme to areas of the country that have not previously benefited from it. To this end, we launched Wave 13 last year, targeting the areas of the country with the lowest standards and the lowest capacity to improve. These are the places where opening a free school can have the greatest impact on improving outcomes.

[Lord Addington]

Looking at free schools and academy trusts, off-rolling is coming in. Will we look at why that is happening? I was at the Hewett school many years ago; most of the teachers will now be dead. I do not dispute that it has changed. It was a case of it having happened there and it catching my eye because I had a personal connection. What happens when you off-roll a group of people who are seen not to be achieving and who will damage you in the league table? What structures do we have in place to make sure that that is not happening—and we are not simply dumping them?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Off-rolling is dealt with in the report by Edward Timpson which will be released quite soon—I think in the next few weeks. I will make sure that the noble Lord gets a copy of it. It certainly addresses all the issues that the noble Lord raises. One point that it makes is that academies are no more aggressive in off-rolling than anybody else in the system. I acknowledge that it is a problem. When I was running my trust, for any permanent exclusion I always said to a head teacher that they had to telephone me personally and told them, “This is a professional failure on your part”. We need to be much more rigorous, but I can assure noble Lords that the practice is widespread also among local authority schools. It is a complicated issue, because there is whole range of categories that a school can use when it shunts a child out of the door. For example, category B is sending a child home to work, although it really wants to get rid of the child. It is a very complicated area, but I will send the noble Lord the report as soon as it is available.

The application window for Wave 13 closed on 5 November. We received 124 applications. A rich collection of potential schools is proposed by a range of groups with a variety of expertise, both new providers and experienced multi-academy trusts. We are assessing those proposals and will announce the results later in the spring.

To answer the concerns raised by my noble friends Lord O’Shaughnessy and Lord Hill, we are planning a further wave, Wave 14, which will continue to put free schools into the areas of most need. Innovation remains key. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that free schools are different because they start with a different ethos. They have the same legal basis as an academy, but having set up four myself—as I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Watson—I know that they are quite different.

A further 55 special and 14 AP free schools are in the pipeline. Last summer we launched a special and AP free schools wave. By the deadline in October we had received 65 bids from local authorities, setting out their case for why a special or AP free school would benefit their area. Early this year we will launch a competition to select trusts in the areas with the strongest case for a free school.

My noble friend Lord Polak asked about the religious designation of special schools. He is right that they cannot have a specific designation, but they can acknowledge the religious impetus behind their application by registering themselves as having a faith ethos.

Beyond this, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, raised some important general points, in particular about recognising the importance of teachers. I echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others, that that is the key to a good education. We have accepted in full the STRB’s recommendation of a 3.5% uplift in the minimum and maximum of the main pay range—one of the largest increases in 10 years. Last year we published a workload reduction toolkit, and we continue to work extensively with the unions and Ofsted to challenge and remove unhelpful practices that create this unnecessary workload. For me that is the most important issue: most teachers do not feel underpaid but do feel that they are put upon with a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. That is one of my priorities.

We are also working with Ofsted to produce a new inspection framework. A consultation document will be issued in the next few weeks. The framework challenges the senior leadership teams, during inspections, on the workload that they are imposing on their teachers.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised the issue of structures versus standards.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I welcome what the Minister says about workload, but my strong sense, gained from many people working in the field, is that the emphasis on Ofsted, and the threat that a head teacher may lose their job—and career—over a negative Ofsted report, is too harsh. We need to challenge people but also to get the balance right. I am, therefore, not completely reassured by what the Minister has just said about the framework.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Earl is right in saying that in this country Ofsted seems to command more influence in the sector than happens in other countries. This is a cultural issue, and one of the first things my Secretary of State did when he arrived last year was to produce a video that showed him and the Ofsted chief inspector on a panel trying to slaughter some of the myths about inspection outcomes and so on. It is a cultural issue that we will not be able to deal with overnight. However, I accept his concern.

I am conscious that I am running out of time. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is correct: we have cancelled some projects during the pre-opening process. In my view this demonstrates our rigour in ensuring that the quality bar is kept high. The point made by the noble Baroness about good governance is also correct. As the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said, however, 50% more free schools have achieved “outstanding” judgments than the average in the state school system—so something must be going right.

Of course, along the way not everything has gone right, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, among other noble Lords, mentioned. We have closed some 13 free schools, seven UTCs and 21 studio schools, and where failures occur we take swift and decisive action. I agree with my noble friend Lord Popat that we cannot shy away from failure and that we should address it and learn lessons from it.

I finish by quoting the motto of the academy trust of my noble friend Lord Nash: “Libertas Per Cultum”—freedom through education. Education provides the stepping-stone to improving people’s lives. Free schools play an increasing role in that work.

[Lord Winston]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I do not want to extend the debate beyond the time allotted. Listening to it, however, is one of my PhD students who is a qualified teacher with a Cambridge degree. He is evaluating some of our work. It seems to me that we need to be evaluating not just entry to Oxford and Cambridge but the wider issue of the scientific and cultural capital of school leavers who may not go to Russell group universities such as the one where I teach. This is not a party-political thing for me—I do not go to schools as a member of the Labour Party but as someone who wants to help people have aspirations. I hope that we can persuade the Minister to say how we can look at the metrics on things that do not involve merely exam results, because education is so much more important than that. I hope that we can collaborate in that.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I would be very happy to meet the noble Lord’s PhD student if that would be helpful in pushing the discussion on. All noble Lords present, particularly on this side, got into this for no other reason than to improve the quality of educational outcomes and the lives of the less advantaged people in our society. We all share that passion. We will have vigorous debates about how it works, but I am absolutely up for learning from the mistakes we have made. Some schools have closed. We backed some of the wrong promoters in the early stages and we have learned from that and moved on. Therefore, if the work that the noble Lord’s PhD student is doing can shed any more light on how we can improve going forward, I would be delighted to be part of that.

Religious Education

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, for securing this debate. I am grateful for this opportunity to set out the Government’s position on religious education and our response to the Commission on Religious Education’s report. During this debate, noble Lords have argued strongly for the importance of religious education and a commitment to its continuation and improvement. The Government share that commitment.

We have decided that now is not the time to implement the commission’s ambitious recommendations radically to reform religious education. However, the Government agree that good-quality religious education can develop children’s knowledge of the values and traditions of Britain and other countries. It can foster understanding among different faiths and cultures. It is an essential part of a school’s legal duty to promote young people’s spiritual, moral and cultural development. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, when he said that we have to help children to understand their way of being in the world.

Schools and colleges have a duty actively to promote fundamental British values as part of the duty to prevent people becoming drawn into terrorism. These shared values—democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and respect and tolerance for those of other faiths and beliefs—unite us and underpin our society. The religious landscape of this country forms part of those principles, and the noble Lord, Lord Stone, referred to the value of unity and oneness. Understanding our British values is a vital part of that. I perhaps have more faith in the power of the teaching of British values than other noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, and it is of course still an evolving part of the responsibility of schools, having been introduced only recently.

According to the school workforce statistics, 3.3% of all teaching hours in state-funded secondary schools in 2017 were spent teaching religious education. This compares with a figure of 3.2% in 2010, so it has remained broadly stable over that period. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, worries that we do not have enough time in the curriculum for the teaching of religious education. However, we do not specify that equal time needs to be spent by each year group on the subject, only that it must be taught throughout a pupil’s school life. For example, there is no reason why schools could not dedicate more time at key stage 3 than at key stage 4, when pupils are generally not studying for GCSE. The key stage 3 national curriculum is designed as a three-year programme of study to prepare children to start GCSEs in year 10.

The noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Alderdice, worry that there is not enough time at key stage 4. Having said that, the EBacc was designed to be limited in size to allow pupils to continue to study additional subjects and reflect their individual interests and strengths. This allows not only for schools to teach RE, as we would expect, at key stage 4, but for religious studies to be a feasible GCSE option.

However, one of the commission’s most concerning statements was that it had found a number of maintained schools and academies either no longer teaching RE or no longer teaching it as a dedicated subject. On that point, I would like to be very clear: RE is not optional. Schools not teaching it are acting unlawfully or are in breach of their academy funding agreements. We will take action if this is found to be the case.

I assure the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Alderdice, that where we are made aware of a school not meeting its duty to provide religious education, my department will investigate, as long as the school’s complaint procedures have been followed. In the last two years, the department has received only one formal complaint about a school not complying with its area’s agreed syllabus for religious education. Following the department’s intervention, the school has revised its curriculum to meet requirements.

One of the commission’s key recommendations is to change legislation so that all state-funded schools have to deliver the national entitlement on religion and world views. Reworded legislation would therefore be extended to encompass non-religious world views. Many teachers already cover aspects of world views in their RE lessons. Both GCSE and A-level content specifications include reference to non-religious views. But the potential scope of what could be considered a world view is very wide. Agreeing precisely what should be taught as part of a national entitlement would be fraught with difficulty.

The commission’s report suggests that existentialism and Confucianism are examples of suitable non-religious world views as they each make ontological and epistemological claims. This illustrates how defining world views and then deciding those worthy of study is complex. There is a risk that religious education is diluted in an attempt to embrace many other strands of thinking. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, raises the responses of the Catholic Education Service and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Both have publicly expressed their concern about this. They are unlikely to be alone. This would make it difficult to agree a consensus.

An important focus of the commission report was the need to recruit, train and retain specialist teachers of religious education. This is key to maintaining the integrity of the subject and the quality of teaching. In recognition of this, we made two announcements in September. First, we increased bursaries so that RE trainees with a First, 2.1, 2.2, PhD or Master’s will now receive £9,000. Secondly, we allocated new funding for religious education subject knowledge enhancement courses of up to eight weeks. These offer graduates the chance to refresh their subject knowledge either before or during initial teacher training.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester raises the importance of Ofsted assessments of religious education, and I agree with him that this is an important part of an inspection of a school. I will take back his suggestion that to achieve an outstanding grade, schools should provide good-quality religious education.

The noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Watson, worry about the decline in teaching of religious education in schools. Actually, the picture is not quite as bleak as one might think. There was a 21% increase in the number of pupils entered for the full-course RE GCSE between 2010 and 2018, from 176,000 to 213,000 pupils. There has also been an increase in the percentage of the total key stage 4 cohort entered for this examination, from 28% in 2010 to 37% in 2018. This is important.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I thank the Minister for giving way. He talks about key stage 4, but as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said and I repeated, a third of key stage 4 students do not get religious education, so cannot sit exams in it. If the Minister wants to increase the figures, as I think we all do, surely he should be getting those 33% of schools to make sure they do what they should be doing under the law and teach religious education at key stage 4.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Referring to my earlier point, we will always investigate any serious allegation about the non-teaching of religious education, and this report certainly highlights examples of that. If they are referred to us, we will certainly investigate. To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, we are committed to ensuring that religious education remains a key part of a child’s education.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned Article 18—freedom of religion—and violations of it. The Government are concerned about the severity of violations of the freedom of religious belief in many parts of the world. Defending and promoting human rights is an essential aim of the foreign policy of global Britain, and derives from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The report mentions that the right to withdraw from religious education has existed in our education system since 1870 and was reconfirmed in legislation in the 1944 and 1988 education Acts. The commission found that many schools are not clear on the scope of this right and how to handle applications for withdrawal. The report recommended that the DfE provide clearer guidance. Since then the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Association of Teachers of RE have produced guidance for schools on this issue. The Government are comfortable with this guidance; my department will help to raise awareness of it.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised a concern about the locally agreed syllabus for RE. For many schools the current requirement is that they follow a locally agreed syllabus monitored by the standing advisory councils for religious education. The department’s guidance is clear: that at local level, representatives of religious and other interests can serve as formal or co-opted members on both SACREs and in groups of this conference to review the locally-agreed syllabus. These are important principles which should not be lost without more careful consideration.

I thank the Commission on Religious Education for its well-considered report. Although it offers radical options for reform which at the moment we cannot consider implementing, we welcome the debate that it generates. The Secretary of State for Education has been clear that reducing teacher workload is one of his top priorities, and as part of that he committed in March not to make further changes to the curriculum. In this context we must decline to take forward the commission’s vision for the future of RE in England.

Committee adjourned at 7.35 pm.

Young People

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, on securing this important debate. Many questions have been raised by noble Lords and I shall endeavour to answer as many as I can. It always seems to fall to me to cover questions for 10 different government departments.

I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, that we are adamant that all young people deserve and have the right to world-class education regardless of their background or where they live. We have shown that giving high-performance school leaders and teachers freedom and autonomy can deliver this through free schools and academies. Eighty-six per cent of schools inspected in England are rated good or outstanding and 1.9 million more children are now in those schools. This represents 84%, compared to 66% in 2010. Multi-academy trusts illustrate how good practice is no longer limited to individual schools. Regardless of geography or the level of diversity in their intake, many consistently achieve exceptional results. To answer the question asked by my noble friend Lady Bottomley, more than 500,000 children who were previously in failing local authority schools are now in good or outstanding schools.

To address the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about careers guidance, our careers strategy commits investment of more than £70 million each year until 2020. It ensures that all schools and colleges will have a dedicated careers adviser to support and encourage young people to find the right path for them, be that into work, continuing academic study or a vocational qualification. I agree completely with him that this is an extremely important priority.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, asked about youth employment. We recognise that the academic path is not suitable for everyone. We will be investing more than £0.5 billion per year to deliver a world-leading technical education system. The new T-levels will have real labour market value, credibility with employers and help young people to achieve their potential. We have recently announced that T-levels will contribute to UCAS points to underline their value. The number of 16 and 17 year-olds in education or work-based learning is at the highest level since consistent records began, at 90.5%. For those aged 16 to 24, only 10.9% are not in education or employment, the lowest figure on record.

I take on board the comments of several noble Lords. Some of this work may not be initially of the highest quality, but my first job was a zero-hours contract at 20 pence an hour and I was laid off when it rained. However, it was a start.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Does the noble Lord not still have the same job?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

That would need a longer answer.

Research has shown that children with higher levels of emotional, behavioural and social well-being have, on average, higher levels of academic achievement. We are prioritising resources in 12 opportunity areas. We are bringing together local and national partners to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged. Through the work of this Government, 18 year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds are over 50% more likely to enter full-time higher education in 2018 than they were in 2009.

I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, about the opportunities for young black people. We have succeeded in narrowing the attainment gap by 10% through the pupil premium, spending more than £13 billion since 2011. It is now in the interests of good and outstanding schools actively to recruit pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

We also recognise the specific challenges for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We have transformed the support available for young people and their families. We have invested £390 million since 2014 to support local areas in implementing reforms and we continue to fund parent-carer forums.

The noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Haskel, asked about apprenticeships. We have reformed the system in the most fundamental way since the war but we accept that it is still evolving. We are working closely with employers and have already made changes in response to feedback. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is listening to these specific points. He indicates that he is and I thank him. We will increase the amount of funds that levy-paying employers can transfer to other employers from 10% to 25% from April next year and will reduce the amount that smaller employers pay for training from 10% to 5% next year. By 2020, we will be investing nearly £2.5 billion in apprenticeships per year to increase the number of high-quality opportunities.

The noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Storey, asked about exclusions. I share their concern about this issue. When I ran my own academy trust, I required any head teacher to ring me personally when a permanent exclusion was under consideration and I always told them that I regarded it as a professional failure on their part. We are working with Edward Timpson, and I am meeting him next week as a prelude, we hope, to his report going out early next year. Last week I met a director of children’s services in Leeds who told me about an innovative idea of providing funding to a mainstream school where a child is at risk of exclusion to enable that child to spend some time in specialist provision, while leaving accountability for that child’s educational outcome with the school at which he or she is registered. I believe that such innovations can better align the interests of the system, which does not happen sufficiently at the moment. We are delivering a manifesto commitment to review why children identified as in need of help and protection have such poor outcomes and make an assessment to improve them.

A child’s home learning environment is one of the biggest influences on their vocabulary, but socioeconomic factors can affect the quality of those environments. We are committed to supporting parents to improve the quality and quantity of adult-child interactions, unlocking the power of learning in the home. Some 92% of three year-olds and 95% of four year-olds now access 15 hours of free early education per week. The early years pupil premium provides more than £300 per eligible child to support better outcomes for disadvantaged three and four year-olds. The Secretary of State has set out his ambition to halve by 2028 the number of children finishing their reception year without the communication and reading skills they need.

One in four adults and one in 10 children will experience mental illness, which is why we are working with colleagues across government to improve mental health and well-being in young people. Our Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, sets out ambitious proposals and confirms our commitment to providing support to schools. That includes the implementation of a trained designated senior lead in all schools and funding for new mental health support teams. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned looked-after children specifically. We recently revised our statutory guidance to place greater emphasis on children’s mental health needs. Virtual mental health leads were among a number of recommendations made by the DfE and DHSC working group on the mental health of children in care.

Every child’s experience at school should be a happy one. However, at times, young people face the challenges of bullying and harassment, which is never acceptable. My department remains committed to keeping all children safe, which is why we further strengthened the statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education. We have also produced guidance for schools and teachers on how to prevent bullying and support those who experience it. My noble friends Lady Bottomley and Lord Chadlington and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, are right about the huge changes and pressures faced by children in today’s society, particularly through electronic and social media.

Today, bullying can come in many forms, not just in a classroom or social atmosphere but from a much wider group of peers. We have seen a rise in young people reaching out for help with their mental health, but we must ask ourselves why we are seeing such a rise in those asking for help. I for one do not believe that it is down to just exam stress, a troubled home life or “regular” peer pressure. In many cases, the potential dangers of social media become realities. We need to encourage our young people to take time away from screens. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, referred to happiness levels in children—an area that deserves much more focus.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Norton stressed the importance of citizenship. I agree entirely. Findings have shown that participation in extra-curricular activities promotes positive well-being among young people. For example, schools with cadet forces see improvements in attendance, behaviour and attainment. We are on track to achieve our target of 500 cadet units in schools by April 2020, developing qualities such as respect, self-confidence, teamwork and resilience in young people. Since the National Citizen Service was launched in 2011, nearly 500,000 young people have taken part in this life-changing opportunity. We continue to support the NCS and are investing £80 million through the Youth Investment Fund to increase opportunities for young people to develop skills and participate in their communities. My noble friend Lord Norton asked whether I agreed with his prognosis on the teaching of citizenship. I do not agree entirely. Of course an A-level in citizenship or history is helpful, but other qualifications could equally suffice.

A child’s early emotional and social development, educational attainment and, later, employability can all be put at risk by problems such as homelessness, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell. In particular, the Homelessness Reduction Act is the most ambitious legislative reform in this area in decades. We have allocated £1.2 billion through to 2020 to reduce homelessness. I will have to write to the noble Lord on the progress of H-CLIC.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, asked about child poverty and workless households. We repealed the income-based measures set out in the Child Poverty Act 2010 and replaced them with new statutory measures of parental worklessness and educational attainment—the two areas that we know can make the biggest difference. Children living in workless households are five times more likely to be in poverty than those where all adults work. Our welfare reforms are making good progress to prevent this happening. There are now 630,000 fewer children living in workless households than in 2010. There are also 300,000 fewer children living in absolute poverty on a before housing cost basis than in 2010.

Children in care deserve a stable home environment. Some 61% of children enter care as a result of abuse or neglect. That is why the Children and Social Work Act 2017 sets out corporate parenting principles. Local authorities need to take this into account as they take on the role of parent to looked-after children, extending to those leaving care. The Autumn Budget announced an additional £410 million in 2019-20 for local authorities to invest in adult and children’s social services. This is on top of the £200 billion going forward to 2020 made available in the 2015 spending review.

I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, over mental health. We recognise that mental health needs can have a significant impact on young people, in particular looked-after and previously looked-after children. This is why we have recently revised statutory guidance for designated teachers, placing greater emphasis on children’s mental health needs. The Government have made £1.4 billion available to transform and improve access to children and young people’s mental health services from 2015-16 to 2020-21. We have set an ambition for at least 70,000 additional children and young people each year to access high-quality NHS mental health care by 2021.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised the issue of youth offenders. We know that children who offend are some of the most vulnerable in society and we are committed to preventing children entering the youth justice system. Education should be at the heart of youth custody. We are investing more than £2 million over the next two years to increase the range of educational, vocational and enrichment activities, including sports and physical activity. As part of the agreed funding of the youth justice reform programme, we are making £0.8 million available in 2018-19 and £1.8 million in 2019-20 to increase the range of educational and enrichment activities in the youth custody system.

The Government have also announced a £200 million youth endowment fund to build the evidence base for action. This fund will support young people most at risk of serious violence, underpinning our commitment to address the recent increase in knife and gun crime. We will be launching a consultation later this month on new school security guidance. This will include references to knife crime.

Some young people are at risk from extremism and radicalisation, be this through online channels or grooming by members of terrorist or extremist groups. We are working with schools to tackle extremism and radicalisation through our Prevent initiative and a strengthening of the Ofsted inspection framework. We want all young people to understand the shared values that underpin our society, and in particular the values of respect for and tolerance of those from different backgrounds.

The noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Brooke, raised obesity. We are making progress on this since the publication of our childhood obesity plan in 2016, including the reformulation of products that our children eat and drink, for example through the soft drinks levy. The next stage will include restricting promotion deals on fatty and sugary products and ending the sale of energy drinks to children.

The noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Sawyer, asked about zero-hours contracts. There are 780,000 people on zero-hours contracts. This is down from 883,000 in the same period of 2017. This is a small proportion of the workforce—about 2.4%—because this is the kind of contract that suits that small proportion, giving them the flexibility they desire so that they can, for instance, study alongside working. Noble Lords will also be aware that we have very much tightened up on such things as unpaid internships, which are absolute exploitation.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and my noble friend Lord Chadlington raised the important issue of youth gambling. There are strict controls to prevent underage gambling in licensed premises or online. GambleAware is working to provide resources for teachers and to support parents to have conversations. The Government published a review of gambling machines and social responsibility in May of this year. Key measures included reducing the maximum stake on fixed odds betting terminals from £20 to £2, a major responsible gambling advertising campaign and a plan of action by the Gambling Commission to strengthen player protections online.

I am running out of time so I shall finish by saying that the Motion asks that we take note of the challenges facing young people. I firmly believe that a good education is vital to help them meet these challenges, and we are steadily improving the education system to ensure that this happens. Children represent the future of our country: few endeavours are more important.

Special Educational Needs and Funding

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, in asking the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I remind the House of my interests with the British Dyslexia Association.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, we are working to improve quality and services for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We are listening to parents and we have introduced new SEND inspections. We are investing to embed SEND in school improvement. We have commissioned an external review of exclusions. High-needs funding has risen by £1 billion since 2013, but we recognise the pressures on budgets and are monitoring the impact of the national funding formula on local authorities.

[Lord Addington]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he agree that, when those in the biggest group in this category have not received a plan and, Ofsted says, struggle to receive the appropriate help, there is something fundamentally wrong? Does he also agree with the next page of Ofsted’s report, which says that when you have a special school with structured lessons, you get good results? Is this not an example of how we should invest more in support in the mainstream classroom?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we have done an enormous amount for this category of vulnerable children over the last few years. One of the most important introductions was that of education and healthcare plans, supported by inspections of local authorities by Ofsted and by the Care Quality Commission. We now have increasing visibility of where good service provision is occurring and where it is not. We will continue to pursue that.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of the Question and ask the Minister whether the department could be proactive in two ways: first, on the back of the local government settlement and the Chancellor’s Budget at the end of October, in relation to additional money for children’s services; and secondly, in trying to get the education and health services to join up, so that, in particular, young people transitioning from school to college and from college into adult life are able to access the funds they need and parents are not put through the nightmare, as many are, of battling day in, day out to get their rights.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I think there are two questions there. Perhaps I may address, first, the post-19 phase for young people migrating from education into the world of work. We are now providing supported internships. There were 1,200 in January last year, an increase of 700 on the year before. We have also legislated to promote the joint commissioning of services. This means that children’s services funded primarily by education funds should be able to work effectively with adult services to support young people as they transition. Secondly, on overall funding, we are very conscious of high-needs pressures. We made available £130 million of high-needs funding in 2017-18, and the high-needs block will rise by £142 million next year.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, what can be done to reduce the cost of going to appeals tribunals, which deters many parents from asserting their rights in the face of obstruction from local authorities, and what can be done to stop local authorities telling parents—quite wrongly, as some do—that a local independent school cannot be named in an education, health and care plan?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, this is a new provision. We have radically changed the way that support is provided for vulnerable children. Although no one is happy to see money wasted on expensive tribunal proceedings, the percentage of tribunal cases is relatively consistent with the increasing number of education, health and care plans awarded. We will obviously challenge local authorities where too many tribunal cases occur but they are still learning about this.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the investment that the Government are making, but is the Minister concerned about the rising number of children with SEND being excluded from school? Does he recognise that high-quality early-years education can moderate behaviours, which will then be improved in primary and secondary schools? Is he concerned that, despite the welcome investment from the Government, families who can benefit from such funding to access high-quality childcare for their children with SEND say that they need more money to be able to do so, pushing the figure towards £300? Will he look at the funding for childcare access for families with children with SEND?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we have certainly kept this matter under continual review. I mentioned some sums of money a moment ago and, as I said, the amount of overall funding for the high-needs block has increased by £1 billion in the last five years. However, we also accept that early interventions can have a very advantageous impact on young people with disabilities. For example, having a clear focus on literacy is helping children with dyslexia, and we are improving initial teacher training and continuing professional development to raise awareness.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, how do the Government intend to address the training needs of staff in education and the capacity for improvement, as identified in the report, given that over half of teachers say that they have received no training on dyslexia?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we are introducing more training on SEND issues in the initial teacher training modules. For example, we are including the subject of mental health generally as a voluntary rollout from September next year and it will become compulsory the following year. We have also provided funding to the British Dyslexia Association to deliver training to teachers to support the early identification of learning difficulties.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, in his question a moment ago, the noble Earl referred to the fact that a very high proportion of young children with special educational needs are excluded from school. More than a quarter of those with an SEN designation were excluded last year, and it is five times the rate when it comes to permanent exclusions. Can the Minister tell us why that is and whether the Government are happy with that situation, or are they content to allow schools to get rid of pupils whom they find slightly inconvenient to improve their overall results?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I can categorically assert that we are not happy with that, and it is one reason why we have commissioned a report by Edward Timpson to look at the whole issue of exclusion. The noble Lord is quite correct to say that the percentage of vulnerable children being excluded is too high, and it is worth saying that a school will not get a good or better rating from Ofsted until it can justify any level of exclusion beyond what might be the norm. We are also dealing with this by increasing the level of provision for special education and AP schooling. We have already opened 34 special free schools and a further 55 are due to be opened to help this vulnerable group.

Schools: Funding

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on securing this important debate on school funding. I acknowledge her great experience on this subject, particularly as a former Secretary of State for Education. It is a key priority for this Government to ensure that every child receives a world-class education to enable them to reach their full potential. We are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter what their circumstance or where they live. Raising educational standards is the key to everything we are doing, so ensuring that the financial resources are divided in the right way is vital to that.

However, I know enough about basic psychology to know that most noble Lords will approach this debate with their minds made up. None the less, as ever, I will do my best to show the House that the picture is far less bleak than commonly portrayed. We are making significant progress: more schools than ever are being rated good or outstanding. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, challenges that and says that the framework has changed. I suggest that it is actually tougher than it was seven or eight years ago. The attainment gap is closing—a significant priority for us—and, if we are here for social mobility, then that is one of the greatest pieces of evidence of what we have done. We have launched 12 opportunity areas to drive improvement in parts of the country that we know can do better. We are investing in our schools and have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair, opaque and outdated school funding system by introducing the national funding formula.

As my noble friend Lady Eaton said, we are investing an additional £1.3 billion in our schools across this year and next, as confirmed in our 2015 spending review. This significant additional investment means that core funding for schools and high needs will rise from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £42.4 billion in 2018-19 and £43.5 billion in 2019-20.

I take on board the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and other noble Lords about statistics, but the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that real-terms per pupil funding for five to 16 year-olds in 2020 will be more than 50% higher than in 2000 and some 70% higher than in 1990. We could put these figures in a different way, and I accept that these debates can become somewhat reductive, but this is another way to deal with it than the way the noble Lords, Lord Bassam and Lord Storey, did. Putting it in the context of an average classroom, funding for an average primary school class this year is £132,000—up from around £124,000 a decade ago and £84,000 in 2000. That is in today’s prices. Those same children will receive an average of £171,000 when they move to secondary school per class, up from around £161,000 a decade ago and £109,000 in 2000, again in today’s prices.

It is not just the quantum of funding available that matters; it is vital that it is distributed fairly and where it is most needed. Prior to our recent reform of the funding system, schools with similar pupil characteristics across the country had been receiving markedly different levels of funding for no good reason. For example, Coventry received £510 more per pupil than Plymouth, despite having equal proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals. Nottingham similarly attracted £555 per pupil more than Halton. That is why our commitment to reform the unfair school and high-needs funding systems and introduce the funding formula has been so important. I am pleased that it has been this Government who have been able to deliver on that. The introduction of the national funding formula means that this year, for the first time, funding was distributed to local areas based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country. This historic reform is the biggest improvement to school funding for a decade and is directing resources where they are needed most.

On a lighter note, I have a cold—I apologise to noble Lords—and I asked my office to get me some Tunes for my speech. None of them had ever heard of Tunes, so they said that they would google them. They sent a note through the Box just before I came here that said, “We couldn’t find choons”. Maybe my education priorities should be refocused.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the funding formula. It has allocated an increase for every child in every school this year, while allocating the biggest increase to those schools that have been most underfunded. This year, schools that have been historically underfunded have attracted increases of up to 3% per pupil. Next year those schools will attract up to 6% more per pupil, compared with 2017-18.

We are particularly focused on supporting children who face great barriers to success, be that because they come from a disadvantaged background, have low prior attainment, or speak English as an additional language. Evidence shows that pupils with these characteristics are more likely to need extra support to reach their full potential. It is vital that we help schools to provide the support these pupils need. The national funding formula has protected the £5.9 billion additional needs funding across the system.

Under the national funding formula, a secondary pupil who had low attainment in key stage 2 will attract some additional £1,550 per year while in secondary education. A secondary pupil who speaks English as an additional language will attract an additional £1,385. A secondary pupil eligible for free school meals and living in one of the most deprived postcodes will attract an additional £2,035. Funding through these factors is all in addition to the basic per pupil funding that the child attracts. These important priorities are often misunderstood or ignored by the commentariat. I accept that it is a complicated system, but it is very much aimed to deal with those children in most need.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord is about to leave the question of the funding formula, but before he does, could he comment on the observations from my noble friends Lady Morris and Lord Knight that, while there might be some merit in the formula in itself, trying to implement it when the overall quantum of funds available is not increasing sufficiently means there will inevitably be many losers as well as a few gainers?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I entirely accept that this is an extremely difficult subject that has been kicked down the road for a long time. Doing it at a time when there are not huge amounts of additional money makes it difficult, but the system puts a floor in the bottom so that no one loses out. Of course, the debate will always be about why we are not moving the bottom ones up quicker. I met a head from West Sussex only last week—

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

The noble Lord is being extremely courteous and helpful to the House, but what he does not seem to be doing is explaining why it is that all these schools, in experiencing what he is saying are increases in budgets, are also experiencing reductions and losing the ability to provide the level of service that they have provided in the past. The Barnet study is a good case in point, because it is not just one isolated school; it is all the Barnet schools. While I am here, I recommend to the noble Lord that he uses Lockets next time, rather than worry about Tunes.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I thank the noble Lord for that very important piece of advice. There is a very complicated answer to the noble Lord’s question. It goes right back to the 1990s, to a system of training called COSMOs that was given to head teachers then. That training has not been continued and has lapsed, but what it showed senior leaders in the 1990s was how to most effectively allocate resources in their schools. A lot of those skills have been lost. I will cover some of the individual questions that have been raised—I have some figures for the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on Barnet, for example.

I now turn to high needs. We recognise the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Eaton about funding for children and young people with high needs. We are also concerned about provision for excluded pupils. We have produced a range of support for local authorities to help them best use the resources they have available, including a high needs benchmarking tool by which they can compare spending. We have increased overall funding allocations to local authorities for high needs by £130 million last year and £142 million this year. We will increase this further next year, by approximately £120 million. In fact, high-needs funding will be more than £6 billion next year and will have risen by £1 billion since 2013. Every local authority will see an increase to their high-needs funding per head of the population of two to 18 year-olds this year and next, with underfunded authorities receiving up to 6% more next year than in 2017-18.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked about mental health care for young people. We are very concerned about that—one would be callous to say anything else—and are putting more resources in. Our Green Paper last year set out proposals to support schools to put in place senior leads for mental health, to introduce new mental health support teams working in or near schools and colleges, and a trial of a new four-week waiting time for NHS children and young people’s mental health services. As came up in a Question earlier this week, the NHS itself is committing £2 billion more to mental health, which will include, over the next several years, adding 8,000 mental health professionals to the system.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about improving teaching for, and increasing awareness of, the kind of challenges that he is so passionate about. We are increasing the level of resources available to help teachers support children with SEN. We have a special resource in the initial teacher training modules. We have online resources for teachers and the department has also contracted with the Whole School SEND Consortium to deliver a programme to equip schools to support children with SEND, which includes dyslexia.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was also concerned about education, health and care plans. We carried out a survey last year that showed that 66% of parents are satisfied with the process. This is, of course, a new process and one we aim to improve.

Turning to efficiency and the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on high pay, I completely share his concern about high pay in academies. The very first thing I did when I took on this job just over a year ago was to tackle it. We went after about 213 trusts, I think it was—more than 200 trusts—and since then 56 have stopped making those sorts of payments, for various reasons. That is a campaign that I will continue. I completely support the noble Lord in calling out those who do that.

On school resource management more generally, we recognise that schools have faced cost pressures. I want to be clear to the House that we are not in denial about that. The idea that I operate in a citadel is a dream that I can aspire to, but the real world is rather different, and that is why we are providing extensive support to schools to help get the best value out of every pound. We recently launched a strategy setting out the support, current and planned, that we have designed to help schools reduce costs. It provides practical advice on how to identify potential savings from their non-staff spend that can be put back into teaching to get the best value. To put that in perspective, we have a non-staff spend of about £10 billion a year, and we believe that £1 billion of that could be pulled out of the system over the next three or four years.

We know that marketplaces can be complex, leading to schools facing higher costs than they need to. The initiatives in our schools buying strategy aim to reduce this complexity when procuring goods and services. For example, we recently launched an agency supply teacher deal to provide schools with greater transparency on costs. We now have 34 national deals to help schools save money on items they buy regularly.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to my comments at the Schools & Academies Show last week—he is obviously very thorough in his research. The reason I used a somewhat strong or controversial approach there is that, for a year now, I have been going round forums such as that show giving endless speeches pointing out that we have these deals available for schools. In the audience for the address he referred to were 200 head teachers and chief executives. I asked those who had used our deals to put up their hands. Out of the 200, five put up their hands. When I arrived in this job a year ago, I wrote to 1,300 chief executives of trusts and told them about the deals that were in place. I said, “If they are no good, please tell me”. How many responses did I get? I did not get one response. I understand the pressures in the system, but the system also has to respond to us. Since we are trying to help them improve efficiency, they need to tell us how we can help them more. That is why I made those comments the other day: it was not to be glib. I am a huge fan of spreading best practice and if there were schools in that audience that were doing interesting, innovative things, I want to let other schools know about that. It is important to put that into context because the trade magazines made fun of me, which of course is grist to the mill in this job.

We have created a benchmarking website for schools. This allows them to compare their spending with that of similar schools elsewhere in the country. We continue to improve this service and recently introduced a trust-to-trust comparison functionality. This will help school and trust leaders to identify if and where improvements can be made.

I am conscious of time. On teachers’ pay and pensions, we have recently responded to recommendations made by the School Teachers’ Review Body to confirm the 2018 pay award for main scale teachers. It is our aim that schools continue to attract high-quality recruits—I take on board the many comments about recruitment challenges—and this award will support them to do that. We will see a 3.5% uplift to the main pay range, 2% to the upper pay range and 1.5% to the leadership pay range. In the main pay range, it is important to stress for noble Lords, this is the biggest percentage increase since 2011.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

The Minister has not mentioned the fact that schools are meant to meet the first 1% of the pay rise themselves, so that is not funded. Can he explain that? Can he also answer my earlier question as to whether he accepts the figures in the Institute for Fiscal Studies report?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is correct that the first 1% of the pay rise is expected to be funded by schools. We believe that that is possible within the efficiencies that I have mentioned. As for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, I believe that it includes within its figures the 16 to 19 year-olds sector, which has seen a tougher regime than the mainstream system: I acknowledge that. We are fully funding the teachers’ pay award beyond the 1%. This will be worth £187 million in 2018-19 and £321 million in 2019-20.

On pensions, we propose to fully fund the increase in pension contributions recently announced for state-funded schools. We know that school budgets for the academic year have already been agreed and, in most cases, schools have allocated those budgets. That is why we have worked with the Treasury to get agreement to implement the changes from September 2019, rather than April 2019. We will consult on the best mechanism to distribute funding to individual schools and announce how it will be distributed in good time, before schools experience the pressures in September 2019.

As we distribute this funding, we will be at the same time more fairly in line with the best available evidence. For example, by using a range of indicators to measure deprivation we are able to ensure our funding reaches all those pupils who need it. It is not limited simply to those who qualify for free school meals. Alongside the additional needs funding in the formula, we continue to deliver the pupil premium, with more than £2.4 billion this year. This is above the funding that we provide through the national funding formula. We will have invested over £13 billion in the pupil premium since 2011 to improve the outcomes for less well-off pupils.

I will now try to address specific questions raised by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, asked about Barnet but I think he has gone. No, he has not—apologies. Under the NFF for 2019-20, schools in Barnet will attract £4,999 per pupil. This is an addition of £68 per pupil, or 1.3% compared to the 2017-18 figure. The total cash funding will increase by 3.2% and an additional £7.7 million, once rises in pupil numbers are taken into account. Just to explain how important that is, the marginal additional cost of educating one more pupil in a school is not the average per pupil amount. Barnet’s local authority received £48.1 million for high needs, an increase of £1.2 million compared to 2017-18.

My noble friend Lady Eaton and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the EPI report and the rise in deficits. They are rising, which is a concern, and I am having to spend a great deal of time on that. We are offering advice to local authorities on how to deal with this, but to put things in perspective, 91% of maintained schools reported a cumulative surplus, or that they would be breaking even in 2016-17, with total surpluses of more than £4 billion against a total deficit figure of less than £300 million.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, mentioned the shortfall in academy accounts. This is a myth that I want to slaughter early before it gathers traction. The figure referred to is driven almost entirely by an increase in impairment charges, which are non-cash changes to the value of land and buildings. Academies do not have to spend money on impairment charges, and a more realistic figure is that of the net cumulative reserves of the academy sector, which has seen an increase from £2.1 billion to £2.3 billion.

I share the concerns that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, have about rural schools. That is why I attended the Lambeth Palace address earlier this week and met the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely yesterday, when we specifically discussed rural schools. I again make a pitch for multi-academy trusts, which are a very good solution to the problem. It is complicated in rural areas because of distance and how small many schools can be but, as I said in my address at Lambeth Palace, we are committed to always having a presumption against the closure of a rural primary school. They are the glue of these rural communities. My own son went to one, which faced closure last year. Since it was in Norfolk, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, would have been upset if I had intervened, but I did not. However, I am pleased to say that it has now joined an academy trust—one which I can tell your Lordships I have nothing to do with. It is important that we have sparsity funding, which is allocated to rural schools. The NFF allocates £25 million and we also give every school a lump sum of £110,000. When that lump sum is coupled with the sparsity factor, it provides meaningful support.

The right reverend Prelate made particular reference to a school where he said that the head teacher was struggling because the school had been asked to double the number of pupils. We have allocated a tremendous amount of basic need funding, with £7 billion during the current spending review between 2015 and 2021. Over the course of the Parliaments since 2010, we have increased the number of pupils by some 825,000 and they have all been funded. I want to reassure him on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about teacher recruitment and supply teachers, among other issues. I mentioned that we have just created a teacher recruitment service, which is now being rolled out across the country. It is a much more cost-efficient service than that provided in the market generally. Likewise, with supply teachers we have created another portal which has got the main supply firms in the country together. It has made them cap their fees and stopped the pernicious practice of charging a recruitment fee if the supply teacher becomes a permanent employee after a number of weeks. These may be only small things, but they all add up.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, raised issues about capital. We have committed some £23 billion to capital between 2016 and 2021 but, significantly, I should stress that we have also reduced the build costs per square metre by some 30%. This rises to 35% per square metre when improvements in efficiency and design are included, so we are very committed to that.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, gave an example of a friend who wrote about possible boiler problems in his or her school. I am not sure whether he said it was under a local authority or an academy but, if it was a local authority school, we make an allocation to local authorities every year of the school condition allowance. It is then for schools inside a local authority to bid in for that. If it was an academy and had more than 3,000 pupils, the academy trust is given an amount of capital which it can then choose to spend as it sees fit.

This leads me on to the BBC documentary “School”, which I have not seen all of, although I of course will do so. However, I saw the first part and felt it was a very disappointing piece of journalism, because it was clearly set up to show how bad everything was. There are a number of challenges in that trust, but just on repairs one line from the journalist said that there were terrible, draughty windows and that the classrooms were therefore cold. When I looked up the figures for the school condition allowance, this trust receives over £1 million from that a year. The school in question—I think it is called Marlwood—is the biggest and, although we do not publish individual amounts per school, because the academy trust is free to use it as it sees fit, I can assure the House that there was plenty of money to deal with those windows. If it had a better call on its money than windows that increase heating costs, this is the sort of thing I get frustrated about. It is not all as one-sided as people think.

I am running out of time—my goodness, I apologise—and I had better sum up. On efficiencies in schools, I heard the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about the Harris Federation. The fact is that the Harris Federation is so efficient that it is able to employ centrally 80 school improvement teachers, who go out into its weaker schools—or ones it has just taken on—and provide the extra resource. That is one of the secrets of it being such a high-performing trust. Outwood Grange, a trust in the north of England, does a similar thing: it has 65 centrally employed school improvement teachers doing exactly the same and raising standards. It already has more than 900 pupils registering year-on-year for the schools that it took over from WCAT—a trust that failed—because of the improvements being seen.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister. I just want to be clear for the record that I was not criticising the Harris Federation, for which I have a high regard, but I wish that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, had the same regard for the Government’s new funding formula.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I had dinner with my noble Friend, Lord Harris, two nights ago and he is always frank in his views. He is a passionate advocate for his schools and what he has achieved is fantastic. I would like that to go on the record.

I would also like to give an example of a relatively small trust, the Thinking Schools Academy Trust in Kent, which has taken the novel approach of paying £2,000 more to its newly qualified teachers when it recruits them. You may say, “There’s no money around, so how has it done that?”. It has done so because its retention rate on teachers is double the national average. It has only a 10% turnover of staff every year, as against a national turnover of 20%. Thinking in ways like that can make such a difference.

I have been told to stop. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I am sorry to delay the end, but I asked when the Government were going to review the transition to the new funding formula.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My apologies. We are on a soft programme at the moment that is being reviewed, and then it will be reviewed more formally with the spending review. So I cannot answer that question at the moment. As the noble Lord will know, we are experimenting with giving delegation to local authorities for the high-needs funding block. Some local authorities are using that and some are passing all the funding straight back to schools. That soft launch will last until the funding review, which will be next year.

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. Even more, I pay tribute to the hard work of teachers and schools who give their best to raise standards in our education system. I have worked very closely with these wonderful people and I support the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, in what she said about the morale of teachers in the workforce and the fact that they are making a vital contribution.

We are changing the way that funding works. It is not easy, but we are seeing it beginning to bear fruit. This will underpin a further improvement in standards to help create a world-class education system that finally allows every child to achieve their potential, no matter what their background.

Schools: Mental Health Support

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to develop mental health support in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, many schools already promote their pupils’ mental health and we are providing significant new support to them. In July, we confirmed our commitment to train mental health leads in schools to develop whole-school approaches to promoting and supporting good mental health. But schools cannot act as mental health experts, so we will also provide increased specialist support from new, clinically supervised mental health support teams.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. He will be aware that 65% of children and young people who have mental health problems currently get no support. I am aware of the trailblazers but they will take time to be established and teach good practice. We have a resource in schools which, sadly, is underfunded. It has too many vacancies and spends all its time on its statutory responsibility of reviewing cases under the Children and Families Act—I mean, and thus mention, our educational psychologists. Why can we not provide extra resources so that educational psychologists who are in post can do this work to provide support for children and young people with mental health problems?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we are improving specialist children’s and young people’s mental health services with our £1.5 billion investment from 2015. We recognise that we need to do more, which is why the NHS will invest at least £2 billion a year in mental health, including children’s services, under the recent Budget proposals. Our Green Paper proposals are about providing support quickly through teams directly linked to schools and testing four-week waiting times for more specialist follow-up. We are absolutely not complacent about this vital area.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, frequently children with ME are diagnosed as having a mental health problem at school, which leads them into child protection proceedings. Can the Minister please ensure that the people responsible are aware of the fact that ME is not a mental health condition so that these children are not treated as mental health patients?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, that is the reason why we are rolling out mental health training in schools. Since April last year, we have already trained 1,300 teachers across 1,000 schools to increase awareness of subjects such as the one the noble Countess raises.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that the number of school nurses and counsellors has dramatically decreased over the past few years. Can the Minister confirm this? What is the role of school nurses and counsellors, or do they no longer have one because they have disappeared?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is up to individual schools to deploy their resources as they see fit. Where school counsellors provide an important role, I am sure they are used, but as I said in answer to the supplementary question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, we are deploying more resources into this area in schools.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that the Jewish Leadership Council has just launched a scheme to improve mental health in schools? Trained counsellors/well-being practitioners are being recruited to five schools—two primary schools, Rimon and Broughton Jewish, and three secondary schools, JFS, JCoSS and Yavneh College—for a three-year pilot. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Yavneh College, Spencer Lewis, the head teacher, and the staff as, according to the Sunday Times, it has just been announced as the best performing non-selective school in the country?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, many faith schools are high performing and achieve consistently high exam results. I am happy to join my noble friend in congratulating Yavneh College. Many of the best schools focus on well-being as an intrinsic part of their job, so I welcome the initiatives highlighted by my noble friend. Promoting well-being can help prevent problems arising or escalating, ensuring that both the school and pupils are provided with the tools they need to achieve the best results.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, while I am grateful for the increased funding that is now available for mental health services for young people, is the Minister aware of the real difficulties facing young people in a crisis situation? I am thinking of a 14 year-old who asked his father to take him to the GP because he was afraid he might do something silly. The GP sat and listened very sympathetically, but then said, “I’m afraid there’s very little I can do for you. If I give you a referral to CAHMS, you probably won’t get an appointment for a year”. Is that not a crisis situation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, there are always going to be individual incidents such as that, and that is why we have made such a big commitment to increasing mental health funding over the few next years, including for children’s mental health. As I mentioned in answer to an earlier question, improving awareness of mental health issues, such as the trauma just mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, will help us deal with these cases.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that having a few people trained in every school does not mean you will get throughput unless you have basic awareness among the staff? That can be achieved only by continuous professional development structured in an awareness package, so that you get to the people you are training.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we are introducing mental health training as part of teacher training. We are beginning a voluntary scheme in September next year, and that will become a compulsory part of teacher training programmes. Returning to the earlier point about funding, we aim to add another 8,000 mental health professionals to the system over the next few years.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, may I add another element to this vital debate? It is about all schools having a school garden. I shall quote from a recent report by the King’s Fund:

“The mental health benefits of gardening are broad and diverse. Studies have shown significant reductions in depression and anxiety”,


and “improved social functioning”. This costs unbelievably little, and lessons can be based around it. In my time running the London Food Board, I put many gardens into London schools, and the effects were dramatic. The cost is as little as 50 quid—with a bit of volunteering—and it has a permanent, long-term effect.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I strongly support the noble Baroness’s comments on children’s exposure to outdoor activities. There is a very good trust, the Country Trust, which takes children on to farms in the same spirit as just mentioned. I think this is enormously important. I am the Minister responsible for the disposal of land in schools, and I intervene weekly to ensure that land used for such outdoor pursuits is not disposed of.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister not realise that the answer he gave to the right reverend Prelate about it taking a year to get help for a child in need was extraordinarily disappointing? Can nothing be done to deal with these urgent cases, about which the right reverend Prelate made such a persuasive point?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we are committing to and experimenting with much shorter waiting times in the NHS to bring that down to four weeks. The rollout of the trailblazers will be in exactly the same spirit: to learn best practice, which we can then adopt across the whole system.

Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 5 September be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 30 October.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Agnew, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.

Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on securing this important debate. I am grateful for this opportunity to set out the Government’s actions to improve children’s social mobility and life chances through early intervention. We have had many serious contributions today and I will attempt to answer the many questions that have been raised, but if I am not able to answer them all I will, of course, write to any noble Lords I have missed.

The Government are committed to early intervention and building the evidence base to underpin it. Early intervention means effective prevention, identification and evidence-based intervention across multiple professions, which places the child at the centre. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, are right that early intervention saves money and saves wasted lives. We can all agree on that. I welcome my right honourable friend Andrea Leadsom’s ministerial working group, which will review how to improve the support available to families in the first two years of a child’s life. Early intervention is a cross-government concern.

Research suggests that there are short and long-term educational and socioemotional benefits of attending early childhood education and care. This Government have prioritised investment in early education. This includes 15 hours of free early education per week for all three and four year-olds and an additional 15 hours per week for three and four year-olds of working parents. Since 2013 we have invested over £2 billion in early education for disadvantaged two year-olds and nearly 750,000 children have benefited from this. I take on board the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, about the high salary entitlement that can trigger this support and I will certainly refer this to the Treasury for the next spending review.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Russell, asked questions on early years and I hope I will be able to address their points. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked what assessment will be made of whether new spending on preschool children is improving social mobility. The free entitlements are just one part of the overall package for social mobility in the early years. We announced a range of initiatives to support disadvantaged children in our social mobility action plan, Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential, investing £100 million across early years programmes, and we will be evaluating the impact. To answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, we are in the process of raising a tender exercise for that at the moment.

We are determined to close the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers and the early years are crucial to getting this right. The gap for children achieving a good level of development continues to narrow, from 19 percentage points in 2013 to 17 percentage points in 2017. We continue to monitor the progress of children in early years through the publication of the early years foundation stage profile. The study of early education and development also began in 2013 and is following almost 6,000 children between the ages of two and seven to understand the benefits of early education and care in England.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked that we ensure that nursery settings are led by someone with a relevant degree-level qualification. We recognise the importance of having a highly skilled early years workforce. Recruiting graduate early years teachers into the private, voluntary and independent early years sector remains a challenge, despite significant investment by successive Governments since 2006. It is therefore important that we consider complementary approaches to developing the skills of the early years workforce. This is why, as announced in the social mobility action plan, we will be investing £20 million in early years professional development activity in disadvantaged areas. We remain committed to ensuring that there are routes to graduate-level qualifications into the early years sector, as well as the existing early years initial teacher training programme that offers funded places and bursaries. We will also be developing apprenticeship pathways, enabling those in the early years workforce to progress up to a graduate-level qualification.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, asked how we will prioritise the potential for the early arts as a method of learning. Expressive arts and design is one of the seven areas of learning in the early years foundation stage. It provides a framework for teachers to assess how children’s artistic, creative and imaginative development is progressing, reflecting the importance of creativity in the early years. Expressive art and design is one of the most important ways for a young person’s mind to develop. I reassure all speakers today that the Government are focused on that.

The evidence is clear that the home learning environment is one of the biggest influences on a child’s vocabulary at the age of three and that its quality varies depending on socioeconomic and other factors. We are committed to supporting parents to improve the quality and quantity of adult-child interactions to help unlock the power of learning in the home. That is why we are holding a summit this month where we will convene businesses, broadcasters and a broad range of other organisations to launch a coalition to explore innovative ways to boost early language development and reading in the home. We recognise the importance of growing the evidence base and are working with the Education Endowment Foundation on a £5 million trial of evidence-based home learning support programmes in the north of England.

Local authorities sit at the heart of delivering effective early intervention services. We want to support this, which is why we are working with the Local Government Association to develop our early years local government programme, which is worth £8.5 million. The programme focuses on improving how the local services that work together to improve children’s outcomes in the early years are delivered, with a particular focus on early language. Children’s centres have an important role to play, but it is right that local councils continue to decide how to use them as part of their wider system of local services.

The noble Lords, Lord Loomba and Lord Touhig, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, all mentioned the importance of early intervention. Good-quality relationships between parents are critical for child outcomes. The reducing parental conflict programme will support all local areas to embed parental-conflict support into wider services for children and will work to ensure that evidence-based interventions are more widely available. We know that alcohol misuse can severely impact on parental conflict, which is why we are investing £6 million to improve the outcomes of children of alcohol-dependent parents.

We have committed over £920 million to the troubled families programme from 2015 to 2020. This focuses on preventive services and aims to achieve significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000 families with multiple high-cost problems by 2020. The programme, delivered through local authorities and their partners, advocates a whole-family integrated approach across multiple services.

In addition to targeted work, we have national health programmes that support early intervention. These include the healthy child programme, which aims to identify issues early. It is led by health visitors and includes five mandated health reviews, advice, guidance and support to improve outcomes and to support the families of children from birth to five years. Building on this, my department is working in partnership with Public Health England to equip health visitors to support families with early language in the home and ensure that any speech delays are picked up early and the right support put in place.

Engagement with maternity services may be the first time that a woman experiences regular and in-depth interaction with the health and care system. The maternity workforce is well placed to support the long-term health and well-being of women and their babies. In March 2018 we announced a pledge to give the majority of women continuity of care from the same midwives throughout their pregnancy, labour and birth by 2021. The maternity transformation programme led by NHS England is leading system-wide activity to improve well-being, reduce risk and tackle inequalities from the preconception period through to eight weeks after birth. The Government are also investing £365 million between 2015 and 2021 in perinatal mental health services to improve outcomes for mothers and children.

There has been a tremendous focus on children’s mental health from speakers today. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Touhig, all raised this important area. One important initiative is Public Health England promoting local adoption of what is known as the prevention concordat for better mental health, which focuses on galvanising action to prevent mental health problems and promote good mental health in all local areas. The design is consciously cross-sector so that professionals from a diverse spectrum of organisations can engage and play their part.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked about the amount of financial capacity in the system. We have announced a package of some £300 million for children and young people’s mental health: £215 million from the Department of Health and Social Care for mental health support teams and £95 million in DfE funding for training designated senior leads for mental health in schools.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about the impact of outdoor schools on mental health. I congratulate the noble Baroness on her involvement in this area. There is no doubt that exposure to open countryside has an enormously positive impact on young people. The early years foundation stage picks up elements of attachment through personal, social and emotional development. As part of this stage, providers must provide access to an outdoor play area or, if that is not possible, ensure that outdoor activities are planned and undertaken daily. On a personal note, I am the Minister who deals with any application for disposal of land in schools, and I have made it very clear to all schools that apply to me that disposals are conditional on improvement of sporting facilities in those schools.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, asked about obesity. I have to express a slight conflict of interest here: as a farmer who grows 3,500 tonnes of sugar beet a year I am slightly on the other side, but I absolutely support the obesity strategy, through which we aim to take 45 million kilograms of sugar out of the food system every year. It is absolutely clear to me that sugar is highly addictive: I am certainly one of its victims and I fight the addiction every day. The more we can do in the early stages for children, to remove that dependency on sugar, the better. It astonishes me that you can buy fizzy drinks in supermarkets for less than you pay for bottled water.

We want to support all young people to be happy, healthy and safe. This is why we are making relationships education compulsory in all primary schools, relationships and sex education compulsory in all secondary schools, and health education compulsory for primary and secondary state-funded schools. In health education, there is a focus on avoiding the damaging effects and risks of drugs and excessive alcohol. The Government are committed to supporting the life chances of children who need particular support from the state. Children in need and looked-after children fall behind from the early years, and these poor outcomes are entrenched throughout childhood and adolescence.

Since the Munro review of child protection in England, which highlighted that the use of evidence is fundamental to social work, the Government have prioritised innovation, learning from evidence and best practice. We have invested almost £200 million since 2014 in the children’s social care innovation programme to develop, test and spread innovative new ways of supporting vulnerable children and improving their outcomes. Through the children in need review, we are building the evidence on what works to improve the educational outcomes of children in need, both in and out of school. We are seeking to understand why their educational outcomes are so poor and what needs to be in place to achieve consistently better educational outcomes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about the impact of funding on social care demand. The drivers of demand are complex: for example, the sector-led care crisis review found many overlapping factors contributing to the rise in care proceedings and children entering care. There is not a uniform picture but instead, significant variation. We have invested almost £270 million since 2014 to help local authorities learn from what works and to support improvements. We have invested in the Early Intervention Foundation to help build evidence in early intervention strategies. We have invested £10 million since 2014 in the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care to improve the evidence base in children’s social care, with the aim of translating this into better practice. In the autumn Budget the Government announced £84 million in targeted, evidence-based interventions, with the aim of reducing demand and saving money for local authorities. Most importantly, this is about improving the quality of services for our most vulnerable children.

Through our partners in practice programme, we are working with 20 of the best local authorities to deepen our understanding of what excellent children’s social care looks like and working with other local authorities to improve their practice through sector improvement support. A number of speakers asked about this. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked about the APPG. I give recognition to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, as co-chair of the APPG for Children’s report, Storing Up Trouble. Since 2010, 45 of what were previously inadequate local authorities in which we have intervened have left inadequacy behind and not returned. This is not intervention for intervention’s sake but improving the lives of children and families. Recently we have gone further, investing £20 million in regional improvement to get ahead of failure.

Our partners in practice programme, which, by the way, has now grown to include 20 of our best authorities, is sharing and spreading excellence across the country. The APPG report recommends that the department works with the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care and sector partners to evaluate new and developing approaches to meeting the needs of children and families. I am pleased to say that this is already happening. An early priority for the What Works Centre is to understand what works to safely reduce the need for children to enter care and to build our confidence that children are entering care only when that is the best option for them. There are promising signs emerging from our £200 million innovation programme.

On the question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about the lack of capacity, since the 2015 spending review we have made more than £200 billion available up to 2020 for councils to deliver local services. This includes children’s services. Funding is important but so is how it is used.

My noble friend Lord Farmer mentioned the boarding school partnerships initiative. I am a huge supporter of this and tried very hard to raise its profile across government and, more importantly, across local authorities. Like my noble friend, I too was in a boarding school. My parents’ marriage collapsed and it was that stability and continuity that gave me the courage to continue my education. My noble friend raised the statistics that came out of the report, albeit a small one, from Norfolk. The figures are very powerful, particularly on outcomes—the percentage of children who came off the register as well as the overall cost. I am endeavouring to increase local authorities’ awareness of this. Almost 60 boarding schools have now committed to bursaries and to helping vulnerable children. My particular focus here is looked-after children who, as we know, get a very raw deal in life.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked whether I agree that the school system is vital in preparing the whole child, as I would describe a young person. The Government have invested more than £12 billion in the pupil premium over the last seven years, particularly aimed at the most vulnerable members of society. The Progress 8 measure is aimed very much at encouraging schools to lift up lesser-attaining pupils when they enter school. I accept that data can be somewhat dry, but from my business experience, what gets measured gets done. We are seeing some tremendous improvements in these areas.

I commend my noble friend Lord Baker for his passion for education and for everything he has done in his long career in politics. No Peer in this Chamber has spent more time in my office in the last year than my noble friend. I share his passion for technical education. We cannot always agree on everything, but I have tried very hard to help as much as I can. The UTC programme is important, dealing with a cohort of children who are clearly more suited to a technical education. I do not believe that the picture is as bleak as he paints: we now have the T-level programme, to which we are committing some £500 million a year. The EBacc programme, which I know is controversial in this House, is aimed particularly at those from less advantaged backgrounds whose ability to go to good universities is restricted.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I know the noble Lord is coming to the end of his remarks, but I hope we have enough time for me just to say that it is not controversial in this House only; it is controversial at large. There are very many people who believe that the EBacc is misguided in the narrowness of its base.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I accept that the noble Baroness says that it is controversial; we will have to agree to differ at this time. I would like to pick up on a slightly more positive issue that she raised in the debate on music and facilitating subjects the other day. I have spoken to two Ministers in the department since, and have agreed that we will write to some universities to test their appetite for adding music A-level to the facilitating subject range.

I apologise, I am running out of time, but I want to say I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken today. All of you have shown great passion and expertise in this area. We all agree that early intervention is vital to promote children’s attainment, health and well-being through their lives. The Government, across departments, will continue to make progress on this agenda, to improve the life chances of this nation’s children, particularly those in the most need of support.

Health: Spectrum Conditions

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and remind the House of my declared interest as president of the British Dyslexia Association.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, our data collections do not separate outcomes of dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia, so we are unable to make such an assessment. In terms of destinations, after completing key stage 4, for those with SEN, overall in 2016-17, 90% of pupils with a statement or education, health and care plan were in sustained education, employment or training compared to 88% of pupils with SEN without statements, and 95% of those without SEN.

[Lord Addington]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I have made him and his office aware of the document brought forward in February this year by Warwickshire Educational Psychology Service, called Teaching Children & Young People with Literacy Difficulties Practice Guidance, which is very similar to a document that appears on the Staffordshire site. This states that dyslexia effectively is not something to worry about. It effectively undermines the whole basis of the support which the noble Lord has been talking about. Will he give an assurance that the Government will make sure that accurate diagnosis, which can be life-changing, is maintained for this group because it helps through education and throughout life?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the document to which the noble Lord refers recognises that early identification and intervention is important to meet the needs of children and young people with literacy delays. On the necessity of a dyslexia diagnosis, I do not have expertise in such matters. However, the noble Lord and the British Dyslexia Association do, and I would encourage Warwickshire local authority to consider carefully its advice on this point, and on the document generally. I share the noble Lord’s frustration that it has not responded to the British Dyslexia Association’s letter written over two and a half months ago.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I am astonished that the Government do not know the figures for the relative incidence of the spectrum disorders in schools. I declare an interest as a member of staff of Imperial College. Is the Minister aware of our programme where we have managed, hugely successfully, to encourage dyslexic students, in particular, to gain very high educational qualifications? But of course, if the condition cannot be identified, it is very difficult to do that.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I acknowledge the great work the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is doing. I am clear that early diagnosis makes a huge difference; it helps the self-esteem of the child in question, and also enables earlier interventions to take place, helping to establish that child on a strong educational pathway.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that dyslexia is an impairment that can result in substantial and adverse long-term effects on an individual and their ability to carry out normal, day-to-day activities, and therefore this report is in complete contrast to the legislation that this House has passed?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is certainly not helpful that Warwickshire County Council is not engaging with the British Dyslexia Association. Under the Equality Act 2010, a person has a disability,

“if he or she has a physical or mental impairment and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities”.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, this is not a party-political issue, and I acknowledge that the Minister made time last week, along with the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, to discuss Warwickshire County Council’s guidance with me. That is why the Minister’s words today are disappointing, because I had understood that he accepted that this was an urgent and serious issue. Warwick County Council’s guidance to parents ignores the science and refuses to recognise that dyslexia is a medical condition. One wonders if, perhaps, it has also advised their residents that the earth is actually flat and that there is no such thing as global warming. With Cambridgeshire County Council and Staffordshire County Council considering aligning themselves with Warwickshire County Council’s position, I think it is important that the Government set out what action they will take to ensure that this misguided guidance is withdrawn as a matter of urgency.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and I have offered to write to Warwickshire County Council to understand why it has not responded to the British Dyslexia Association’s very detailed and well-written letter, sent two and a half months ago. As I said, we recognise the issue of dyslexia. Many children and young people who have SEN may have a disability under the Equality Act, and as I said, we strongly believe in early diagnosis and early intervention.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, my grandson—a splendid little boy—is on the spectrum. Only yesterday, we had a meeting with the Minister on the subject of early identification of this problem. There is no doubt about it: the earlier it can be identified the better for everybody, as it gives children a chance to participate in life in a normal way. What was lacking, as many of us here know, is child psychologists. Without many more child psychologists we do not have the ability to identify problems early, and I hope that the Minister, who I know has huge empathy for this subject, might hasten to add to that voice.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, was referring to dyslexia or autism, but he will be aware that we have increased awareness among all schools, and encouraged teachers to increase their awareness. With the Autism Education Trust, for example, we have rolled out a lot of autism awareness training. We now have 190,000 people trained in autism awareness, which is up from 150,000 in June of last year.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that during Children and Families Act, the local offer required local authorities to give information about special needs provision, and that information has to be accurate. Does the Minister not agree that it is not helpful to parents when false information is given out by councils, particularly on this issue of dyslexia? Will the Government clarify whether they fully support the recognition of dyslexia as a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the Equality Act 2010 provides protection for any person with a condition that meets the Act’s definition of disability—that is, a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. The Act does not, except in a few specific instances, mention by name the conditions that automatically fall within the definition of disability. This is because, in most cases, it is the impact on the person’s life that is the qualifying criterion, rather than the condition itself.