State-funded Schools: Special Educational Needs

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right. It is important that we tackle absenteeism in the way that this Government have outlined and that I have talked about at this Dispatch Box on previous occasions, whether that is persistent absenteeism, where we see a higher proportion of students with special educational needs, or those who have been completely removed from schools and are no longer on school registers. It is also important that we introduce, as we intend to do through legislation, the registers for children who are not in school, so that we can ensure, first, that our schools are appropriately inclusive, so that parents do not feel the need to remove their children and children do not absent themselves from schools because of their inability to be able to learn, but also so that we can track children when they are not in school.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, despite significant progress in the identification of pupils with SEND in recent years, some groups remain significantly underrepresented in accessing a formal diagnosis and acquiring an EHCP. Looked-after children as well as those experiencing the most severe poverty and those who belong to Romany, Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities face particularly serious barriers. What steps will the Government take to ensure that the most vulnerable children with SEND are better served?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate is exactly right that, where you see an assessment of special educational needs alongside other areas of disadvantage, there is, if you like, an additional concern and an additional difficulty for those children to succeed. That is why we need to make our schools more inclusive, we need to make sure that we have the specialist workforce in place—some of which I have talked about today—and we need to make sure that investment is available in local authorities for those higher needs, and we need to make sure that we are intervening earlier. For example, as more children are able to get early years education alongside the trained support that we are providing in early years education, I hope that we will be able to identify those children earlier and start them off, at least, on a better chance of succeeding in our schools.

Vocational Training

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has contributed considerably to my education, while I have been in this place, on the crucial role played by those really excellent music and dance schools. That is why the Government’s Music and Dance Scheme enables enormously talented young people, regardless of their background, to access that education—to ensure that we can continue that pipeline of completely brilliant and elite musicians and dancers, who are so important to this country’s creative sector.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, FE college enrolments of 14 to 16 year-olds have surged by nearly one-third in the past four years, according to a recent study by the Association of Colleges, with over half consistently from the two most deprived quintiles. These students, however, mostly on vocational courses, do not have the same access to transport funding and free meals as their counterparts in schools. Can the Minister outline what steps the Government will take to address this very basic inequality?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate is right about some of the opportunities available to 14 to 16 year-olds in our excellent FE colleges. I was not clear about the particular inequality that he is talking about. It is of course the responsibility of local authorities to ensure that students have the school transport that they need to enable them to complete their education. I did not think there was a discrepancy between institutions in the way the right reverend Prelate outlines. I will take certainly that away and perhaps come back to him with some more information about it.

Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for securing this debate. One of the most rewarding pieces of work in which I was involved when I was on the staff of Lichfield Cathedral about 15 years ago was a partnership with a local school for pupils with SEND to create a bespoke multisensory tour involving water, incense, bells, holding crosses and even, judiciously, fire. At first, the cathedral guides were dubious, having been used to providing school visitors simply with a verbal commentary on the history and architecture of the building, but before long they were the ones advocating that the multisensory interactive components be incorporated into all our school visits. The result was a definite uplift in our overall educational offer—and I shall come back to that at the end, if I may.

The Church of England’s National Society for Education has set out a vision for a future curriculum that combines aspiration and equity to support the flourishing of all pupils. Three areas emerge as essential to this vision: first, investment in high capacity and integrated professional services; secondly, access to a broad curriculum for students with SEND; and, thirdly, the need for flexible metrics to evaluate effective teaching.

First, multiagency professional services must be properly funded to provide holistic support to children with SEND. I have in mind the fields of educational psychology, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and child mental health, all of which have been in decline in recent years. We must ensure an equitable provision for every child, not a postcode lottery wholly reliant on the resources and capacities of overstretched local authorities.

Secondly, we must avoid the assumption that one single approach will suit all students with SEND. The challenges that some experience are cognitive, while others face physical, sensory and social communication barriers. The wide variety of needs and abilities demands in turn a varied curriculum but one that is nevertheless ambitious and in no way dilutes content for students with SEND.

Thirdly, there is a danger of an overreliance on formulaic assessments to measure the success of an educational offering. It is short-sighted to seek to incentivise high-quality and consistent teaching by demanding adherence to a single accountability framework or assessment mechanism. Indeed, each of the latest Ofsted reviews on subject knowledge concludes that there is no single approach that guarantees delivery of a high-quality curriculum.

Finally, in a recent debate, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lincoln—previously lead bishop for education and chair of the National Society—highlighted the potential of Church-based special schools. Bearing in mind the tremendous constraints on mainstream education and the chronically underfunded and overstretched special education sector, I hope that this possibility will be given serious consideration.

A focus on support for children with SEND is obviously worth while, because those children themselves matter to us. If our experience in Lichfield is any guide, such support is capable of generating learning that can enrich the education that we offer all pupils. That is the reason I am so grateful for this short debate and for the opportunity to contribute to it.

Universities

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for securing this debate of a vital report. It is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson—as it happens, for the second time this week. I celebrate the contribution of all the commissioners and advisory group members to the report, and I welcome its recommendations for a bold new strategic vision for the sector.

I am tremendously proud of all the phenomenal HE providers in my diocese: Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Sheffield, the Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and the colleges of Sheffield, Barnsley, the Dearne Valley, Doncaster and Rotherham. For the next few minutes, I just want to comment briefly on maintenance grants and financial support, and on the challenges facing FE colleges in particular.

First, on maintenance grants and financial support, the inequality of access to education is well documented and much lamented. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, remarked, potential students are facing severe financial challenges as the costs of tuition, housing and other expenses increase to levels that are simply unsustainable for a growing number. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly hard hit, such as those across south Yorkshire. We are seeing a rise in the number of potential students who cannot afford to study or whose studies are significantly compromised by the obligation to pursue simultaneously a demanding burden of paid work—a point also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. It is unacceptable to restrict equality of opportunity in this way.

To make matters worse, special support grants were abolished and replaced with loans in 2016. Since 2007, the household income threshold, which determines access to the maximum maintenance loan, has been frozen at £25,000 per annum. This has meant that the percentage of the student population accessing a full maintenance loan has dropped from 56.6% in 2012-13 to 37.5% in 2021-22. I applaud the report’s recommendation to reinstate maintenance grants for the most disadvantaged students, and to ensure that maintenance loans are increased in line with inflation.

I turn secondly to FE. Noble Lords will be aware that there is a systemic dichotomy between the higher education and further education sectors. According to Ofqual’s latest data, A-level students at FE colleges as a whole secure poorer results than at all other education institutions at which A-levels are studied. I commend the report’s recommendation for the establishment of a “tertiary education opportunity fund” to respond to the needs of pupils in areas with low participation in higher education. It is vital that any new fund does indeed, as the report advises, incentivise HE/FE partnerships and joint programmes to signpost and support a diverse array of learning opportunities both for students and for the sake of employers. As in most sectors, collaboration is key.

The report illustrates some successful models and I hope we can learn from them. As the Government pursue their commitment to growth, I implore that further consideration be given to develop a lifelong learning entitlement to streamline post-18 student funding. This support, provided on a modular basis, would go a long way towards enabling more flexible training and reskilling over a lifetime.

I celebrate the Higher Education Progression Partnership in South Yorkshire, funded by the Office for Students. This partnership supports young people from under-represented groups to improve academic achievement and helps them find bespoke routes into further education.

As other noble Lords have said, the report’s proposals are integral to this Government’s missions. A creative, innovative approach to both HE and FE is fundamental for kick-starting economic growth and breaking down barriers to opportunity. This country owes nothing less to our young people and to future generations.

Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, on bringing forward this Private Member’s Bill, and indeed on the many years of thinking and hard work which have brought the Bill to this point. I welcome the Bill, support its aims and heartily welcome the five specific headings, which together give some definition of what is meant by “British values” in an educational context.

Especially in an educational context, it will be vital to foster a culture in which these headline categories are inhabited in a meaningful way. This kind of culture is capable of being fostered as much in the teaching of maths and science as through the teaching of citizenship, PSHE or RE, but these latter subjects provide an opportunity for values to be addressed directly and explicitly. I shall say something further about RE in particular, but the list of values identified in the Bill includes respect for the environment, and I would also like to say something about the potential for a natural history GSCE.

I will address RE first. The statutory inspection process for Anglican and Methodist schools and their teaching of RE means that church schools can confidently guarantee a high-quality, diverse religious education that supports children to develop the skills and knowledge they need to grow into global citizens and to navigate the nuances of a secular, multi-religious society. However, both citizenship and RE subjects have fallen foul of the English baccalaureate system. Since its introduction in 2017, uptake of RE at GCSE has fallen sharply and social studies uptake has consistently remained below 10%. It is my sincere hope that, through the Bill and through the current government curriculum and assessment review, timetables and curriculum frameworks will be structured to prioritise and value the crucial learning currently taking place under the banners of citizenship and religious education.

Secondly, on the proposed natural history GCSE, the Bill provides an extraordinary opportunity to embed respect for the environment into British values through the education system. Wisely applied, this could ensure that young people are taught about climate and nature issues consistently and systematically, rather than as part of discrete subject areas such as geography and science. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, lead Bishop for the environment, assures me that the natural history GCSE has gone through the required iterations and is ready, but the launch of this new GCSE has been delayed without explanation. I would be grateful for some clarification from the Minister as to what problem, if any, there is in launching this new pathway.

I support the Bill and hope that it will give renewed purpose to the teaching in our schools of RE and citizenship on the one hand, and natural history on the other, while also recognising that the five headline areas identified in the Bill will only ever be headings unless we foster the culture in which they can truly be inhabited and lived out.

Education Sector: Equality of Opportunity

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Having spent 11 years teaching economics and business studies— I am not sure my personal financial literacy quite matches up to what might have been expected from that—I think the noble Lord makes an important point. A whole range of schemes and important initiatives already help in that area, and I am sure that teachers and schools would be keen to support others, as well as what they are able to deliver in the curriculum.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, according to data published by the Education Policy Institute, disadvantaged learners in Yorkshire and the Humber are typically 21.4 months behind their more advantaged learners by the end of secondary school. This is opposed to a disadvantage gap of half that size, at just 10.4 months, in London. What steps will the Government take to reduce such perniciously stubborn regional inequalities in educational outcomes?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right that regional inequalities at key stage 2, GCSE and A-level are not just persistent but, certainly in some of those cases, have become worse. That is why the Government and the Department for Education are absolutely committed to ensuring that, wherever you live in England and whatever your background, you will have access to the highest-quality teachers and the best possible curriculum. This is the reason for our launching the curriculum and assessment review. That is absolutely at the heart of the Government’s opportunity mission.

Higher Education Funding

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for focusing the attention of the House on the HE crisis and for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko.

As the Bishop of Sheffield I have close ties with both universities in the city, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. I am told that those two institutions support more than 19,500 jobs and generate more than £1 billion annually for the local economy. I know at first hand that they bring a rich cultural diversity to our city. What is true in Sheffield is true across the country: universities are generally hugely beneficial to the communities within which they are situated.

The Church of England believes that higher education should be in the service of the common good—that is to say, not merely the private good of personal enhancement but the public good of benefit to the community and society that it derives from the education of its citizens. For example, working together, Sheffield University and Sheffield Hallam University support communities across South Yorkshire in a variety of ways, and I would like to celebrate just three. First, they have partnered with local and national government to create the South Yorkshire investment zone, bringing jobs and billions of pounds in private investment to the area. Secondly, their students volunteer and work on placement years across health, education, social care, law and other areas, directly impacting the experience of local people of these essential public services. Thirdly, their HeppSY partnership supports those at risk of missing out on HE to make informed and inspired choices about their future.

Civic activities such as these are seriously threatened by the financial crisis in HE and the perfect storm currently battering the sector. In the past few years, as noble Lords have mentioned, there has been a drastic drop in EU students while international students from further afield are facing visa restrictions. UK students have been poorly placed to cope with the cost of living crisis, and I gather that a lower birth rate in the early 2000s means that there are reduced numbers of young people in the cohort currently in sixth-form and FE colleges. As a result, there has been increased competition between institutions for the same smaller pool of students, and the pinch has been felt most keenly by the smallest of our HE institutions.

Among these are the universities that belong to the Cathedrals Group, 14 church-founded universities committed to higher education for the common good. These 14 institutions make higher education disproportionately available to underserved communities, such as rural and coastal areas. They typically have a higher proportion of students who progress to university when they are older and who are the first in their family to make that step. I mention the Cathedrals Group simply by way of illustration. Our HE sector as a whole is under threat, and what is at risk is not just the private good of students and potential students, whose opportunities to study and to enhance their prospects have been eroded, but the common good that universities bring to the communities in which they are set.

Higher Education: Arts and Humanities

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware that that plan has currently been proposed. Where we have concerns about quality, they are about courses rather than subject areas at individual institutions, where the outcomes for those students, whether they are international or domestic, are significantly poorer than for the same course at another institution.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, almost every armed conflict in the world at present has a religious dimension, making informed and respectful dialogue increasingly critical for international peace and security. In that context, the steady decline in the numbers of those studying religion, theology and ethics in our higher education institutions is a cause for real concern. Given the dearth of graduates in these subjects at present, can the Minister tell us how the Government will nurture the necessary religious literacy of our public life in the coming years?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

This is a very important subject and, I may say, goes wider in terms of critical thinking and understanding the information that we receive both in reality and online. I do not have the specific figures for religious studies on their own, but historical, philosophical and religious studies have declined over the last three years, as the right reverend Prelate said, but only by 5%. Multiple issues impact on that, but I think we also see young people seeking debate, and the moves that we have made as a Government on free speech within our universities are critical to underpinning that.

Schools: Music, Art, Craft and Dance

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, many Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals regularly send professional musicians into schools to support them with singing, at minimal charge. For example, by 2026, Sheffield Cathedral plans to support 30 schools a year with high-quality, curriculum-based music teaching, mostly in our most deprived communities. Does the Minister think there might be scope here for partnership with government to maximise the potential of such schemes?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I very much welcome that initiative. That ecosystem between our different cultural institutions, including charities and, of course, religious organisations, is extremely important. However, in practical terms, local relationships between schools and local cultural organisations can work best, and our music hubs help to link those up.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak for the first time in this Chamber, and in support of this Bill’s aim of widening access to higher education. I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead. I record my thanks to Members and staff for the consistently warm and generous welcome I have received and the helpful induction I have been given. If my experience of introduction to this House is typical, it speaks very well of the culture of this place.

On Thursday, it will be exactly six years since I was consecrated as a bishop at York Minster and took up my present responsibilities. The wonderful diocese I serve is made up of former steel-making and coal-mining communities across much of south Yorkshire, farming communities in parts of the East Riding and even a port in the town of Goole. I had never lived in south Yorkshire before but have found the city of Sheffield astonishingly green—I believe it to be the only city in England with a national park within its boundary.

Sheffield also boasts two professional football clubs: Wednesday and United. The former play in blue-and-white stripes, the latter in red-and-white stripes. Rather gloriously, both achieved promotion this past season. I am in the happy position of not having to choose between them but of being able to rejoice with them both, because my own football allegiance belongs—for historic reasons—to Newcastle United, who play in black-and-white strips. Noble Lords will understand the pleasure it gives me to don my club’s colours every time I enter this Chamber.

Every follower of Jesus Christ is a disciple. The word “disciple” simply means learner; almost by definition, therefore, every Christian is rather obliged constantly to be seeking to grow in knowledge and wisdom, in insight and skill. The Christian church is, therefore, again almost by definition, bound to be committed to the principle of lifelong learning and, therefore, to support any Bill which seeks to make lifelong learning more effective and more widely possible.

Personally, I recognise how privileged I am. I have benefited—at the expense of the taxpayer—from a world-class higher education studying for degrees in the traditional manner. I studied history as an undergraduate in Durham and then theology as part of my training for the ordained ministry in Cambridge. Subsequently, I undertook doctoral studies at Oxford. So I appreciate the value of scholarly immersion, of intense periods of lectures, seminars and tutorials, of reading and writing.

In ordained ministry, however, over the past 35 years I have served on Tyneside and Teesside, in the West Midlands, on Merseyside and in South Yorkshire. Immersion in these communities has left me in no doubt that a greater flexibility and access to higher education is urgently needed. Apprenticeship schemes have generally and lamentably languished in recent years. New initiatives are urgently needed to revive them or at least to fill the gap in training which those schemes previously met.

In the diocese of Sheffield, we boast two top-ranking universities: Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield. We also have the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. However, across the diocese as whole, we are equally as proud of our less-heralded colleges with HE provisions in Sheffield, Barnsley, the Dearne Valley, Doncaster and Rotherham.

I was at Rotherham College only last week to meet the staff responsible for its HE provisions and to hear from them about this Bill. Few of the HE students at Rotherham College are in a position to access the education I received; their domestic circumstances and accessibility to learning are often very different from my own, and they require more flexible funding arrangements. They may be combining higher education with employment or childcare in a way I never did. The shift envisaged in this Bill, to enable learners, including mature students, to access funding in a modular way, is surely right and good.

As noble Lords may be aware, no fewer than 11 universities in this country have a Church of England foundation and retain a Church of England ethos. Known as the Cathedrals Group, these 11 HE institutions educate 100,000 students a year. These learners, as much as any others, stand to benefit from the provisions of this Bill, to unlock new opportunities for lifelong learning and to support a greater plurality of routes into higher education. These are very laudable aims, and I gladly support them.

However, I came away from that visit to Rotherham College last week with some sense of the scale of implementation challenges which are bound to attend a Bill as ambitious as this one—for example, in the management of learning provision to ensure that supply is as flexible as demand; or on the impact of learners taking advantage of newly flexible grant arrangements to switch providers, perhaps multiple times, in the accumulation in their modules and credits. I realise there is much detail in relation to this Bill which still needs to be worked through, but could the Minister assure the House that the Government are aware of implementation challenges such as these and will address them, perhaps in Committee?

In closing, I note that my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry—the lead Bishop for the Church of England on FE and HE—would also add his support to this Bill, though he regrets he is unable to be in the House today. It is a great privilege to participate in this debate, and I look forward to many more such opportunities in the years ahead.