Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a number of interests declared on the register in the higher and further education fields.

It is my great privilege and pleasure to welcome and applaud the excellent speech by my friend—he is my friend—the right reverend Prelate. I find myself the Spam, or maybe even the ham, between two maiden speeches. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Sewell, well and look forward to his speech. I will concentrate for a moment on the excellence of the speech just made by Bishop Pete.

Obviously, all of us who are resident in or have some association with Sheffield and South Yorkshire always like to hear the city and sub-region mentioned in the way that the right reverend Prelate has done. In his case, it comes from the heart because of his humanity and sense of place and emotion—backed up by his wife Cathy, whose books my wife Margaret and I would recommend to your Lordships. They might make your hair stand on end, but they have very interesting takes, including on the Church of England.

I thought that the right reverend Prelate’s maiden speech was an indication of his own understanding of and commitment to education—to the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to use it in the service not just of yourself but of others—and an understanding that the city and region he now serves were built on apprenticeships, crafts and artisan skills which were the measure of success in the past. It also showed why this modest but important measure can contribute, as my noble friend Lady Wilcox, on the Front Bench, said, to a jigsaw which adds up to offering people a way forward and a way out of disadvantage and poverty.

On his travels, the right reverend Prelate will accord that we see a lot of the challenges of intergenerational disadvantage in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Some of it is because of the demise of steel and the mining industries and the lack of a proper transition. If anything, this small but important measure can help with the transition we are going to be making in the years ahead, both to net zero and to making the development of robotics and artificial intelligence a plus rather than a minus for people—something that will enable people to adapt and adopt new ways of working and experience new ways of learning. If we can do that, unlike the past, when major change often came at the disadvantage of the already disadvantaged, we can make it a trampoline by which they can learn.

Working together, I am looking forward to the right reverend Prelate’s contribution in future. I have given him only one small piece of advice: try to keep Prayers short, if you do not mind. It really helps us in terms of our enthusiasm to be in there, participating and listening.

I will add to what people have said only very briefly, because much of what I was going to put to the Minister—which I have already done privately—has been touched on on a number of occasions. We need to learn from that very small trial, that small pilot, and work out why people in the beginning of the process found it so difficult to be enthused or to connect. What relationship will these measures have to credit and modular learning and to information and adult guidance, which will be fundamental to people getting it right? Why not have smaller credit accumulation, as has already been described, so that people can get a foothold and perhaps move from five hours a week over 30 years to 10 or 15, perhaps with the help of their employer?

I am here today in many respects only because of the day-release class that I was able to take advantage of all those years ago. It is true that credit accumulation and a loan scheme of this sort could be blended with the entitlement given by employers, where people already have a job, or with part-time employment, which would be an opportunity for people to take their learning into new realms. It is also true, as has already been described, that the more flexible the opportunities offered, the more likely people will warm to them.

The figure given of only 70,000 people taking level 4 and 5 qualifications outside the university sector is extremely worrying, and anything we can do to ensure that that statistic is changed for the better has to be good. However, it involves being flexible about the nature of learning, how people are learning, and how providers can work together, not just in franchising but to make it possible for people to accumulate modules and to be able to exchange them and move from one provider to another in a seamless and rational way.

I finish with an appeal, which the Minister will appreciate. If there is to be a jigsaw, and small measures such as this are to be fitted in, there will have to be a degree of give and take and flexibility from the Department for Education and beyond. We cannot have people unable to accumulate the appropriate level 3 to move, whatever the distance and blended learning may be, to levels 4 and 5. If they have not got to level 3 in the first place, the chance of them doing that is zilch.

It is not just about getting it right for 16 to 19 year-olds, who my noble friend Lady Blackstone rightly mentioned, and not trashing T-levels, but giving students some degree of choice and ensuring that high-quality advanced qualifications are available for those whose maturity in both the emotional and educational spheres—their pedagogy learning—requires something different. All the runes tell us that, if we are not careful and do not moderate and allow a little give in the push to defund—in other words, to delay it slightly—there will be even fewer people reaching level 3.

Let us try to put the jigsaw together so that we encourage people to reach level 3, they move on to levels 4 and 5, and they come back into learning throughout their lives and take advantage of the greatest gift other than—the right reverend Prelate will forgive me as a Methodist for saying—the love of the Lord, which is education. Get this right and the Minister and her colleagues in the department might be remembered for something really good; get it wrong by being too rigid and they will be remembered only for a piece of the jigsaw that did not fit.

Schools: Curriculum Update

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We are not changing the national curriculum, but we did a major review of it in 2014. A knowledge-rich curriculum, which evidence suggests is particularly important for children from disadvantaged communities, continues to be our focus.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I think we all agree that there will be a point when the improvement and radical updating of the curriculum are needed. If that is to happen, putting in place the required backing for teachers to get support will be necessary. The Minister gave a very helpful answer when she talked about citizenship. Will she reflect that some of the people who have the greatest character and resilience in reality are those living in the most desperate circumstances—often a single parent abandoned by their partner with three or four children in a high-rise block? Preaching to them is not what they need.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really hope that I did not give the impression that any element of preaching was going on. I absolutely recognise the description that the noble Lord gave. I just ask the House to reflect on this idea of radical improvement being needed in the curriculum. England just came fourth in the PIRLS global reading survey; we are, as we like to say in the DfE, the best in the West. That does not sound to me like a curriculum that needs radical overhaul.

Universities: Impact of Industrial Action on Students

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

What I am saying is that we established the Office for Students to ensure that students’ interests are respected and upheld. The Government have no direct role in relation to the Universities Superannuation Scheme beyond the legislation that applies to all workplace pension schemes as regulated by the Pensions Regulator.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a real complication between the pension scheme operated by universities and the pension scheme operated by the health service. Could the Minister talk to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the contradiction between giving away £1 billion of public funding for consultants operating under the health service pension scheme and the situation faced by consultants in teaching hospitals, who have opted, or been encouraged, to take on a previous university pension scheme, which is now being completely changed? We might get some sense out of the issue of getting tutors back to work, if we could put a little of that £1 billion into resolving the pension problem for universities.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am more than happy to pass on the noble Lord’s comments to colleagues in the Treasury.

Education System

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government very much welcomed the report. Our strategy is ambitious in all these areas. My noble friend will be aware that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has challenged the department to consider how we can go further to ensure that every young person receives the benefits of a broad and ambitious education, so that every child has

“the best chance in life”

and can prepare

“to enter … a rapidly changing world.”

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, the decision announced this week to reclassify further education for borrowing and investment purposes into the public sector has caused real concern. The £150 million allocated by the Government for capital spending on the back of that is very welcome, but perhaps the Minister can tell us whether that is new money, and was it not extraordinary that two weeks ago the Chancellor allocated no new money to learning and skills?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department is working very closely with the further education sector to manage the transition that the noble Lord refers to. In terms of funding for skills, we are investing £3.8 billion more in further education and skills over the Parliament as a whole.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my registered interest in the universities sector. Like the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, I am not a lawyer, but I often find myself—this is an embarrassment for him—agreeing with every word he says. I commend the forensic contributions made by those who do have legal expertise, including my friend, as I think I can describe him, the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner.

We should take a step back and ask what we think we are doing with this legislation. Thank God we are not America. Thank God that, normally, we can sort things out without recourse to the law or to a regulator. Normally we can apply common sense, but let me clarify a case where common sense does not apply.

Let us call someone Kathleen. She must put up with the totally unacceptable behaviour of those extraneous to a university and of some colleagues inside it. She is not dismissed but is put in a position surely intolerable to all right-thinking people, except those who are fanatics for a particular cause and acclaim it as being all about equality and justice, only then to deliver the exact opposite. In this case, would she be entitled to claim constructive dismissal? If she would, there is a remedy already in the system. I take the point about the amendments to do with the employment tribunal system: you cannot bring a case if you have not been employed for two years. Let us say, however, that Kathleen has been employed for 16 or 20 years. Would she succeed in a claim for constructive dismissal in these circumstances? If she would, there is no cause for increased nightmarish leviathan legal structures. If she would not, this clause and the Bill do not assist her.

We have the OIA and the Office for Students. Now, under civil law, we want this engagement of tort to deliver something that either can be delivered under existing legal structures, or cannot be and which the Bill does not deal with either. It is a nonsense. The whole Bill is a nonsense. There are other ways of going about this in a civilised democratic society, for people to stand up to those who intimidate or to what might be described as cancel culture. It is time for people with a commitment to democracy and freedom to do that, rather than rely on regulators or the law.

I speak from experience. When, as Secretary of State for Education and Employment, I introduced the first tranche of fees in higher education, I was driven out of university premises. We just met outside them. We continued to have those meetings and that dialogue, irrespective of those trying to shut down free speech. Therefore, I have had a bit of it, though nothing like the example of someone we might call Kathleen, which sees people’s lives destroyed. We need a society that stands up for what is right and not a Bill that will cause even more confusion, difficulty and regulatory nightmares. On Report, we should eliminate this clause—and, in the end, we should eliminate the Bill.

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly sympathise with the Government’s intention in pressing Clause 4, which is precisely to protect people such as Kathleen Stock. That is its purpose but it goes about it in the wrong way. Speaking as a former academic administrator, I see two particular problems, both of which have been alluded to briefly in this debate.

The first is vexatious litigation. Whenever a free speech row arises in a university, pressure groups are not slow to get involved. Some come from a standpoint of complete integrity and their interventions are helpful. Others are more politically motivated and, as I have seen frequently, in the fight to cause mischief. Some of these pressure groups are very well funded. Some are religious organisations, some political organisations. I fear that one result of this clause, were the Bill to become law, would be to place a significant burden on universities in fighting off vexatious claims. That is highly undesirable.

This leads to the second real problem with the clause. In reality, far from encouraging free speech, which I am certain is its intention, it will have the opposite effect, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said. Universities, unions and university societies will fear the heavy hand of litigation and the effect will be a chilling one. Universities will be less likely to host controversial, vibrant events if a tort of this sort is pressed by this Parliament, than they would be if no such action is taken. I strongly oppose this clause for those two reasons—and others, but for those two in particular: vexatious litigation and the clause’s chilling effect on vibrant debate in our universities.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

I very much hope that the Minister, even at this late stage, will have second thoughts about this and see the compelling force of the argument. I believe that there is good support for the amendment—at least, I hope there will be—from all around the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and declare my interest as the honorary president of the Association for Citizenship Teaching—and I put on record that I will adhere to normal sartorial values on Wednesday.

I will speak very briefly, because there is still a long way to go this evening, in support of the amendment. It follows on from the Ties that Bind recommendations of the Select Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, back in 2018; the Justice and Home Affairs Committee’s investigation into the “life in the UK test”, published just a few weeks ago; and the ongoing desire to align the Department for Education—sadly now without the guidance of Robin Walker, who was deeply committed to citizenship and who was actually shifting the templates a little—and Ofsted, which is not aligned at all with what the DfE says or what we thought Ofsted had understood four years ago. It is a very strange juxtaposition.

I just want to put on record that we need to understand and be clear about the difference between personal development and citizenship education, which incorporates an understanding of the broad values of being a citizen in the United Kingdom, as well as the practical measures that make it possible for our democracy to function properly.

At this moment in time, given the clear need for respect from one politician to another, whether it is on ITV or Channel 4, we need to reinforce with our young people one simple message. We may, as your forbears, have got into a terrible mess and our democracy may well be extremely fragile—as I was saying last week, quoting the noble Lord, Lord Hennessey—but the future is in your hands, as the next generation, and beyond. Unless we guide and provide a framework and a landscape by which those young people understand what is happening in our democratic process, we will have let them down, because they will think that what they see on their televisions and what they read in their newspapers at the moment constitute the values that we espouse. They do not.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I offer very strong support for Amendment 101, so eloquently moved by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and spoken to by my noble friend Lord Blunkett. It offers a coherent system we can unite around. Other countries have their written constitutions; we do not. The Americans also have the Gettysburg Address—easy to teach, easy to understand. In this amendment, we have a coherent system of basic principles of democracy, human rights and equality and the modern imperative of care for the environment. This whole subject, taught as a unity, is particularly important for non-faith schools also, which have a less coherent framework than the faith schools. We are a diverse society. We have several faiths and beliefs and we need a framework that we can cohere around, such as the values of British citizenship in this amendment. The Minister would be doing the children of this country a great service if she were to accept it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have also put my name to Amendment 105. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on their work on this issue, which has been very important, and the Minister on listening and moving forward.

I start off with a bit of a caveat, because a lot of good things have been said: as an ex-teacher, I too am only too aware of the dread of pushy parents intervening in the minutiae of school, turning up and demanding to see this, that or the other. More seriously, we know what happened when a group of activist parents gathered outside Batley Grammar School and demanded to dictate what the curriculum was. That is not what this is about at all.

The context for the Government, which is very important, is that at the moment, because parents cannot see this material, it has been left in an informal morass of people hearing stories and getting particularly worried. Parents have had to resort to freedom of information requests to see third-party materials, and that really is not helpful. There is a rather excellent exposé by Milli Hill entitled “Worrying truth of what children are REALLY learning in Sex Education”. We are leaving it up to journalists to do these exposés. That just worries parents, so we have to grab this back.

Most parents think that, when their children are being taught about pronouns, that is helping with their English grammar, but then, when they read in the newspaper that it has something to do with policing language and gender ideology, they understandably worry. They worry when they hear about the affirmation of radical medical interventions, such as the amputation of sexual organs. These things are really scary. I urge the Government to grab hold of these horror stories and deal with them. I would like to see them acting on this very important issue.

There are matters that go beyond the scope of Amendment 105. The issue of parental access and teaching materials talks to a problem of parents feeling that the curriculum on contentious issues is being politicised. There is an excellent new report from Don’t Divide Us called Who’s in Charge? A Report on Councils’ Anti-racist Policies for Schools, which I will pass on to the Minister and I hope she will even meet the authors. The reason why I refer to it is that I do not want people to think this is just about the gender ideology issue. It is a sort of broader feeling that many parents have that there are third-party providers creating a political atmosphere in school, and that even schools themselves are doing the same. That raises problems of parents’ trust in what is being taught to their children.

I therefore query Amendment 101, on British values, despite the brilliant speeches we have heard in support of it. I was initially attracted to this amendment. After all, it mentions

“freedom of thought, conscience and religion … freedom of expression, and … freedom of assembly and association.”

These are my passions; I go on about them all the time. I thought, “Great—can we get them into schools?”. But when I talk about freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, these days I am often written off as some sort of alt-right lunatic who—

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Surely not.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

There we go. I am written off as someone who wants free speech only in order to come out with hate speech. I say this because even something such as free speech is contentious. I do not think that trying to use an amendment such as this, including the word “citizenship” to get around the fact that there are contentious arguments about values, will resolve the problem. I wonder whether I can be consoled by those who tabled this amendment that it is not about avoiding a political argument via using the law. It could end up politicising the curriculum.

For example, I disagree with the proposed new paragraph on “respect for the environment”. We have to take into account that Section 406 of the Education Act and schools’ legal obligation to remain impartial can be compromised by things that people in this House are passionate about politically but that maybe should not be in schools.

That finally gets me to my concerns about Amendments 118B and 118H, which call for

“a review into teaching about diversity in school curriculums”.

I am concerned about their emphasis on British history including

“Black British history … colonialism, and … Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade”—

not because I do not think those things should be taught, but we have to ask whether this is being promoted for historical or political reasons. The recent controversy over the OCR syllabus on English literature being changed, when we had the works of Keats, Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen and Larkin removed, was justified not on literary merits but on the basis of an emphasis on ethnicity, diversity and identity. That kind of politicising of the curriculum does not do any service for the pupils we are teaching and is making parents rather suspicious about what is going on in schools.

Schools: Citizenship Education

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. She is right that the schools White Paper focused very much on our literacy and numeracy ambitions: that by 2030 90% of primary school children will reach the required standard in reading, writing and maths, and the average GCSE grade will rise from 4.5 to 5 in English and maths. Those subjects are absolutely critical for children being able to engage in citizenship in all its different forms. Our focus on a broad and balanced curriculum will also support that.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister, who, with the Minister of State, has a sympathetic ear on this subject, can tell me why the department is supporting Ofsted in its belief that personal development and active citizenship and citizen education are one and the same, when they clearly are not?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The understanding is that citizenship education is an important part of schools’ accountability for their pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural education. I do not think there is a suggestion that it is equivalent to personal development, but it is a critical part of personal development.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have already said at the Dispatch Box that the regulatory review will begin within weeks. I am unable to say anything further about the other stages of the Bill.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, may I just try this then with the Minister, who is doing her best in very difficult circumstances? Would she be prepared to talk with the Secretary of State, who is one of the most able members of the Cabinet—that might not mean a lot to others, but I think in this particular case it does—on whether it would be beneficial, not just to the passage of this legislation but to the whole education system, if he were able to see his way to taking time to reach a substantial consensus on the majority of this Bill, which I think we can do, if time were allowed to do so?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am more than happy to commit to taking back the views of the House to the Secretary of State.

Clause 29: Local authorities: power to apply for an Academy order

Amendment 59

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I have to say that I once had an aunt who was one of the most successful teachers I have ever come across. She was not properly qualified but was one of those people who came in after the war and could teach boys of 14 to sing in a very poor part of Newport in Monmouthshire. I do not start from any real belief that teacher training is a perfect answer, but I agree with the first part of what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said. It seems sensible to have a system whereby, in general terms, of course teachers must have professional qualifications. I happen to think that we have to improve those qualifications and I have some sympathy with the reference of noble Baroness, Lady Blower, to the areas in which that ought to happen. That is really important.

If I have said that, however, I have to say too that I am much less happy about the second proposal. I have to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, that I do not know of any other circumstance in which it is thought that you must have predictability about the money you earn. It seems to me perfectly possible to have standards when you go in for jobs, and I do not understand why this is a necessary part of that. Indeed, I noticed that she started with the teacher pay issue, and I want to turn it around; I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight had the right order. The order should be standards and quality and the ability to teach. It is not unreasonable then for there to be different systems in different places to meet different requirements.

That should be the decision of those areas, not a centralised decision dominated by the teachers. I always remember having a discussion with her many years ago, when she had a big poster that said “Putting teachers first”. That was the poster and that was the argument, and I want to believe that we put children first. So I start by wanting teachers of the highest standard, but I do not believe that it is necessary to have some kind of national pay structure that does not vary from once place to another. I much prefer the mix I am presenting. I must ask the noble Lord, Lord Knight: if he really cannot ask this Government to have a vision here, I do not know where else they have a vision, so why should they have it here?

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak in this debate, but I am minded to say just a few words in agreement with the last phrases that have just been used. This is part of the problem.

We obviously need a highly-qualified, well-trained teaching profession, as we expect in the health service and elsewhere. When we have a basic standard which is adhered to and a career structure that people understand, we can of course then vary that in order to attract teachers to particular areas, such as opportunity areas that the Government have designated at the moment—education action zones, in my time—where golden hellos and golden handcuffs are available to ensure that we get the right teachers in the right place to overcome gross historic inequalities in the quality of education in those areas. I would have thought that we could reach complete unanimity about that.

I do not have an aunt who used to teach me, but I did have my mum, who left school at 14. She was pretty good at correcting my English, which says something about the schooling of today and quite a lot about what she learned up until she was 14. I would not recommend people leaving school at 14; I think I had better make that abundantly clear.

I have a PGCE myself for teaching in further education, and a great deal can be done in the post-16 area to ensure that people are appropriately qualified. I just wanted to make this point: ex-Ministers or present Ministers may eulogise about students acquiring a key body of knowledge—and with that a historic view of how teaching might take place—but it is impossible to ask pupils to acquire it if those teaching them have not acquired it themselves. That is why trashing teacher training through university is a big mistake, because someone has to have that historic foundation and knowledge of pedagogy in order to know how best to develop for the future the best way of teaching in entirely different circumstances to the ones that people might experience in the school they first enter.

I have one small caveat and disagreement with my noble friend Lady Blower. I was involved in battling for years to get a national minimum wage, because collective bargaining in some areas was about differentials and the clash between the craft unions and the general unions—I do not want to go back to those days.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, this is an important question, but, again, I would be looking for the output, not the input—in other words, when asking whether teachers should be qualified, it is the quality of the qualification that matters. At the moment, it is a nine-month course without any validation at the end. We have the Teach First initiative, which was pioneered very successfully by Labour, which is six weeks of training. Looking at parts of the economy where we are desperately short of good teachers—take a subject such as computer science, for example—I would say that you could bring those sorts of people into teaching for a couple of years, because they might want to put something back in an initiative similar to Teach First but then go on to a different career.

So, if we are worrying about the quality of teachers, we must be careful that this is not just about some formal qualification. It is about how good they are and, particularly in response to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, it is about how good they are at enthusing children in the classroom. I think we have moved into a new and very difficult game post-Covid. Children were learning across screens remotely on and off for two years, and the skills needed to enthuse and engage children in that way have changed, rather than just standing in a classroom. So, I am sceptical, but this is an important point, and I am glad that we have the chance to debate it, because this is exactly what a Schools Bill should be doing.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a declared interest as the honorary president of the Association for Citizenship Teaching. I agree entirely with the comments of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. I just wish that citizenship teaching was taken more seriously, from the top and right through the system, from headteachers to Ofsted in particular. I know that the Minister will listen today, because she listened earlier this year. I hope that she can take back to her colleagues in the department the comments from this afternoon and those in Committee. I also hope that, when she comes to respond to the debate today, she will say something about the juxtaposition between the special educational needs Green Paper and consultation and this Bill, and whether proposals will be brought forward when the Bill reaches the House of Commons.

I commend what has just been said in relation to mental health, the way we need to take it much more seriously and how that then needs to be co-ordinated so that local authorities and local health services have a very key role to play. Of course, this is highlighted by today’s report on safeguarding and children in care, which shows that we have a scandal on our hands. This might not have been so bad—although it would not have resolved it—had Sure Start not been destroyed in what I consider to be a criminal fashion.

I turn now to the Bill. Not everything in an education Bill is actually about education. I very much appreciate that a lot is going on elsewhere. However, we have a crisis in recruitment, including a shortage of 30,000 teachers. We have a shortage of male teachers and role models. One in seven who starts teaching drops out in the first year. We have had a 25% cash cut on the amount spent on repair, maintenance and renewal compared to 2010, and we will get back to 2010 levels for revenue funding only in two years’ time. The situation is scandalous. While the Bill has a number a very good elements in it which have already been mentioned—including the role of Ofsted in the registration of children who are allegedly taught at home—there is so much left out. It is a mouse of a Bill. As my noble friend Lady Chapman on the Front Bench has described it, the Bill is a lost opportunity.

I will concentrate on trying to wheedle out where we are going with the structure, functions and accountability of the service. We started in 2010 with the mantra that every school would be free-standing: free to do what it wished, and free to adopt the curriculum or not. Thank God that we have moved away from this and returned to the idea which all education institutions—or at least 90% of them—understood to be the case: you need a family of schools in which schools worked, contributed and spread success together. We are moving back to that, albeit under the multi-academy trust model. This actually makes free schools a complete anomaly—that is, the idea that you can create a new school only by calling it a free school, even if it is not free because it is part of a multi-academy trust which, as has already been spelled out, will now be dictated to by the department itself. We have moved seamlessly in 12 years from everything being part of an isolated, fractured and “fragmented education system”—as the former Chief Inspector of Schools, Michael Wilshaw, called it seven years ago—to putting them into multi-academy trusts. We have moved from, “You do it your way and all flowers will bloom”, to giving the Secretary of State powers—which I actually welcome on the whole—to intervene to avoid failure.

However, we are not really providing any accountability; it has already been said in this debate that the missing element is accountability. This involves the engagement of parents and governing bodies with some role and power to ensure that this is a function of the whole community and not just the creation of isolated multi-academy trusts peppered across the country. This also involves ensuring that those recruited as trustees—and, I hope in the future, as governors—of the schools themselves are appointed on a transparent basis. There is so much to do to rethink the curriculum and assessments, and to work out how best to teach in the modern era, what to teach and how to prepare young people for a very different future. Very little of what is in this Bill will affect the fundamentals of our education system for the future, and that is a great shame.