Education: 11 to 16 Year-olds
Lord Bichard Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government’s view would be “both/and”. I think it is critical, for the reasons that the right reverend Prelate sets out, that modern languages form part of our curriculum. We are developing a new language hubs programme and offering significant training bursaries for language teachers and scholarships for French, German and Spanish trainees. We share the right reverend Prelate’s focus on this issue.
Lord Bichard (CB)
Is the Minister not especially concerned—maybe even embarrassed—that in 2023, some 35.2% pupils in state schools left without a grade 4 or above in English and maths? Has not the time come, as the Select Committee suggests—and what an excellent report that is—to look to again at whether those subjects as currently defined are the route to ensuring that children leave school with functional literacy and numeracy?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government absolutely share the noble Lord’s concern, and one of the things we announced alongside the introduction of the advanced British standard is a review of how we can improve outcomes, particularly in mathematics but also in English, for those children who currently do not achieve the grades. The noble Lord makes an important point.
Child Safeguarding
Lord Bichard Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
I understand the spirit of my noble friend’s remarks. With respect to him, the thing that first the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and then others have brought out is the fact that so often in these cases different organisations, whether it be the school, the GP, the police or children’s services, have different snippets of information about a child. Critically, and very often, we need to share those to get an accurate picture of that child’s life.
Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, I associate myself with comments from other noble Lords about the tone of today’s Statement, which I think is a major step forward. However, will the Minister ask the two reviews if they will specifically look at the issue of sharing information and data? I ask that for two reasons. First, those of us who have been involved in these sorts of cases—I am afraid over decades—too often have seen perceived problems in sharing data and information behind the tragic outcomes. Secondly, we will tomorrow be debating the Health and Social Care Bill which includes a specific provision to improve the sharing of data where adults are concerned but says nothing at all about children. That surely could be one of the immediate things that we could do. Even if it was not a major problem in this case, it is a major problem too often, and we could do something about that.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Bichard Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bichard)
My Lords, welcome to the Grand Committee. If there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Clause 12: Functions of the Panel
Amendment 105
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Bichard Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Social Care Institute for Excellence and as a vice-president of the LGA.
Inevitably, we have reached a stage of the debate when I shall be adding my voice to others already heard on some of these issues. Therefore, I will try to be brief. However, it is important that the Minister understands the weight of feeling that exists across the House.
I am slightly more positive than my noble friend Lord Warner about some aspects of the Bill and welcome much that is here. However, this Bill could easily become a missed opportunity unless our deliberations and many of the points that have already been made today are taken into account. Some of those points do not seem to me to be controversial; they are certainly not political. I hope that the Minister is prepared to listen, take those into account and make some early amendments.
I am afraid to say that I have considerable sympathy for the points that have already been made by my noble friend Lord Warner in relation to Part 2, but I will confine my comments to Part 1.
I rather welcome the articulation of the corporate parenting principles in Clause 1. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, I am especially pleased to see subsections (2) and (3), which require local authorities to have regard to the need to encourage children and young people to express their views, wishes and feelings, and for those to be taken into account. I welcome that commitment to giving young people a more central role and greater power to influence policy.
On a point of detail—although maybe it is not just a point of detail—I wonder why the duty is merely to “have regard to”. Why do we not just place a duty on local authorities to have regard to the voice of young people and to reflect that in their services and policies? It seems to me to be rather mealy-mouthed: let us make it a straightforward duty on local authorities. However, the important point is that we find better ways of ensuring that children’s voices are heard when they have not always been in the past, whatever the rhetoric.
As others have said, once again, Clause 1 is an example of central government being happy to place duties and responsibilities on local authorities but failing to put its own house in order. I was a chief executive of two local authorities and a Permanent Secretary of two government departments. I can tell the House where collaboration is more likely, and it is not in central government. Therefore, like others, I would like to see Clause 1 extended to central government and its associated agencies. The Minister may well tell us that the Government already publish a cross-departmental care leavers strategy which recognises that central and local government have a unique relationship with children in care and care leavers. But why do we not just place a duty on central government departments and their agencies to act in the best interests of care leavers so that DCLG, the Department of Health, the Department for Education, DCMS and the Home Office have a responsibility to resolve some of the current anomalies and work better together for care leavers in the future?
I am sure the Minister is aware that, at the moment, care leavers remain a priority housing need only until their 21st birthday, but their exemption from the shared accommodation rate expires on their 22nd birthday and they are subject to labour market conditionality when they turn 18, with a significant number then facing sanctions. These are just a few examples of how central government departments have so far failed to act coherently. We need to do better.
Clause 2 requires local authorities to publish information about the services offered to care leavers. I think that is a step forward. Again, I am especially pleased to see the duty for a local authority to consult care leavers and their representatives about the services offered. However, we need to go further. Speaking as an ex-bureaucrat, I know that consultation can often be a hollow process, the results of which are too easily ignored.
Let me make two very simple, practical suggestions. The first is that local authorities are placed under a duty to publish a formal response to that consultation so that care leavers and their representatives can see that their contributions have been properly considered. I have been campaigning for that for government departments for a long time, but let us just confine it to local authorities for the purpose of this debate. Secondly, a duty should be placed on local authorities—this is something that many already do—to establish a care leavers council to keep the local offer under review. Many authorities, such as Birmingham, already have this kind of forum in place, but why not give it some statutory weight to ensure that it is uniform practice across the country?
Clause 3 proposes that local authorities must provide care leavers with a personal adviser until the age of 25 “if” the care leaver requests it. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Massey, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, have already said, why only “if” it is requested? Why do we not switch it about and make it a responsibility on local authorities for all care leavers up to the age of 25 to have an adviser unless the care leaver informs the authority that they do not want one? My fear is that, otherwise, many care leavers will either not know that an adviser is available or not be confident enough to request one. Place the onus on the authority and not the care leaver.
The failure of children in care to achieve acceptable levels of educational achievement has been a national scandal for far too long. Indeed, I first spoke of it when I was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Employment almost 20 years ago. Levels of attainment have improved but they are nowhere near good enough. Therefore, I welcome the provisions to make available advice and information to promote the educational achievement of care leavers, as well as the provision for maintained schools and academies to designate a member of staff to promote this.
However, if that makes sense for maintained schools and academies, should not something similar be in place in early years provision, FE colleges and universities? Already in this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, has pointed to one excellent initiative in a university. Should we not place the same responsibility on those institutions? Call me a sceptic, but is it not because those institutions happen to be the responsibility of another government department and therefore it has just been a bit too difficult? Well, it should not be too difficult. We should place responsibility on those institutions too.
Clause 11 in Chapter 2 relates to the proposed Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. This panel will identify the most serious child safeguarding cases and arrange for those to be reviewed under its supervision. I do not in principle have a problem with that, but I need to point out that, since the 1973 Maria Colwell case, we have had literally hundreds of serious case reviews, many—the majority—of which reached very similar conclusions. We have not been short of reviews wherever they have been undertaken. We have not been short of lessons. The problem has been the failure to translate the lessons into action and change, which might involve redesigning systems, procedures or training. As far as I can see, there is nothing in Clauses 11 to 14 that gives me any more confidence that action is more likely as a result of the Bill.
When I chaired the Soham inquiry, I decided to publish six months after the report a follow-up report on how the Government had responded to my recommendations. I am absolutely convinced that, had I not done that, we probably would not have had, for example, the Police National Database that we now have, or a system of enhanced CRB checks, which I know has not been without problems. It is not for me today to suggest how the Government intend to ensure that necessary action is taken on the conclusion of the panel’s report, but unless that is addressed more convincingly, these provisions are frankly bureaucracy without a purpose. If the intention is to rely on the existing powers of the Secretary of State to implement the recommendations, the Secretary of State should be required to report to Parliament once a year on what action has followed the various reviews that the panel has undertaken.
As I said, when I read Part 1 of the Bill I was encouraged, but only to a point. It could, with a few changes, be so much more significant and I hope that the Minister will be prepared to take some of them on board. I also agreed very strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, when she expressed the hope that our considerations would demonstrate that we value and respect the extraordinary work that so many social workers carry out in the most difficult circumstances. Too often, the emphasis has been on blame and failure. That is damaging and unfair, and I hope in our deliberations that we will do something to redress that balance.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Bichard Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, I will talk about social care and will share my disappointment that the gracious Speech did nothing meaningful to address the problem—some might say the crisis—that faces social care and therefore millions of some of the most disadvantaged people in this country. I declare an interest as the chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence.
I do not think that many people would deny that these are challenging times for social care. Too many users are critical of the services they receive, too many providers struggle to survive, too many commissioners feel disempowered by a lack of resource, and too few people see social care as an attractive career option. For those clients who experience the consequences of this, arguments which we often hear in this House about who should be blamed, debates about budget numbers and discussions about pioneers, vanguards and better care funds feel a world away from the reality of their lives. Of course, those lives cannot be put on hold, awaiting the end of austerity or the next new pilot initiative or organisational restructuring. They have to be lived now, and we all have a responsibility not just to offer promises for the future but to look at ways in which we can improve the quality of lives that are being lived now.
How might we do it? We could start with money. For me, resources are never the complete answer, but social care has suffered disproportionally from recent cuts, and some urgent investment is needed—some urgent reordering of investment, not necessarily new money. We could, for example, revisit the criteria for free prescriptions, 91% of which are now not paid for. We could look again at winter fuel payments paid to well-off pensioners, review free public transport for well-off pensioners, look again at free TV licences for all over-85s, and taper the currently free national insurance for over-65s. There are ways in which, by reordering our resources, we could liberate money for those most in need.
But, as I say, it is not just about money. Users—I meet quite a lot of them—often tell me that they do not get what they need in the form they need it because they were not sufficiently involved in prioritising and shaping services at the outset. I become increasingly passionate about what in the jargon is known as co-design, which is about giving users a real say in shaping services at a point when they can make a difference. Providing services that people do not regard as a priority in a period of austerity is an affront, so let us give users much more control over how reduced budgets are spent.
While we are on the subject of design, I would like to see government, local and central, building its capacity to design services around clients. If that seems a bit esoteric, look at the practical consequences of us not understanding design. Look at the way in which we currently deliver care support. It involves three separate departments, countless assessment regimes and a mix of benefits—some means-tested, some not, and some delivered nationally and others locally. This system was never designed—it just happened, and in ways that made sense to bureaucrats but not to users or their families. We have reorganised much of the benefit system, but not this confused, stress-laden mess. We should and we could do so.
Of course, people will receive whole-person care only if we, the bureaucrats and the politicians, learn to work better across organisational boundaries. The rhetoric of integration has certainly taken root—but, again, the reality is often very different. That is because we talk as if integrating organisations will inevitably deliver better services to people. It will not. People in residential homes want free, convenient access to GP services. Old people who leave hospital need to be able to access domiciliary services. They do not need ambitious promises about how primary healthcare and commissioned healthcare will integrate better at some time in the future.
We have talked a lot today about digital. We could do more to realise the digital dividend. But, again, it is about delivering practical improvements. I will give describe one. The Airedale vanguard enhanced health in care homes will introduce telemedicine links in all 248 care homes this year. So, for example, staff supporting a care home resident with Parkinson’s disease will be able to access clinical advice and support 24 hours a day, every day of the week, through secure video conference. It is not rocket science—they probably would not even bother to mention it in Estonia. There are of course similar examples in this country, but they are not uniform good practice. They should be. Digital technology is not a silver bullet but we could do better and we have been slow to exploit its potential in telecare and telemedicine.
In the same way, we have been slow to come to the aid of and support providers, who currently struggle with increased regulation, increased fees for regulation—I am not sure how that one happened—the living wage and clients with increasingly complex conditions. I know that Governments have always shied away from appearing to support private sector companies, but in this unique situation, maybe we should consider an improvement fund for smaller providers in particular so that they can get better access to the best practice in their industry.
What about the crisis in the workforce? Social care should be seen as the noblest of professions, but in reality it is often seen as a last-resort career. Could we do more? Could we encourage former clients, care leavers perhaps, to join the profession? Can we extend initiatives such as Teach First and Frontline to social care? Do we know enough about why people leave the profession? Should we revisit the excellent report of the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill? Too often—it is not just the case in social care—Governments prefer to blame and restructure rather than invest in improving the workforce. But, at the end of the day, whether it is education or social care, it is the workforce that matters and will deliver quality.
Maybe we could do more to reinforce quality and good practice through the inspection process. I am pleased with the work that the CQC is doing; I was pleased to see it moving into area-based assessments. But maybe we should shift our focus away from always looking at the institutions and start asking questions such as, “What does a good life look like in Doncaster?” —I just plucked Doncaster out of the air. Maybe we should look at what happens between the institutions, not always at what happens within them.
Finally, despite all the problems, let us be prepared to innovate in social care. We have talked quite a lot today about the arts and culture. I have become increasingly involved and interested in how the arts and culture can contribute to improved health and well-being. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is chairing an APPG at the moment which is uncovering countless wonderful examples of how visual and performing arts, music and dance, are helping to address loneliness, mental illness, stress and pain.
So yes, we can improve social care, even in the time of austerity in which we live—and we must. But I am not seeing much evidence that this is receiving the attention it deserves.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Bichard Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bichard) (CB)
Welcome to the Grand Committee. If there is a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Clause 6: Interaction between intervention powers
Childcare Bill [HL]
Lord Bichard Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bichard) (CB)
If Amendment 12 is agreed, then Amendments 13 to 16 cannot be called by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 12
Queen’s Speech
Lord Bichard Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, a new Government and a first gracious Speech provide an opportunity for us to revisit some of the most intractable of our problems. My particular hope is that the Government think long and hard now about how better to reform our public services, especially those which we are debating today.
Few people do not believe that reform is still needed. Successive Governments have tried, but what really matters is that, from the citizen’s perspective, the user’s perspective and the patient’s perspective, the results have been disappointing. It is true that, recently, the lack of resources has made the task even more difficult, but the problem is not primarily one of resources. Too many of the services that we provide are unnecessarily complex and therefore very difficult to access—we have heard many examples of that already today. Too many make more sense to the providers than they do to the users, too many provide poor value for money and some just do not work very well. If that sounds too pessimistic, your Lordships should take an honest look at the availability and quality of much social care, take a look at the extent to which the NHS is truly patient centred, and ask themselves whether improvements in educational attainment have kept pace with our international competitors.
So why have we not been more successful, in spite of all the effort and good intentions? Perhaps we continue to place too much emphasis on changing the structures of our institutions. Few people now would deny that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was a classic example of that. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, pointed out, quite rightly, all the evidence suggests that structural change does not make that much difference to quality; in fact, it often demotivates the staff who can make the difference. At the end of the day, it is the quality of teaching in the classroom and the quality of nurses and clinicians that make the difference.
Perhaps we have continued to place too much reliance on regulation and inspection, which can only ever describe services, never improve them. Perhaps, in spite of all the protestations, we are still too fond of centralisation, prescription and intervention when things just do not go according to plan. Perhaps the many targets we have set from the centre have served to confuse rather than to clarify priorities. It may be that creating ever more specialist agencies has made it more difficult for teams to work effectively together at a time when few, if any, of our social problems can be resolved by one department or agency working in isolation.
What I am sure of is that if all we do is to continue with these same approaches, then we will get the same disappointing results. Is there a better way, a way we could do things differently? I think that there is, and that some of the things that we can do are really quite simple. For example, instead of constantly beginning any process of reform by thinking about how departments, agencies and authorities should change, we might start by looking more closely at the experience of users and what they really need. Having spent more time understanding that better, we might try and design services and policies around users’ needs rather than around our bureaucratic boundaries. We might try and make those services more accessible, seamless and reliable.
We could certainly do much more to involve users in the design of services and the development of policy at an early stage, instead of leaving it to belated and sometimes meaningless consultations after decisions have already been taken. We could, in other words, seek to achieve a genuine process of co-production. In doing all that, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, suggested, we could do a lot more to integrate technology into the design of our public services, building on the excellent work of the Government Digital Service: using technology as a way of giving people more power but also as a way of giving them greater personal independence and improving the quality of our services. We could and should be much more imaginative in drawing on and supporting the potential which I believe exists in every place and community, so that people become less dependent on the state and more able to provide together for their own needs.
Am I optimistic? There is some hope. The Care Act, which came into force only on 1 April, does seek to build around the needs of clients, not the convenience of providers. It talks about building on users’ strengths, not just assessing their weaknesses, and points towards the need for co-production. It needs more resources, and I for one cannot understand why we always talk about protecting the health resource, but never the health and social care resource, which is what we actually need to do. This is a piece of legislation which I hope the new Minister will give real priority to, because it will not only bring benefit to the users of these services but could offer a new model for our public services.
However, in ending, I contrast the ambitions of the Care Act with the way in which we provide financial support for those in need of care. They, or more usually their dependants, have to struggle still with a complex, confusing maze of bureaucracy, involving: the Department for Work and Pensions, which provides lower and higher-rate attendance allowance; local authorities, which provide or commission domiciliary or residential care; and the NHS, which provides continuing healthcare. This is a system full of perverse incentives and different assessment arrangements, some means-tested and some not. It is a system designed by bureaucrats for bureaucrats and makes no sense at all to users. If you look on the internet, you can see that the system has spawned an industry of companies that are offering paid-for advice to vulnerable people on how to obtain the best deal from those bureaucracies. On top of all that, it wastes taxpayers’ money. If we really did design services with users around the needs of users, we would never end up with such an unsatisfactory set of arrangements. Beacons of light are all very well, but we need user-led services to be the norm.
Child Exploitation in Oxfordshire
Lord Bichard Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister reassure the House that, as a result of this further appalling tragedy, we will not just be placing the blame at the door of a local authority, local authorities or social workers but that government departments and Governments will examine their own conscience, look at their own practices and policies, and play their part in ensuring that, so far as possible, these things do not happen in future?
Schools: Arts Education
Lord Bichard Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, this is a very timely debate and I too thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating it, and I certainly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, on a maiden speech full of passion and commitment for education—which I very much applaud.
I am not an artist. I am not a designer. I am certainly not an actor. In fact my art teacher described me as the most boring pupil he had ever encountered. I thought this was a touch overstated, but it was a setback to my creative ambitions and left me with few options but to become a bureaucrat—which I did. I subsequently sought to rehabilitate myself and have been vice-chancellor of the University of the Arts London, which has already been mentioned, the chair of the Design Council, the chair of FILMCLUB, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, helping me, and I am now vice-chairman of Shakespeare’s Globe—an organisation which, without public money, works with more than 120,000 young people every year, creating productions with and for students. In those various capacities, I think I have come to understand the power of arts education, as well as its importance to young people, to society and to our economy. I want to give some specific reasons why we should champion the cause of arts education.
For a start, it enables young people with talent for the arts to develop their potential. Not everyone excels in the traditional academic subjects—as we have heard—but education must be about ensuring that every child fulfils their potential. We have a responsibility to ensure that our young creative talent has that opportunity, too. As the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said, it also develops confidence. It develops the capacity to communicate and to present effectively. These are essential social and employability skills, which we know that many school leavers lack. As a result they struggle to engage, to find work and to assert themselves in society.
Arts education often helps children with learning difficulties to participate on a level playing field. I have seen countless moving examples of pupils who generally find school difficult coming alive in drama classes, in dance classes and in the arts generally. They are excited by the chance to play a full part in class activities, at last feeling a true equal. It also builds our creative engine for the future. Our creative industries fuel our economy, not least in London. They not only produce GDP, from a sector which is growing three times as fast as the rest of the economy, but provide the UK with a major international profile. That does not happen by accident. We have to develop the creative skills that we need, and we have to do that early. We cannot leave it to further and higher education.
Arts education helps to develop an understanding and an appreciation of the creative arts, which will enrich lives throughout the adult years, not only improving immeasurably people’s quality of life but building in our society a demand for the arts. In effect, arts education builds tomorrow’s appreciative and discerning audience. It teaches pupils the importance of resilience, determination and, yes, the need for courage. People used to be surprised when I spoke about courage at the university. However, what struck me quickly upon taking up that job was that arts students needed to have not only application and sustained effort but the courage to expose their work to criticism, some of it ill informed. That may, after all, be very good training for the next generation of politicians.
It helps pupils to work effectively in teams because art is rarely an isolated experience. Drama, dance, music and design are examples of where you need to work together to be successful, and that equips young people with another key life skill. It helps people to develop the ability to innovate and be creative beyond the boundaries of the creative arts. Our businesses need people who can be creative and think laterally. They need people capable of using their initiative—with the possible exception of the banking sector. They need people who have learnt the importance of challenging the accepted wisdom. Exposure to the arts and to the mindset of artists at an early age begins to build those invaluable capabilities. It also teaches you how to solve practical, not theoretical, problems. There is a danger that education can, too often, become concentrated on theories and not on practices.
Finally, your Lordships will be glad to hear, it provides the sheer joy of creative achievement. What can compare, for example, with being involved in a successful performance after weeks or months of rehearsals, setbacks, challenges and learning? That is a unique feeling, and one which will stay with you for the rest of your life.
I do not think that there is another subject which provides the same return on investment but it is essential that government recognise that, and recognise the arts as a core exam subject, as others have said, if that subject is not to become seen as second class. If it is seen as second class, teachers and students will walk away from it. They will vote with their feet. We have already had some statistics but it is worrying that the numbers of GCSE drama students has fallen by 25% in the past six years. Equally, it is important that Ofsted gives due regard to arts education in its inspections and more clearly defines what cultural development means, within the Ofsted guidance for inspectors, because we all know how significant Ofsted inspections are to schools. At present it is just one part of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and that is not good enough. We need to do better than that.
But I am in danger of proving my art teacher right and I do not want to detain the House unnecessarily; I want to end on a slightly lighter note. One of the things that people often tell you is that the arts cannot really cope with complex and difficult issues. Let me tell you that the arts are a way of helping young people to address the really complex and difficult issues. I have always loved the story, told by Sir Ken Robinson, of his going into a drawing class one day, sitting down alongside a young lad and saying, “And what are you drawing?” The young lad said, “I am drawing a picture of God”. Ken said, “But no one knows what God looks like”. The young lad responded, “Well, they will do in a few minutes’ time”. Never underestimate the power of the arts.