Children: Special Educational Needs
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, in 2018-19 the high needs block will rise by £142 million, to a total of £6 billion across England, which is up from £5 billion in 2013. Just last week we announced an additional £50 million of capital funding, bringing the total to £265 million of capital funding, to help build new places at mainstream and special schools. I would be happy to meet the noble Lord on the specific request he makes to discuss the case and, if necessary, I will ask the Minister for Children to write to the local authority.
Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, there is a group of children whose interests are hardly ever mentioned in your Lordships’ House, and those are the children whose mothers are being detained in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. How are these children being educated, and what progress is being measured in respect of their detention?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I do not have that information to hand, but I am very happy to write to the noble Lord with it.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the gracious Speech, which provides an opportunity for the House to reflect on the Government’s performance in the field of welfare. I hope that the experience gained from legislation in the last Parliament will be used to inform the Government’s approach in this Parliament.
I take the view that the structure and values of welfare define a society. They define our common humanity, our collective compassion and our sense of social justice. I believe that they should also provide a moral compass for the Government and, indeed, for society as a whole.
We can all agree that the underpinning culture of our welfare system should be to enable those in need to attain personal independence. However, reform of our welfare system over recent years has been underpinned by a culture of fear and bureaucracy. There is now a popular belief, built on the experience of those claiming benefits and those who support them, that the culture of the DWP is not to enable but to punish. Of course there is a need to cut down on benefit cheats. Who could disagree? Certainly not this House. I believe in punishing any fraud, whether by benefit recipients or by those who run our financial system, yet there is a belief that we concentrate on the former and the latter go free.
Most people involved in the financial sector are honest, hard-working citizens, and so too are most benefit recipients. Some benefit recipients, due to ill health or caring responsibilities, are unable to work, and some cannot find work. Two-thirds of those who found work last year earned less than the living wage, leaving their families in poverty, according to a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Under the new universal credit system, benefit claimants are at risk of sanctions if they do not apply for or accept zero-hours contracts.
When the bedroom tax was introduced, the Government said that it would have no negative impact on health or well-being. However, a study published in the Journal of Public Health in March concluded that the bedroom tax has increased the level of poverty and is having an adverse effect on health, well-being and social relationships. Those deemed to have a spare room have a choice: pay extra for their housing and have less for food and heating or they have to move. The Tory flagship council of Wandsworth is reported to have moved families 120 miles to Birmingham. I had to ask myself: what on earth have these families done to be treated in this way? I concluded that this must represent the worst form of social cleansing.
Last year, these policies and others led to 1 million users of the food banks run by the Trussell Trust, which believes that this is just the tip of the iceberg in relation to food poverty. The Government told us that people use food banks only because they are there. That is arrogant complacency at its very worst.
A story from Cheshire links the effects of these policies and demonstrates the vindictiveness of our benefits system. It also shows us why food banks are a vital lifeline to more than 1 million of our fellow citizens—like Robert, whose only crime is poverty. Robert had been working full-time but was now receiving employment support allowance due to a leg injury which required his attendance at a DWP work-related activity group. He was on his way when he collapsed with a serious blood clot and was rushed to hospital. As a result, he missed the appointment and his benefits were stopped for five weeks. To manage, he naturally had to turn somewhere and he turned to the food bank.
That is not an isolated case; it is yet another example of a vindictiveness which creates fear. What has happened to our common humanity, our collective passion and our sense of social justice? We now have a new Government, a new Parliament and new policies. Among those, I hope we can find a new moral compass.
Schools: British Values
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm that in establishing and promoting British values, we are not undermining the multiracial and multicultural society?
Schools: Nutrition
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, when I walk to the department in the morning I pass a number of schools and, sadly, I see children drinking Red Bull and eating crisps for breakfast. I would call that junk food because it is not very healthy or good. There are things we need to do to improve the quality of food. There are many schools doing that, including academies, and that is something that we should encourage.
Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, the consumption of so-called junk food is a clear indication of poverty. What steps are the Government taking to implement the target inherited from the previous Government for ending child poverty?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am not sure that I agree with the noble Lord’s premise that eating junk food is necessarily an indicator of poverty. It is an indicator of people not being properly educated in the importance of good food and that is something that we need to look at. It can also be an indicator of a number of other things. I know from visiting academies which are dealing with some of the poorest children that they are inculcating extremely good habits of eating with pupils all sitting down together, learning and, I hope, building habits for a lifetime. The broader issue of child poverty is clearly important and the Government are working to make further progress on that.
Education Bill
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, I add my name to those supporting the group of amendments spoken to by my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I do so because the current provision for face-to-face careers advice preceded one of the dates mentioned in this debate. If I am right, it goes back to the Education Act 1973. It was more than just a passing of an intent; it placed a duty on the local authority to provide support designed to match the needs of the individual student. One of the problems with the Bill in respect of the provision of careers advice is that this statutory right has been downgraded significantly to access, basically, in respect of needs. There is no real provision for quality or indeed quantity assurances. It is a one-size-fits-all provision, based in some instances on an online system.
I see some difficulties in future years. As I understand it, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is also promoting an all-age service of advice and career guidance. Again, though, it is faceless and has no interaction because it is online. It is predicated on a one-size-fits-all culture. The current system is tried, tested and respected. It enthuses and inspires confidence and provides a two-way interaction; it is a critical friend that challenges and motivates. That is as it should be. It is a system that extends parental support to the student who needs that sort of guidance, particularly in circumstances of a one-parent family. That is crucial.
I want to raise a point about the transition. As I understand it, the arrangements currently provided by Connexions end in March 2012 and the new provisions being canvassed in the Bill would not come into force until September 2012. So my question is an obvious one: how will the gap be filled?
We have heard much about social mobility. The only way to ensure that all young people have opportunities to raise their aspirations is for them to receive a first-rate education that enables them to achieve academically and to have access to independent, impartial careers advice and guidance that supports them to make the best decisions and helps them to apply for appropriate post-16 learning opportunities. It is for those reasons that I add my name to the group of amendments so ably spoken to by my noble friend.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am grateful for this chance to return to the issue of careers guidance and the Government’s proposal to give schools greater responsibility for securing appropriate support, based on the needs and circumstances of pupils. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, we had a good and extensive debate on this in Committee, and I am grateful to noble Lords, particularly to my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Sharp of Guildford, for meeting me and my honourable friend John Hayes recently to discuss some of the areas of their concern.
Perhaps I may briefly set out the context in which we are implementing changes to the delivery of careers guidance. We know that the single most important factor in making sure that young people carry on and prosper in post-16 education—which is what we all want to encourage—is that they do well before they are 16. Only one in 40 students who get five good GCSEs is NEET at any point after the age of 16, compared to one in six of those who do not get five good GCSEs. Without that bedrock of achievement, the potential of adding to that, even with the best advice and guidance in the world, is quite limited. That is why our focus is on what goes on in schools.
I say that to demonstrate why we have chosen to focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning in our schools, and on introducing the pupil premium to help improve the attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, about whom we have already spoken. At a time of economic difficulty, we are moving away from centrally-directed services and have protected school budgets as much as we can. We have given schools greater autonomy and the flexibility to determine the best use of resources for every pupil.
We disagree with the party opposite in seeking to move the focus away from—in the jargon—inputs to outcomes, because we think that it is more important to know how a school or college does by its students than to know precisely what it does. That is the thinking behind the development of new destinations measures. We think that these will show parents and pupils how well a school or college does in helping its students on to positive destinations, whether it is in further education, higher education, apprenticeships or work. We think that those will act as a powerful tool to help those institutions to make sure they look at everything that leads to positive outcomes, from education through to, and including, careers guidance.
A number of amendments in this group touch upon the important issue of the quality of careers guidance and how we can help to ensure that what is available to schools is good quality. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, about the importance of that. There is no disagreement between us. Careers guidance should be of the highest standard and offered free from the influence of any particular organisation. That is a point that was raised by a number of noble Lords who, I know, have been concerned that sometimes schools have steered children in a particular direction and not towards apprenticeships or other rival institutions.
The national careers service will be required to meet a robust high-quality standard and all providers involved in the service will be expected to be accredited to the standard by April 2013. It was recently announced that this quality standard would be the revised matrix standard, and that will assist schools in making well informed decisions about which providers they want to work with.
Alongside this, the Careers Profession Alliance is taking forward work to increase the professionalism of the careers workforce in response to the recommendations of the Careers Profession Task Force. An online register for members who have reached a level 6 qualification, have agreed to uphold a code of ethics and have demonstrated a strong commitment to continuing professional development, is expected to be introduced in April 2012.
We spoke in Committee of the need to reduce generally the burden of guidance from the centre. There were previously 169 pages of guidance on careers for schools, and we want to reduce that. However, having listened to contributions in Committee, I recognise that it is sensible to allow scope for focused guidance to be issued to schools to support them in fulfilling their new duty. After considering the concerns raised by my noble friends Lady Sharp of Guildford and Lady Brinton at a recent meeting, I want to go further and ensure that the statutory guidance highlights to schools how they can be confident that the external support they are buying in is of the desired quality. The guidance will contain a clear description of the quality standard for careers guidance for schools in commissioning independent advice and support for their pupils. I will certainly commit to consulting on that guidance.
Education Bill
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I want to intervene briefly on this. I should declare an interest as, like the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, I am a member of the Skills Commission which recommended the development of an all-age careers service. I welcome the fact that the Government have moved in that direction. Currently, two problems arise. One is the rundown of the current service, particularly in light of the squeeze on local government finances and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, pointed out, the reduction of money devoted to this service by the Department for Education; £7 million is a miserable sum and far too little. There is also the problem of transition, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.
Another problem is the shortage of professionals in this area. Not only have people trained to deliver careers guidance left the profession, but not enough people have been properly trained to provide the new service. One thing that the Government might do to show their earnest in setting up the new service would be to establish a crash course in training careers advisers. They are graduates who do a one-year master’s course to qualify and they are desperately needed. As I said, we have the transition problem from 2011-12; let us grab this opportunity and invest in the service as required. That would show the Government’s willingness to support it; they would be putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak. I realise that the question of money is very difficult.
Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, I, too, support the group of amendments so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I support them because as a group they correct a number of the anomalies inherent in Clause 27. The amendments are consistent with good learning and with the frequency of provision. Face-to-face opportunity to discuss career needs is of very high value, and the Bill is deficient in this area. We recognise the important contribution that trained and qualified professionals can make.
Of course, when a person chooses to have career advice, it is because they are uncertain of their direction of travel. The whole purpose of it is to examine the options and alternatives available with professionals who are honest, who test one’s capability and who advise. There are many people who start out wanting to take an academic route, and who finish up taking the vocational option, or vice versa: that is the benefit of career advice. I fail to see how you will get that interaction and that positive two-way challenge—because it can be a challenge—under what is proposed. What is being proposed is an all-age careers service. I have no difficulty with that as a principle. Indeed, I believe that the Careers Service should and can extend throughout one’s working life. That happens in industry, where managers and senior professionals are supported with personal trainers from time to time, who provide career advice on whether to continue or change direction. This is why the online provision is deficient, because it does not provide the opportunity for challenge and interaction. As with so many of the education proposals which are emerging, we get a lot of promises but some degree of under delivery. I see this career provision of the Bill as fitting that area of concern: much is promised, but little substance is delivered when it is tested.
The fact is that the people who will be denied the opportunity for face-to-face career advice are actually the people who may need it most. Not every child has access to the internet; indeed, in some parts of the country, that is for technical reasons, not just real poverty. That is adding to the reality of digital poverty from which some communities suffer disadvantage.
Careers advice is vital. You must get advice, you must challenge the provider and the provider must interact with your good self. What is so worrying about this aspect of the Bill is that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has seen the careers service as broken, deficient or not meeting the needs of students. All my experience is that career advisers care about what they offer and deliver.
The Secretary of State is taking away the duty to provide and replacing it with a duty to provide access. That is a fundamental shift in the culture, the duty and responsibility of the service. There is no way at this or any point that anyone can be certain that what is proposed will lead to better advice. Local authorities, who have that duty, will not be in the driving seat in procuring professionals to provide better advice but merely carrying through what is decreed by governing boards and the school. The bond between school, local authority and governing bodies will be broken when the all-age career advice service online becomes the norm.
Lord Elton
I know that the Committee is anxious to get to the point. The noble Lord has spent some time demolishing the Government's position, but we are discussing amendments to change that position. I wonder which of those amendments he is supporting.
Lord Morris of Handsworth
I indicated at the outset that I support the group of amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. That was my start point. Within the context of those amendments, the points I have made refer to issues that coincide clearly with the face-to-face provisions and the provisions about experience, and so on. I am clearly satisfied in that respect.
My point here concerns the shift from the duty to provide to the duty merely to give access. There is an opportunity in the amendments for real change to improve the Bill. I support the group of amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we know that the most important determinant of success post-16 is attainment pre-16. I start with a simple point to explain why the Government have been focusing on investment in the early years, why we have been seeking to improve the quality of new teachers, why we are bringing in reforms to the curriculum and why we have introduced the pupil premium to help to address the gap in attainment between more affluent and more disadvantaged backgrounds, which is of concern to everyone in the Committee.
Education Bill
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Peston
I express my sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and her amendments. I do not have her expertise on this matter, but there are some general principles which, it seems to me, we cannot avoid looking at. First and foremost of those principles is the fact that the young people whom we are talking about come overwhelmingly from the lowest socio-economic group in our society. This is not a random group of misbehaving young people; it is a highly limited group. Indeed, the latest research, which I have looked at, says that what the experts call young people with socio-emotional problems occurs to an enormous degree among the poorest in our society and to virtually no degree at all among the richest. We cannot avoid that fact, if we take deprivation as one of the main criteria in judging how we run our education system.
The thing that horrified me was the discovery that we can see these socio-emotional problems arising at a very young age. The evidence overwhelmingly is that it can be seen at the age of three, or even less. I do not remotely believe that this Government would go down this path, but my immediate thought was that it could end up like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I can easily imagine someone or other coming up and saying that what we ought to do is to filter these people before they go to school and not let them go there. That is the kind of background that we have to bear in mind as we look at this.
The second point that I make, which the noble Baroness herself made, as did my noble friend, is that the fact that these people are young children does not mean that they have no human rights. None of us would tolerate being treated in this way on anything else that we encountered as adults. Whatever was going on, and if we were doing something wrong, we would certainly expect to be dealt with with due process and the right of appeal against anything that was relevant.
I as a teacher have never had to deal with disruptive pupils. I dealt for years and years with students who had not the slightest interest in what I had to say, but my experience was that they just shut off. They did not bother me, and I was perfectly happy for them to shut off, because I could then talk to the people who I really felt wanted to learn my subject. But my heart goes out to teachers who have to deal with disruption in their classrooms. None of us doubts that, or I hope they do not. But that is quite different from saying that these people who disrupt are in full control, when very frequently they are not. Overwhelmingly, it does not mean that they have no rights.
My view therefore, as is typical when we meet as a Committee in your Lordships' House, and particularly in a Grand Committee, is that we should have our say and hope that the Minister listens sympathetically and sees whether anything can be done to meet our worries. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has put her finger on something that is not minor at all. It is a major question that confronts how we run our education system, and I should like her to know that I, along I am sure with many of my colleagues, am very much in sympathy with what she has to say.
Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, dealing with the issue of exclusions. As we have heard, the issue is not exclusions per se but one of process and, of course, procedure. More importantly, it is one of basic natural justice.
All of us in this Room and in this debate start from the position that good discipline is important to good learning. We start from the position that everyone associated with the education system needs to be and should be supported. Teachers should be supported, heads and governing bodies should be supported and parents need support. In the overall context of those stakeholders, however, the children themselves need proper support.
So these amendments, which I support, are necessary to prevent what I call the end game—exclusion without proper review, given the possible consequences of exclusion on the future of those pupils affected. The decision to exclude, without the process for the facts, the information and all the consequences that led to the decision, means that it is neither properly heard nor properly examined.
Fairness and justice lie at the heart but it seems that the Secretary of State has taken the position that the heads and governing bodies are always right and that the pupil is always wrong. That cannot be sustained because here we have a situation where those associated with a decision, whether it is the heads or governing body, are the accusers in the first instance. They are the investigators, assembling the facts and putting together the arguments. They prosecute in the case and, in the end, they are the judge and jury, all without any recourse to justification. The review panel, as we have heard, has no powers for reinstatement, however unjust the decision might have been.
In her introduction to the amendment, the noble Baroness set out the position of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and here I declare an interest as a member of that committee. Moving beyond its view, however, the fact of the matter is that legally decided opinions on the issue of expulsion without review are not on the side of the Government. The decided cases that the Government have used in their defence claim that expulsion from education is not a human right. But that is not the issue. There are equally strong legally decided cases which indicate very strongly that the real issue is not a question of whether education is a human right. What is a human right is the right of the excluded individual to return to the school from which they have been excluded. That is fundamentally different from the Government’s legal position that they cite in support. With that conclusion, I support the amendment.
Education Bill
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I want to flag up for the Minister that this might be relevant to his interest in the training and development of teachers more generally and that he might seek confirmation from those of your Lordships who have been in practice in this area whether my concerns regarding the teacher-pupil relationship are right. I know from other settings working with children that it is vital to build a relationship of trust. All kinds of emotions can emerge from that. There can be love, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has often said, but there can also be feelings of hate.
I remember observing a teacher—a man in his late 40s, perhaps—working with a 16 year-old girl with Down’s syndrome. We were taking her out on a summer expedition to picnic in the park. She was a lovely girl but she was unmanageable; she would push the boundaries. She would walk away, and what could he do? What could any of us do? As we went back in the minibus I observed him—I may have been incorrect in my observation—start to tease her about her boyfriend who was sat next to her. We are all human and when we are put under pressure certain people get under our skin and certain things come up. The way in which we can avoid taking such things personally is by reflecting on what we are doing—just as that Montessori teacher was helped to observe that wagging her finger at pupils was not helpful and perhaps came from an experience in her past that she does not want to bring about again.
Rather long-windedly, I am suggesting to the Minister that his work in bringing in Charlie Taylor to advise about behaviour and in thinking about how we can better train and develop teachers might be useful in this area—not only to avoid having to bring about the searching of children but the danger that certain children might be targeted by teachers who find them annoying. This might be one way of dealing with that annoyance.
People have always emphasised to me that—I wanted to check this point with those who have teaching experience—little attention is given to the teacher-pupil relationship in teacher training and development and that there is a vacuum in that regard. In the initial teacher training there is very little about child development and how you interact with children. Continuing professional development is also lacking in that regard. Teachers report that it is wonderful to be given training in child development and managing difficult behaviour. Indeed, the training that foster carers say is most valuable to them is that concerned with managing difficult behaviour. I flag up the point to the Minister that the broader issue of the training and development of teachers is involved here. I know that he is doing some work in that area and he may want to say something about that in his response.
Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, as the debate has revealed, this is a very sensitive issue which has to be dealt with with the greatest understanding in respect of the problems that can arise, including the possible disruption of a school. Before this issue arises again on Report, the Minister might wish to consider producing detailed guidance to assist teachers in this area as regards the dos and the don’ts, what is prohibited and, indeed, what is acceptable. One point that has not emerged in the debate is that of who searches who and whether a pupil should be searched by a teacher of the same sex as himself or herself. That issue needs to be addressed; if not, teachers will be left vulnerable and exposed and may be subjected to unfair criticism and accusations. I hope that the Minister will consider bringing forward guidance to support teachers in this respect.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I echo the points made by my noble friend Lady Perry. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which looked in detail at this clause. We sought to draw a distinction between searching a person and searching belongings. I think that this has been illustrated in our debate today. Certainly from my perspective, the searching of persons is the area which attracts most comment and requires a great deal of care. Notwithstanding the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, greater latitude and flexibility should be afforded to teachers when searching lockers and bags. I thought that it might be helpful to point that out.
Schools: Well-being Education
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with my noble friend’s underlying point that, in looking at all these issues, it is extremely important that we leave scope for individual schools to exercise their judgment on the best way of teaching the children in their care. There are elements of PSHE that are part of the national curriculum, but more generally I agree with my noble friend’s point that we do not want to prescribe everything from the centre and do want to leave as much discretion to individual schools as possible.
Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, although the House will welcome any steps to raise the standard of education in our schools, can the Department for Education be reminded that it is educating tomorrow’s multiracial society—common standards, common values, but different history?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I consider myself reminded, and I very much agree with the point that underlies that. We want to have an education system that caters for all children. To go back to the earlier point, one of the best ways that we can do that for all children is to make sure that they can read and write whatever their background; to have high aspirations for them; and to hope to give them the chance to progress and have as many opportunities as possible.
Education Bill
Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Morris of Handsworth
My Lords, I, too, wish to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Edmiston, on his maiden speech. He brings much experience to this House, and we look forward to hearing much more from him.
While I have some concerns about various aspects of the Bill, there are some worthwhile proposals within it. For instance, I welcome the restrictions on the reporting of allegations made against teachers until they are charged with a criminal offence. Other aspects of this Bill cause me deep concern. Under the Education Act 1973, all young people up to the age of 19—whether they are in school, college or employment—have a right to receive impartial careers advice and guidance from appropriately qualified practitioners provided by local authorities. Under this Bill, it is the Government’s intention to create an all-age national careers service for people over the age of 18. However, it is not possible to judge whether it will be appropriate to the needs of today until we have further information about what form the proposed service will take.
All research shows that adults and young people place a high value on the face-to-face careers guidance interview. Will the new service provide only for a call centre helpline and a website, as many people fear, or will those seeking advice receive proper support for a face-to-face interview with a trained careers adviser giving impartial advice on the basis now provided by the Connexions service, which will be closed next March? Sadly, the national all-age careers service will not be available to young people under the age of 18, and we must ask why.
As I understand it, schools will be encouraged to provide careers guidance, but the Bill leaves to the discretion of the school the quantity and quality of what is to be provided. Many of us fear that most schools with a sixth form will simply channel young people into courses, irrespective of whether they are appropriate to their needs, their ability or to their career aims. That is no way to achieve social mobility. The only way to ensure that young people are able to raise and to attain their aspirations is through a first-rate education alongside access to independent and impartial careers advice and guidance that supports them to make the best decisions and helps them to apply for appropriate post-16 learning opportunities.
My second point of concern is in regard to the proposals that deny basic rights and justice in the context of the proposed exclusion process. I recognise that schools must have the means and the support to exercise discipline, but I am disappointed that some schools deal with their problems in a disproportionate manner by excluding pupils, sometimes permanently. Such exclusion can affect the life chances of pupils for the rest of their lives. Many will have special educational needs, and for some those needs are not being met.
Today, I have grave concerns that under this Bill there will be no fair or just remedy for excluded pupils. The current independent panels will be replaced by a review panel with no power to order reinstatement. At best, the review panel can ask governing bodies only to reconsider their decision. I fully accept that governing bodies and heads need to be supported, but they cannot be put above the law and above the rights of the child. With experience to guide me, I cannot accept that the child is always wrong and the governing body is always right, which is the conclusion of the proposals in this Bill.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights—I declare an interest as a member—has considered the many options for the appeals process. The committee is not persuaded that the evidence provided by the Government shows the necessity for abolishing independent appeals panels. The committee is against the Government on the lack of access to some form of tribunal to consider the merits of permanent exclusion. It has concluded that the Government’s proposal is contrary to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Unsurprisingly, the committee is not alone in its conclusion on this issue; the governing body should be subject to some test and the Government have got it wrong. The Joint Committee is supported in its conclusion by the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, which recommended that all exclusions should be referred to a first-tier independent tribunal with powers to provide effective remedies. I strongly urge the Government to heed that advice.