Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts
Thursday 3rd July 2025

(1 week, 3 days ago)

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Lord Agnew of Oulton Portrait Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
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My Lords, I am taking a slightly different approach with my Amendment 200, which relates to school uniform policy.

It is important to recognise that a tiny minority of schools use the cost of uniforms as an unpleasant instrument to screen out children in poor families—I am not in denial of that. However, that relates to perhaps 1% or 2% of the 20,000 or more state schools. Nor am I in denial that we should do something about it. A lot has been done, which I will come to in a moment.

Nevertheless, the solution proposed in this clause is heavy-handed and bureaucratic. It is a classic example of the dead hand of the state intervening in an entirely impractical way to cause more harm than good. Does Whitehall really know how many branded items a school would like to use? Where does the magic number of “three” come from? For example, schools encouraging sport and competing with others are trying to foster an identity, and branded sportswear is a basic part of that. Have the bureaucrats found out how much a branded iron-on logo costs? A quick search of the internet suggests that you can buy them, custom designed, for £1.16 each.

How can we do this? I refer to my interest as the chairman of Inspiration Trust. Let me quote some of the bullet points from our uniform policy:

“We will make sure our school uniforms … are available at a reasonable cost … Provide the best value for money for parents/carers. We will do this by … Carefully considering whether any items with distinctive characteristics are necessary … Limiting any items with distinctive characteristics where possible. For example, by only asking that the blazer, worn over the jumper, features the school logo … Limiting items with distinctive characteristics to low-cost or long-lasting items, such as ties … Considering cheaper alternatives to school-branded items, such as logos that can be ironed on, as long as this doesn’t compromise quality and durability … Avoiding specific requirements for items pupils could wear on non-school days, such as coats, bags and shoes … Keeping the number of optional branded items to a minimum, so that the school’s uniform can act as a social leveller … Avoiding different uniform requirements for different year/class/house groups … Avoiding different uniform requirements for extra-curricular activities … Considering alternative methods for signalling differences in groups for interschool competitions, such as creating posters or labels … Making sure that arrangements are in place for parents to acquire second-hand uniform items … Avoiding frequent changes to uniform specifications and minimising the financial impact on parents of any changes … Consulting with parents and pupils on any proposed significant changes to the uniform policy and carefully considering any complaints about the policy”.


It is all there—I am sure, in large part, just following the DfE guidance. Your Lordships will see a similar approach on most of the larger academy trusts’ websites. The bit missing is the cost, but, according to the Schoolwear Association, uniform costs have undershot inflation by 34% in the last three years. According to the House of Commons Library, the cost of a secondary school uniform in 2014-15 was £232 for a boy, while today it is around £94. Great progress has been made—that has been driven by guidance, which is a good thing.

However, does this really need a central government mandate? In the last three years, my chief executive has not had a single complaint about uniform costs—that is for over 11,000 pupils in 18 schools. Let us say that something has to be done, but, rather than a top-down Whitehall diktat, we suggest that the members mechanism that the Labour Government themselves originally conceived be given the task. The extraordinary power of this structure and the protection of stakeholders’ interests is not well understood by many DfE officials. For noble Lords not familiar with it, I should explain that, in essence, members of an academy trust act as the proxy shareholders—a trust, of course, does not have shareholders, as it is a charitable entity—but they sit above the trust board and have certain enshrined rights and responsibilities. The problem at the DfE was that officials had allowed the two groups—members and trustees—to become intermingled. This undermined the whole point of a separate body being able to step in when governance failures by the trustees occurred.

It is reasonable that the chair of the trustees and one or two others are members, as long as the members who are not trustees are in a majority, which is now the case. At the moment, members have several key powers. These vary slightly depending on the time of the creation of an academy trust. The original trusts set up by the Labour Government gave more protection to “sponsors”, as they were putting in £2 million of their own money to take on the school. However, the following key responsibilities apply to the vast majority: appointing and removing trustees; appointing and removing members; amending the articles of association, subject to legal and regulatory restrictions; directing trustees by special resolution; appointing auditors; and safeguarding governance, which I stress. Members must assure themselves that governance is effective and intervene if it is failing. These powers ensure that members can intervene if the trust governance or performance is inadequate, but their involvement is otherwise minimal. Members must always act to further the academy trust’s charitable objectives.

The solution would be to add a specific requirement for members to monitor costs of school uniforms and report on it in the annually audited accounts. The members are already answerable to the DfE. Noble Lords will see from those six key responsibilities that I listed that it would be logical and straightforward, if prescribed, to add something specific—such as overpriced uniforms. “Directing trustees” and “safeguarding governance” are there to protect children if a trust is badly run. Overpriced uniforms are part of bad management; it is as simple as that. Noble Lords will have seen from the statement on its website that the Inspiration Trust already deals with most of this. However, adding something simple such as, “The members of the trust have scrutinised and approved our uniform policy and its cost”, would close the loop.

It is important to mirror the governance oversight in local authority schools, as nearly half of primary schools are not academised. This can be done by requiring directors of children’s services, or DCSs, to assume the same responsibility as that set out for members of academy trusts. There is separation between local authority governing bodies and DCSs. This would give consistency across the English state system.

When the Prime Minister was elected last year, he said that he wanted to lead a Government who would “tread more lightly” on people’s lives, but here we have primary legislation that seeks to do exactly the opposite and control lives from Whitehall in a rigid, top-down way.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I fully understand the Government’s desire to limit the cost here, but I support the principle behind most of these amendments, particularly those of my noble friend Lord Agnew and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, made an excellent point, which was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that if uniform is not standardised, parents with students who can afford it may well “show off” through the clothes which their children wear. That is why we ban trainers in the schools in the multi-academy trusts that I chair, and why they are banned in most schools. We want all our children to feel equal.

As the Minister previously responsible for the school cadet programme, and as for the point that my noble friend Lord Young made, if the clause works as he says it does, this would seem to me an obvious and easy give by the Government. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on this point. As for the amendments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bennett, I thought they made an excellent case for more, rather than less, uniform, because that would be the easiest way to regulate and monitor what it is made from.

Baroness Spielman Portrait Baroness Spielman (Con)
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My Lords, I apologise for being a minute or two late arriving in the Chamber. I support Amendments 196 to 199 proposed, respectively, by the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and Amendment 201, from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed. If these are not accepted, the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, and Amendment 195 from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, also have considerable merit.

Every autumn, there is a rash of stories about children being sent home for not being in the correct uniform. However, most often, these disputes are about not branded items but a child’s reluctance to wear something in the style that has been approved for all pupils. It is encouraging to note that household expenditure on clothing and footwear as a proportion of household spending has fallen substantially over the past 50 years. In historical terms, it has probably never been cheaper to clothe a family, though I note the concerns that have been expressed about cheap synthetic fabrics and finishes.

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Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
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What I said was that this measure does not prevent schools providing or loaning branded uniform items, such as competition kit, but, if that were to be compulsory, that of course would need to be included in the three branded items. As long as those items are optional, I do not think it is too difficult to envisage that schools might be able to make that work.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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So if the shirt provided by the school is blue and the opposition plays in red, and this has all been arranged in advance, and some pupils decide to be difficult and turn up in red, which will create chaos, that is okay, but if you say “You’ve all got to turn up in blue”, that is breaking the rules. It does not sound very practical. I ask the Minister to take a bit of time with people who run schools and officials to see whether we can work our way through this in a practical way, while at the same time trying to make sure that all children are treated equally and that we limit the costs as far as we can.

Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
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I am certainly willing to continue thinking about the issue of school sports, because it is very much not the intention of the Government to prevent the loaning of branded items for school sports. On the example that the noble Lord mentioned, in my day, when I played hockey, if we ended up playing against a school with a similarly coloured kit, we wore bibs to distinguish ourselves. My point is that I do not think it is impossible to overcome this. Let us come back to it. I take the point that noble Lords have made here.

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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, my Amendment 279 would allow local authorities to inspect the materials being used in the child’s home education and to see the child’s work. I also support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Meston. I strongly support the Government’s measures in relation to home education in this Bill, and in this respect I find myself in disagreement with a number of noble friends on these Benches with whom I generally share a common view of life. I was delighted to hear the Minister’s opening remarks on this group. I thought she put the situation exceptionally well.

As we have heard, the home education lobby is very concerned about these provisions, and I am sure it will be concerned about my amendment. However, the number of children apparently being educated at home has grown exponentially over the past 10 to 15 years, probably from 20,000 to 30,000 to somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000, and that is without allowing for the 300,000 children estimated by the Education Policy Institute to be missing from education. My noble friend Lord Frost says that only 1.4% of home-educated children get a school attendance order, which is unsurprising as without a register local authorities just do not know who these children are. As for the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, about the majority of home-schoolers being university-educated people, that may well be the case for those home-educated children who are being suitably educated, but I believe there are many more children who are apparently being home-educated but who do not have that benefit.

Of course, many children are educated exceptionally well by their parents at home or in other settings, and I respect parents’ right to do that. These are not the parents who concern me, and nor should these parents be concerned about the provisions in the Bill or my amendment. If they are providing a suitable education, why should they be? But those of us who work in schools know that many children apparently being educated at home are not receiving a suitable education, or indeed any education at all. Many are active in gangs. Surely, we must be concerned about these children. Children have a right to be educated, and I invite the home education lobby to reflect on whether its objections to the Bill, and no doubt to my amendment, are a little selfish and lacking in public spirit in some respects. I understand what my noble friend Lord Lucas was saying about the importance of children being seen. I assume, therefore, that he supports going further than my amendment, because the whole point is that too many children are unseen.

England is an outlier in relation to home education. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, talked about the relatively low number of children being home-educated. We have the highest proportion of children in home education and the lowest amount of regulation. No other European country has a higher rate of home education. The next highest is France, which mandates yearly inspections. The 2018 European Commission report into home education concluded that students’ progress is monitored and assessed everywhere in Europe except in the UK and in the Netherlands. I refer noble Lords to an excellent report by the Centre for Social Justice dated November 2022, entitled Out of Sight and Out of Mind. That report made a number of recommendations, including that local authorities need powers to conduct visits and see the child in person at least every six months, and that home-educated children should complete an annual light-touch progress assessment in English and maths. My amendment goes nowhere near as far as that.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has uncovered incidents of harm involving children reported to be in home education, including a number of children who have died. The panel concluded that such children were often invisible, were not in school and did not receive home visits. A 2021 report by FFT Education Datalab found that children with additional vulnerabilities are disproportionately likely to be out of the school system by the end of key stage 4, and it is estimated that about half these children are in home education. It found that a child who has been persistently absent from school is more than three times more likely to end up with no final destination than a child who has never been persistently absent, and a permanently excluded child is two and a half times more likely than the child who has never been permanently excluded.

Local authorities do not like serving school attendance orders because by the time the matter gets to court, the parents are lawyered up and, even when they are not providing a suitable education, may well be pretending to be doing so by producing documentation that they have only recently obtained. My proposal would cut through this dance. Unless a child who is home-educated is known to social services, how is a local authority to know whether they are receiving a suitable education?

While Sara Sharif had previously been under a CPP, she does not appear to have been at the time of moving into home education. On my noble friend Lord Wei’s point about scaremongering, we should certainly be concerned about children who are home-educated and suffer abuse or are murdered. I believe there are many more children, not in this category, who are apparently being educated at home but are actually not receiving any education at all. Sadly, in the last decade or so, the world has moved rapidly to this appalling state of affairs.

My amendment is consistent with the recommendations made by the Education Select Committee in its report Strengthening Home Education, although it does not go anywhere near as far as its recommendations of annual contact with the family and a minimum annual assessment of a child’s progress, particularly in relation to literacy and numeracy.

Lord Crisp Portrait Lord Crisp (CB)
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My Lords, I support Amendment 202C from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and Amendment 226 from my noble friend Lord Meston. As this is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I would like to make two preliminary remarks. The first is to declare a personal interest, as I have a relative who is home-educating, and therefore I have learned at second hand some of the issues involved here. Secondly, that has also caused me to want to investigate more and to thank the many people both inside and outside this House who have provided me with information about the whole field of home education and how it relates to local authorities.

I am very grateful to the Minister for having a meeting with me early on in this process and to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for also having meetings with me to discuss these issues. I very much appreciate it, and I very much appreciate the fact that the Minister has offered to meet Peers. I am available in August, so we look forward to having further discussions and perhaps saving some time in Committee around some of the relatively minor details that need to be cleared up in the Bill.

I do not want to take up too much time; I will simply make three or four points and then speak to the amendments. If noble Lords want to see a real approach to personalised education, they can find that in some of the successful examples of elective home education perfectly attuned to the needs, capabilities and aspirations of the child. That happens at all levels of achievement.

However, and equally, I am concerned about the 39,000 missing children mentioned who may be at risk of abuse, may be running wild or are being brainwashed and separated from society in some form. There are a whole range of different sets of issues that we must think about here.

In characterising home education, I just want to pick up one other point that I do not think has been made by anyone: some parents choose to home-educate one of their children because of that child’s particular needs but have their other children in school. Indeed, many parents will home-educate their children for a period and then bring them back into school later on when they perhaps have moved up or managed to develop in a way that allows them to take advantage of whatever the provision is locally.

We must really recognise the poor state of some of our schools and some of the stories I have heard about what has been described to me as “in-school excluded”. These are children who perhaps have difficult behaviours or whatever, have an educational assistant and end up spending the time in the corridor with that assistant rather than being educated.

There is a whole range of issues that we need to tackle here. My approach to it is, like others—I am delighted to see this spirit in your Lordships’ Committee on this—to try to find practical ways forward to balance all the different issues. Central to that, in whatever we do, is to help to frame a positive relationship between home-educating parents and local authorities. In some cases, this is excellent but, in others, this is very fraught indeed. I will have a bit more to say on that later.

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I turn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, on education, which I find more problematic. What will it achieve if you are asking for home-educating parents to show you the materials that they are using? Those materials may be different depending on their philosophy of education and whether they are following a more traditional school academic approach, or, as they are entitled to, a more child-led approach.
Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My amendment also says

“to see the child’s work”.

As those of us in schools know, seeing a child’s books is one of the best ways of finding out whether they are being properly taught. It may be that the home educators are educating their children in a particular way and you can see the materials that they are using to teach, but one needs to know whether the children are actually learning. The only way to know that is to see their work.

Lord Crisp Portrait Lord Crisp (CB)
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I thank the noble Lord for that intervention, and I very much understand the point that he is making. However, the issue is what happens to that material once it is inspected. How does the home education officer make a judgment on it? Most of them are not teachers—in fact, I suspect very few are. Do they go to an outside source, or do we set up some great panoply of mechanisms to decide whether those materials are appropriate?

At the moment, we have a different situation. The current position, as I understand it, is that, where authorities have cause for concern, Sections 437 to 443 of the Education Act 1996 provide for steps to be taken if it appears that there is very little or no education in place for a child, or if the local authority has no information about any education arrangements. I understand that in most, possibly all, local authority areas home-educating parents provide an annual report to the local authorities, rather than providing materials that will be judged in isolation.

I think that we should leave the law where it is. As I understand it, the attitude of the best local authority home education officers is that they build relationships; they are happy with most of the people, but can then concentrate on the problem areas—because there are problem areas—within the home education sphere. Imposing new duties such as this would add burden, bureaucracy and frustration to authorities and parents alike. We should concentrate on improving that relationship, not making it more burdensome.

Lord Storey Portrait Lord Storey (LD)
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My Lords, I thank the Government for taking this issue on and for being aware of the problems that we face. I also recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was on to this in her role as Minister as well.

I have met hundreds of home educators and considerably more have contacted me, and most of them do an amazing job. Noble Lords ought to know that some of the home educators who have contacted me by email have been concerned about what has been going on and given practical examples of that. We need to get a balanced picture sometimes.

If we really want to understand this issue, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Meston, makes the point in his amendment that 39,000 children are missing—we have no idea where they are. The Government want to tackle that head-on. Imagine a society that says to those who want to remove their children from the education system that that is fine—just do it—but we will not keep any records and we will have no idea what you are doing at home, and will leave you to get on with it. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine a situation where fundamentalist religious groups set up unregistered schools and we have no idea what is happening in them, except occasionally when some of the teachers working in them report to the authorities the appalling behaviour of staff? Ofsted has on many occasions tried to close those schools down, but they re-emerge as home education settings—

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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On the figure of 30,000, the Education Policy Institute, of which I was a trustee until relatively recently, estimated by comparing GP registrations with school registration and home education data that in 2023 there was a gap of 300,000 children—and that was not accounting for home-educated children.

Lord Storey Portrait Lord Storey (LD)
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I thank the noble Lord for that.

Clearly, there are different groups of home educators and we cannot just use the blanket term “home education”. First, there are the traditional home educators. Let us be honest, the most important educators in a child’s life are the parents, and some parents have the time, opportunity, money and desire to teach their children at home. They do a fantastic job. As I said earlier, I have met many of them. They organise summer camps, celebrate together, et cetera. In the main, they are probably the people who have the resources and time to do that. The second group are those whom my noble friend mentioned: parents who feel that the education system is not working for their children who have special educational needs. I think we can understand that.

Then there is a third type, which the noble Lord, Lord Nash, mentioned. After Covid, children, mainly from poorer families or disadvantaged backgrounds, returned to school and could not cope. They went back to their parents and said, “I don’t want to be in school”. They nagged their mum and dad who, in the end, said, “Okay, we’ll home educate you”, despite having no experience of home education at all. Sadly, those parents did a major disservice to their children, who of course were not being home educated—they were just doing nothing at home and getting further and further behind in their learning. Some have gone on to criminal activities as well.

Finally, there is the group I mentioned before: those in unregistered schools. If noble Lords knew some of the practices that went on in those schools, they would be appalled. In fundamentalist religious schools, eight year-old boys spend all their time just learning holy scriptures and have no proper education, which is not acceptable at all.

I understand some parents’ concerns that they do not want to see bureaucratic procedures getting in the way of their home education, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, rightly mentioned. It is not beyond our wit to look very closely between Committee and Report at what we require. It is important that we know where children are. Any system we bring in has to work; we have been down this route before. In my first headship—some teachers here will remember this—there was the unique pupil number which every child had and which went on with them to whichever school they went to. The school had a duty to inform the next school that the child was moving to, et cetera.

That, for some reason, has broken down; I do not understand why. Therefore, the system that we adopt here has to work—and not just between schools; in cases where children do not go to school, we have to know where they are, so that we can keep them safe and ensure that they are learning.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts
Monday 23rd June 2025

(2 weeks, 6 days ago)

Lords Chamber
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Moved by
177: After Clause 26, insert the following new Clause—
“Action to promote the wellbeing of children in relation to social media(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must, for the purposes of promoting the wellbeing of children—(a) direct the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom (“the UK CMOs”) to prepare and publish advice for parents and carers on the use of social media by children at different ages and developmental stages, and(b) by regulations made my statutory instrument require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly-effective age assurance measures to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users. (2) Any advice published under subsection (1)(a) must have regard to—(a) the paper published on 7 February 2019 entitled “United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ commentary on 'Screen-based activities and children and young people’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing: a systematic map of reviews'”, and(b) any scientific or other developments since the publication of that paper which appear to the UK CMOs to be relevant.(3) Any regulations under subsection (1)(b) must be treated as an enforceable requirement within the meaning of section 131 (and for the purposes of Part 7) of the Online Safety Act 2023.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1)(b) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(5) For the purposes of this section—“the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom” means the Chief Medical Officers for—(a) England,(b) Wales,(c) Scotland, and(d) Northern Ireland;“regulated user-to-user services” is as defined in the Online Safety Act 2023.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take action to promote children’s wellbeing in relation to their use of social media by commissioning advice from the Chief Medical Officers and introducing regulations to prevent under 16s from accessing social media.
Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, my Amendment 177 seeks to ban access to social media before the age of 16. Other amendments in this group relate to screens in schools, edtech, and the use and possession of smartphones in schools. I refer to my interests in the register, particularly the fact that I am co-founder and chair of a multi-academy trust and an investor in a number of technology companies.

We are now seeing an overwhelming body of clinical evidence about the dangers of social media for children and young people, and a rapidly increasing awareness about this among parents, teachers, and children and young people themselves. The title of this Bill is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and, in my view, nothing could enhance the well-being of our 9 million schoolchildren and young people more than to accept this amendment. Nothing could have a wider impact.

The dictionary definition of well-being is the state of being comfortable, happy or healthy. Sadly, millions of children are in none of these states. Indeed, it would be better to scrap the whole of the rest of the Bill and enact only this one amendment than to enact the Bill without it—although I am not proposing that.

According to Health Professionals for Safer Screens, social media causes developmental issues such as language and communication difficulties, emotional and social difficulties and reduced academic attainment, and has an impact on ADHD. It says it causes physical impacts, such as changes to the brain, poor eyesight, eating disorders, obesity and sleep difficulties. There is evidence that autistic children are particularly vulnerable to the impact of screen time.

A recent UCL study corroborated the link between social media and eating disorders, and that young people with eating disorders are more likely to be shown harmful content by social media algorithms. Samaritans’ research has shown that young people frequently see self-harm and suicide content across all social media sites, some of which display particularly graphic and triggering content. Almost three-quarters of teenage girls think that social media creates more pressure for people to look a certain way. If I can attempt to paraphrase such a leading expert as Andy Clark, professor of cognitive philosophy at the University of Sussex, overreliance on technology negatively impacts our ability to think, predict and be creative.

The impact of social media on reading is something we are seeing ever more articles on. A study published in Acta Paediatrica concluded that brain connectivity in children is increased by the time they spend reading books and decreased by the length of exposure to screen-based media. According to Teacher Tapp, 56% of teachers would prefer a world without social media and, of course, teachers are particularly aware of the impact of cyberbullying.

According to Mumsnet, half of parents say their children’s use of social media negatively affects their self-esteem, rising to 57% for girls, and 83% of parents back a social media ban for those under 16. Some 60% told Mumsnet that they would be more likely to vote for a party that implemented such a ban. It also makes the point that this is a cohort problem—that is, it is too big for any one family to solve. Millions of families across the country experience a daily battle with their children because of the addictive nature of smartphones and social media. Is this what we want for our families? I do not think so.

A recent American Harris Poll found that most parents wished their children grew up in a world with no social media—the same level of regret as for guns. According to HMD, 64% of parents say smartphone use negatively impacts their child’s sleep, and 61% say that it reduces the amount of physical activity they undertake. More than half are worried that it will reduce the amount of time they spend socialising with friends, and 75% of parents fear smartphones expose their children to internet dangers, with more than half admitting that they just do not know what their children get up to when using their phones. Almost half of parents believe mobile phone use has changed their child’s personality.

According to Deloitte, over half of Gen Z would favour a ban on social media for under-16s, rising to 71% for millennials and 78% for boomers. According to an American survey by Common Sense Media in 2023, the average American 11 to17 year-old receives 237 social media notifications a day.

According to Parentkind, 67% of 16 to 18 year-olds themselves think smartphones are harmful, and according to a Millenium Cohort Study, 50% of teenagers say they are addicted to social media. New research by the British Standards Institution shows that almost half of young people aged 16 to 21 would prefer to be young in a world without the internet.

Adolescence is a period of life in which our sense of self undergoes a profound transition, as teenagers become more conscious of how others perceive them; they often experience increased self-consciousness and self-criticism. Social media and the algorithms attached to it serve only to amplify this. We also know that the adolescent’s brain is particularly susceptible to addictive behaviour. Constant exposure to fast-paced, highly stimulating content can only condition the brain to expect frequent, rapid rewards, making it harder to sustain focus and concentrate.

So, why 16? As I have said, adolescence is a significantly important period of development, and we know that girls and boys may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of social media at different times during their adolescence. Indeed, research shows that girls experience a negative link between social media use and life satisfaction when they are 11 to 13 years old and boys when they are 14 to 15 years old, suggesting sensitivity to social media use might be linked to developmental changes, possibly to changes in the structure of the brain, or to puberty, which occurs later in boys than in girls.

The 13 to 16 age group is the least risk-averse and is easily influenced and highly susceptible to issues such as grooming, cyberbullying, body dysmorphia and social comparison, violent content, misogyny and knife crime, not to mention dopamine addiction. Thousands of influencers push on social media vaping, antidepressants, therapy, cosmetic injectables and mental health misinformation daily on to our teenagers.

A study by Northwestern University found that children aged between seven and 18 on average use six different skincare products a day, and some more than a dozen—all of which is to say that age restrictions which seek to stop children accessing harmful content on social media from an earlier age than 16 are unlikely to be effective in stemming harm.

We want our children to be brought up confident, able to engage in deep thought, be reflective, able to concentrate, able to exercise judgment and see the other side’s point of view, be compassionate and so on. We also want them to get a good night’s sleep. Smartphones and social media set up exactly the opposite behaviours.

Research by the Children’s Commissioner shows that the experience children have online is entirely different from that of adults, and that they are affected by content in different ways. Content that adults may not find harmful can be extremely damaging to children and adolescents. The former Children’s Commissioner, the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, who I am delighted to see is in her place, has stated that:

“Too many children are spending their most precious years sedentary, doomscrolling on their phones and often alone, while their health and wellbeing deteriorates”.


We know that the police are very concerned about the use of social media in the radicalisation of children and young people and in their recruitment into gangs. The Education Select Committee has concluded that:

“The overwhelming weight of evidence submitted to us suggests that the harms of screen time and social media significantly outweigh the benefits for young children”.


It is time to deal with this issue, and I am encouraged that the Government are at least thinking about it. However, the concept of two hours per app—two hours on each of WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok and so on—is really playing at the issue. France is planning a ban, one is being implemented in Australia, New Zealand is bringing forward legislation on one and Greece, Spain, Denmark and Ireland are considering one. We take children’s safety seriously in areas such as smoking and alcohol; now is the time to step up to the plate on social media.

It is particularly noticeable that all the leaders of the main teaching unions have pointed out, in stark terms, the dangers of smartphones and social media, with the general secretary of NASUWT describing smartphones as “lethal weapons”. This support from the unions is commendable. As the Labour Government are so close with the unions, I very much hope that they will follow their advice. Why should our hard-pressed teachers have to deal with the consequences of this free-for-all?

I have cited much research and many statistics, but I will conclude by asking noble Lords to remember five points. First, smartphones and social media are damaging the development of our children’s brains. Secondly, they are highly addictive. Thirdly, they expose them to serious risk of sometimes life-threatening dangers. Fourthly, cyberbullying is rife. Finally, they are having a serious effect on our children’s self-esteem, mental health and well-being, which is what we are here to debate. The formative nature of teenage brains is totally ill equipped to win the battle against the algorithms embedded in social media by companies with billions at their disposal. They need our help—and they, their parents and their teachers are crying out for it. It is time that we came to their aid.

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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and all noble Lords for their contributions. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Bethell for his contribution. I am just so sorry that we will perhaps not see him around this place for very much longer.

On the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran concerning the possession and use of smartphones in schools, as my noble friend Lady Penn said, it may be that 90% of schools have a policy, but, unless smartphones are physically not allowed in schools, bans will be ineffective. Teachers are reporting that children are going to the loo far more often; I see the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who is a teacher, nodding. Some schools use pouches, but the evidence is clear. As my noble friend Lady Barran said, if my smartphone is there, I will concentrate far less than if it is out of the room. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Agnew said, children are very ingenious. I am told there are ingenious methods of opening and closing these pouches by using magnets and various other methods.

On what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said about the consequences for any school or person who did not follow a ban if we passed this amendment to ban smartphones in schools, I do not think for a moment that we are talking about a criminal offence. Surely a duty would do.

I am highly sceptical about what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said about allowing smartphones in schools to teach their safe use. Children know far more about how to use these things than adults. They do not need to see a phone to be told what not to watch. Unless they cannot access social media, pornography or whatever because of age verification, they will watch it. That is what kids do.

On my noble friend Lady Penn’s amendment, which I support, I will make this point. Heads of primary schools have recently been alerted—I used that word advisedly, because none of them can tell me they were aware of any specific notification on this—to the fact that the reception baseline assessment, the RBA, will now require four year-olds to be tested using touch-screen devices, which, of course, they will have to familiarise themselves with before they take the tests. If we bring these screens into schools—

Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
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Does the noble Lord accept that that assessment—the procurement, analysis and evaluation of which started back in 2019—will be carried out alongside teachers, with the ability for teachers to use other methods with children where necessary? This is not something that children will use on their own, on screen.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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I understand that entirely. I understand that there will be two devices, on one of which the teacher will have to log the responses. The pupil will sometimes use a hard copy, but they will have to touch a screen for some of the tests. So we will be bringing these devices into primary schools, which will accept their existence for these ages. Goodness knows where this might go in primary schools without the kinds of amendments my noble friend Lady Penn is proposing.

The Government have entered into a £20 million contract with Made Tech Group plc to develop the relevant technology for the reception baseline assessment. The contract specifically states that

“the RBA will be the first service launched to schools in a wider suite of digital assessment tools”.

In other words, this is the thin end of the wedge. I hope the Government will reconsider this. I note what the Minister said about hoping that there is very little of this sort of thing in the early years.

I heard the Minister’s response to my Amendment 177. I listened carefully, and I am afraid that clauses and phrases such as “The Government will do what is needed to keep children safe online”, “Online Safety Act”, “scientific evidence mixed”, “correlation and causality”, “build the evidence base”, “publish results in due course”, “recommendations on limiting screen time” and “advice on sleep” do not fill me with any hope. All this sounds to me like statisticians wanting 100 years of evidence before they say the case is proven. The time is now. How much more evidence do we need? How much more damage do we need to see before we act?

I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said about Ofcom, but social media companies are perfectly capable of implementing highly effective age limits if they want to. I am glad he was listening so carefully to what I said and noted some similarity between what I said today and what I said in the purpose clause debate, but I hope that when he checks Hansard he will see that there was quite a lot of new material there.

Concerning my Amendment 177 on banning social media before 16, there are clearly very strong feelings about this across the Committee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said. This is becoming a real issue for working families across the country, and I have no doubt that if it is not dealt with before the next election, it will be a big issue on the doorstep, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. It is no secret that there is support for this not only in this House but across the Benches in the other place, including from a number of honourable Labour Members demonstrated by, for instance, Josh MacAlister’s Bill and other interventions. I urge the Minister to convene a meeting across the political spectrum to discuss how we can take this matter forward, and I ask her now, as a first step, whether she will kindly meet me very soon to discuss how we can take this forward. We may—indeed, we almost certainly will—look to bring this back on Report, but for now I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 177 withdrawn.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts
Tuesday 17th June 2025

(3 weeks, 5 days ago)

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Knee-jerk reactions and assumptions that, “Oh, they’re just ripping the system off” are often based on the views of people who know nothing. Let us face it. There may be people who are ripping you off as well, but both are out there. In trying to get a good idea of what the Government are actually trying to get out of this, we all agree the principle, but then we have dozens of different assumptions about what that means. So if we can find out what the Government mean in this series of amendments, it will probably be able to work. Hopefully, this will be something that, as much of this Bill has been, is essentially cross-party. It is about how we get the right answer here, because the Government—as in all good democracies—have brought forth a slightly reactive Bill. They are dealing with problems that exist. I do not say that as a great criticism of the Government: it is simply that that is the situation we are in. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us an idea of how the Government’s thinking is going around about the transparency, how we get out and how, for instance, if you think that someone is grossly overcharging you, you are actually saying that is happening. That is what I hope we will get out of this discussion.
Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 134A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson. I also believe that the transparency of prices should extend to the SEND sector. I agree we need responsible, not highly leveraged, private investment. I understand why the Government are bringing forward these provisions of a profits cap and monetary penalties, because, of course, none of us wants cowboys looking after our children. What worries me, however, is that these kinds of assets are already very out of favour in the private equity sector, which is struggling to sell the assets it has. The provision of the profit cap and monetary penalties or fines is just going to drive capacity out of the sector, and I really am worried about this. Who is going to replace the inevitable lack of capacity that I am sure will result as a consequence of these provisions?

In an ideal world, of course, many of us would like all provision for these kinds of children to be run by charities or the public sector, although some public sector operators have had their own problems. We do not, however, live in an ideal world; the public sector has no money, and charities are struggling to raise money. Most of the private equity operators are highly professional operators, very concerned about their reputation and safety and the quality of their provision, and we need to encourage them. Otherwise, we will have—and I predict this will lead to—a massive shortage of capacity as a result of fines and caps. I am, however, all for full transparency.

Baroness Thornton Portrait Baroness Thornton (Lab)
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How does the noble Lord feel that we need to make the transition to the kind of system that we want, if he is so worried about the reduction in capacity? How do you deal with the profit gouging that has gone on? If you sort of say you do not have profit gouging, what happens when the suppliers walk away?

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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Transparency is a good start. I think it is the case, and I know there are vastly different prices charged around the country, perhaps for different reasons, property prices or whatever; but I think transparency is key. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington: I think that trying to interfere in markets is generally dangerous and you generally have unintended consequences. Everybody knows that I am a career venture-capital private-equity guy, but I do know that these assets are completely out of favour.

There are a number of groups that have these assets and cannot sell them, and we are just going to run out of money, so I think the Government need to be very careful. I say that as somebody who is very concerned about this sector, and that is why I am here. I do not have any magic solutions, but I think that, if people are threatened with fines, who is going to want to run these homes? Individuals. It is something that needs to be thought about very carefully.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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The noble Lord has just essentially agreed with what I said, that some of these entities are financially unstable and uncertain. Would the noble Lord understand, at least, the argument that it is better to bring these back? These facilities are going to have to stay open: we need them. It is better to bring them back into non-profit hands in an orderly manner rather than, if one of these private equity companies goes down, having an immediate crisis. What do the Government do then?

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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The care sector is slightly different, for the reasons people have mentioned. But what are we going to do—nationalise it for nothing? Are we going to become a communist country? Are we going to pay for it, and if so, where will that money come from? Anyway, even if you deal with the ownership issue—obviously, I do not agree with the idea of nationalisation—threatening people who operate them with fines just does not seem reasonable. That is why I support the amendments on limiting fines and not applying them to natural persons, as opposed to corporations.

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 140A, in my name, and propose that Clause 14 do not stand part of the Bill.

Before I turn to my own amendments, I add my support to my noble friend Lady Sanderson’s Amendment 134A. As we have heard, it would bring much needed transparency to the children’s homes market and help to level the playing field for smaller and larger providers. Of course, this transparency would help the negotiating position of local authorities and regional care co-operatives in future. I thank my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley for making it real and giving us very practical examples.

Equally, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, made important points about the level of profit in the area of supported accommodation. As I understand it from the CMA report, it has some of the highest margins in the sector and today provides about two-thirds or three-quarters as many places as children’s homes do, at just over 6,000, or 7% of the market for looked-after children.

Amendment 141, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, seeks, as we heard, to extend the profit cap to independent special schools. As the noble Lord understands extremely well, this is a very complex area, and one has to be careful, given the range of provision. Some of these homes offer short-term respite to foster carers, for example, so any changes would need to be thought through carefully to avoid unintended consequences.

Along with others, and not just on my Benches, including the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, I cannot support Amendment 174, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Our starting point is that there needs to be greater capacity to limit price increases and ensure a choice of suitable care. We were very clear when we were in government that we do not condone profiteering in this market, but we have concerns about how the transition in Wales will work to a market where there are no for-profit providers. Obviously, the problem of very high pricing will only be exacerbated, as my noble friend Lord Nash just explained, if sufficient new capacity is not created quickly or even if capacity is withdrawn. Such an approach cannot be considered in England until the Government have invested in new, not-for-profit or social enterprise capacity, whether that be in the local authority or in the voluntary sector, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, very ably outlined.

I confess that it is slightly curious to be in a position of challenging the Government’s attempts to regulate and limit the profits of some actors in this industry, which have rightly drawn criticism from the CMA, local authority leaders and indeed many in your Lordships’ House. My amendments to this clause and the others in this area are definitely not about defending a group of companies that can well defend themselves; I am simply trying to test the viability and impact of the Government’s proposals. It is important, because there is such a level of frustration with the behaviour of some of the actors in this sector that we risk having a confirmation bias that anything we change it to will be better. We need to test these proposals and be confident that the solution the Government propose will work.

As we have discussed at numerous points in Committee, there is a fundamental problem with the lack of residential care capacity, whether that be in relation to fostering, children’s homes or supported accommodation. The Competition and Markets Authority described the current shortfall as a “fundamental failure” in market functioning, imposing, in its words,

“severe limitations on the ability of the 206 local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, who purchase placements, to engage effectively with the market”.

We need a clear plan to address this shortage. My fundamental concern is that the measures in Clauses 12 to 18 will not have the desired impact that the Government seek—and that, across your Lordships’ House, we all seek. Amendment 140A is simply an example of why I do not think the plan for a financial oversight regime as presented in the Bill has been properly road-tested and that we can have confidence in its impact.

New Section 30ZI, to be inserted by the Bill, gives the Secretary of State the power to arrange for an independent business review by an external qualified person. You would assume that, in such cases, almost the first thing that they would look at, if it existed, would be the recovery and resolution plan set out at new Section 30ZG, but it is not even mentioned. There is a list of things that they should look at, but the recovery and resolution plan is not mentioned. It would be fundamental for them to look at that plan, given that it covers, according to the Government, the

“nature and extent of any risk to the financial sustainability of the person … the action the person proposes to take”

to address this, as well as

“impacts on local authorities, and children”.

That makes me lose confidence that this has been properly thought through. I hope that the Minister can either add it to the list of things that independent business reviewers will look at, or, more importantly, reassure me and the Committee that this area has been properly considered.

My opposition to Clause 14 standing part of the Bill is probing. The proposed financial oversight scheme for children’s social care represents part of the regulatory response to the market failures identified by the CMA. As with many parts of the Bill, much of this scheme will be set out in regulation. The scheme requires information from parent undertakings, but, as the Minister knows, private equity structures are notoriously complex and opaque. I wonder whether she is concerned whether providers might restructure to minimise oversight burden—how will the Government mitigate this? I am not clear how the scheme will address jurisdictional limitations on enforcement for offshore-based organisations. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that, or write to me if the answer is particularly technical or it is not at her fingertips. It is reasonable to question whether the DfE has or will acquire the specialised financial and private equity expertise needed to analyse complex corporate structures and financing arrangements effectively—I think this fly in the Chamber has been sent in by a private equity firm.

Similarly, is the Minister confident that local authorities have the capability to respond to advance warning notices? Is she concerned that the act of alerting local authorities about the financial fragility of a provider could lead to them withdrawing placements, leading to the financial collapse that the scheme seeks to avoid? I would be grateful if she could set out how the Government think that the contingency planning will work. I wonder whether the Government have had conversations with providers about how they expect to create realistic plans, given the prevailing market conditions. Surely existing supply shortages will make rapid replacement extremely difficult, and emergency placement costs are already unsustainable.

There are a lot of questions about the impact that this will have on the shape of the market. Will it actually result in more concentration in the market, because the 40 largest providers will have gained the confidence of local authorities? Could it result in financial pressures on smaller providers where there is less transparency?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts
Tuesday 17th June 2025

(3 weeks, 5 days ago)

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Baroness Spielman Portrait Baroness Spielman (Con)
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I shall speak to several amendments—to Amendment 170, on a capacity plan, and to Amendment 134B, on planning. I declare my interest as a former Ofsted chief inspector, where I spoke repeatedly over seven years about the issues with sufficiency in many parts of the country, and the urgency of taking action to enable homes to open in the places where they were needed.

I support what my noble friend Lady Evans just said, and I will not cover the same points about planning. I will say that the most acute need is partly in the most expensive areas, for obvious reasons, and partly for the children with the highest needs, for whom it is most difficult to configure, recruit, train and get a home open where we need it, when the children are there. We need planning for high needs. I stress that capacity planning should pay particular attention to the very high-needs children, whose care accounts for a startlingly large proportion of the total spend on care, and whose needs, in the main, are predictable, if not from birth then from very early in life. There is a high level of certainty of that being needed all the way through their childhood, and many of them will, sadly, also be in care homes in their adult lives. We need that focus and urgency to do everything that can be done, and to think intelligently, sufficiently far in advance, to enable homes to open so that, at the point and age at which children need them, they can move to somewhere within a reasonable distance of home.

I reassure the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler- Sloss, that the existence of children in unregistered accommodation is a serious concern to Ofsted. We spent a significant amount of our resources on putting pressure on those accepting placements of children to register as children’s homes, as they should.

I will speak briefly on a couple of other points. I support the boarding proposal for those for whom such schools are genuinely the right place; it is a way to create stability and a strong partnership with foster parents to make something more stable and enduring—in certain cases. The principle that it should at least be considered is important. I also support Amendment 165. As others, including my noble friend Lady Sanderson have said, that seems so obvious that one cannot imagine that it is not happening everywhere already.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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I support Amendment 119, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, about the availability of boarding places. I do so as a former south London boy who was, rather unexpectedly, because of family circumstances, sent away to a boarding school—with, I believe, considerable financial help. Pretty much every child in care I have ever spoken to, when I have asked them, as I tend to do when I meet them, what the biggest issue facing them is, replies that it is the lack of a constant adult in their lives—the revolving door of people responsible for them. This leaves issues of lack of trust, which can stay with such children all their lives.

In a boarding school, a child has a constant adult—often a housemaster or mistress. I accept that it might not be appropriate for all children, but I agree that children should be offered it. It can be a very inexpensive way in which to look after these children, although obviously that is only a secondary consideration. I have seen the benefit of this in many cases of young people who have experienced boarding, thanks to the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation.

I support the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and others about unregistered settings and about children being sent away many miles from their home.

Lord Storey Portrait Lord Storey (LD)
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My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, that all these amendments would enhance the life chances and life opportunities of looked-after children, and they should be seriously considered.

In the 21st century, the words “unregistered” or “unregulated” should never enter into our dialogue or vocabulary. It is not acceptable for our schools or our children; whether it is an unregulated school or an unregulated home, it should not exist. I wish that I had signed the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and I apologise for not doing so. The noble Lord is absolutely right to call it scandalous. Noble Lords should have a look at the BBC “Panorama” programme from two or three years ago that looked at looked-after children in unregulated schools. Never mind caravans—some of them were being housed in barges. Imagine that in the winter. Unregulated provision is never inspected, and anything can go on in them. The children are not safe—we should not allow it to happen. Of course, Ofsted does not inspect them either. We owe it to our children to give them something better than that. I agree with my noble friend Lady Tyler that we cannot do that overnight, but we can make a stand and say that we are not going to have children in unregistered provision and we will phase it out. That would be a testimony to the current Government.

On Amendment 129 from my noble friend Lady Tyler, to which I added my name, everything that she says almost ties in with that of the noble Lord, Lord Watson; they are very similar on what they say.

I turn to Amendment 119 from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew. I think that the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Bennett, are looking at a stereotypical view of boarding schools. I would like to take them both to Liverpool College, which was an independent school and is now an academy, and where the local authority buys in places for looked-after children. The children get accommodation of high quality, but they also get adults who properly look after them, and they get sport and they get clubs and activities as well as outdoor pursuits. What is more, they go to the school and get fantastic results. I agree that not every boarding school would be suitable, but if it is a choice between being on a barge or in a caravan or some other dump, as some of the unregistered schools are, a boarding school would be a better prospect.

I had not thought about the link between schools, GPs and looked-after children moving into a particular area. Presumably, in a digital age, when we are about to move to a new registration system, probably linked to NHS numbers, there is a real opportunity for us to be very joined up. When children move into those areas, the doctor and the school will be notified, and it can only benefit the child as well.

I like the idea from the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, of a national plan to ensure that there are sufficient places for children and we are not in the same position that we are in currently. We cannot wave a magic wand and expect this to happen overnight, but all of us in this Chamber want the same thing—we want the best possible opportunities for children, including registered schools and proper provision properly inspected. As we have said time and again, we also want the children to be as close to their locality and their family and friends as possible.

Free Schools and Academies

Lord Nash Excerpts
Thursday 23rd January 2025

(5 months, 2 weeks ago)

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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Future Academies, a multi-academy trust with 10 schools in London and Hertfordshire, 7,000 pupils and a SCITT teacher-training facility. I support the child protection elements in the Bill and commend the Government for bringing them forward so swiftly, but I do not support the academy and free school elements.

I am a child of Labour. I owe my place in your Lordships’ House to the Labour Party as my wife and I, via the charity we established, were appointed in 2008 by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as sponsors of a failing school, Pimlico, just down the river. That drew me further and further into education. Since then, Future has made it its mission to take on failing schools and has set up a new outstanding primary school. We also have a particular emphasis on a very strong extracurricular programme—extra sport, music, drama, trips and residentials—and a very strong careers offer.

All our schools are now rated good or outstanding except one, which is acknowledged by Ofsted to be rapidly working its way towards “good” and one we took on only a few weeks ago. Our most recent success, Phoenix Academy in Hammersmith—in special measures when we took it over—has a 50% pupil premium cohort, largely drawn from the White City estate. It recently received “outstanding” from Ofsted in all grades and is now in the top 2% of schools by progress in the country.

All of this is thanks to our superb staff. Working in a MAT, our most effective school leaders can paint on a broader canvas, rather than just running one school, as was the case under the previous highly fragmented school system. We are also able to employ very well-qualified people in the centre on finance, HR, IT and estates. Our outstanding SCITT trains teachers in our pedagogy and knowledge-rich curriculum, and we can offer our staff excellent career development opportunities to work in different schools. Indeed, they often say that one of the best aspects of working in a MAT is having strong career development opportunities, which they could not have when they worked in a single school. Our heads often say that, when they ran one school, they used to lose all their best staff because they could not offer them those opportunities. We also have a curriculum centre that provides teacher resources and greatly assists our teachers’ workload.

Across the country, there are many MATs using their freedoms to dramatically improve the life chances of their children. The Labour Party should be rightly proud of this, as it started the programme. My grandmother used to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I look forward to the Minister giving us her evidence-based reasons why the Government seek to change the system. I am also concerned about the weak and optional nature of the intervention powers envisaged, which seem a licence for endless JRs. I say that as someone who was JR’d up to the Court of Appeal—and that was after the objectors broke into my office. Surely, we do not want to go back to those days.

The sector is in shock, confusion and worry about the proposed changes coming, as they do, without any consultation, ahead of both a new Ofsted framework and a curriculum and assessment review. This is leaving a total lack of clarity concerning accountability and intervention, described by one school leader to me as leaving them trying to put the tail on the donkey. I urge the Government to think again.

Lastly, Future Academies runs the Government’s Latin excellence programme, under which we have brought Latin to 40 schools not previously offering it and 8,000 pupils. Unhappily, the Government plan to curtail this programme next month, half way through the school year, leaving those schools stranded. Many schools will not be able to offer Latin going forward and pupils may not be able to complete their GCSEs. I have written to the Minister about this. I understand that a meeting with the Secretary of State is being organised and this may involve a number of high-profile figures who are very concerned about the matter. I would be grateful if the Minister could facilitate this meeting with the relevant school leaders from Future Academies as a matter of urgency.

Lord Grocott Portrait Lord Grocott (Lab)
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My Lords, I say very briefly that amid the myriad arguments on this group and, indeed, throughout the Bill, there is, if it does not sound too pompous, a philosophical difference, to put it mildly, about academies and their role. I have to say I particularly like my noble friend Lord Hunt’s Amendment 1, with its

“strategic policy on parental and community engagement”,

and I very much like the proposed new clause in Amendment 5 from my noble friends on the Front Bench, particularly proposed new subsection (2)(b)(iii) and (iv), which refers to

“the duty to cooperate with the local authority in school admissions; the duty to cooperate with the local authority in school place planning”.

That seems to be where the divide is: whether you see these academies as part of the community and to a degree answerable to the community, with community involvement, or as islands, looking after their own interests and without any requirement to be part of the whole. We will no doubt have that debate in whatever time is allowed when the Bill comes back to us from the Commons—if it gets that far.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of a multi-academy trust, Future Academies, and a trustee of the Education Policy Institute. I am no expert on parliamentary procedure and will not comment on the discussions on it so far, but I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on listening to the concerns expressed across your Lordships’ House and by the sector, and on her approach. I will reserve judgment on any clauses that come back in whatever way until I see them, but I am delighted that my noble friend and her department will now engage widely with the sector and others. I also endorse her and my noble friend Lord Baker’s point that there are other very important parts of this Bill; for instance, on children missing from education, home education and illegal settings, which are long overdue for legislation.

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Portrait Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
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My Lords, having listened to everything that has been said, it is very tempting to rub salt in the wound, but I will resist.

We are of course pleased that the Government have agreed to withdraw Clauses 1 to 18, but note that they had no other option. At first, we wondered how this had happened. I now do not think that this was just poor drafting; I think that the Government did not know what they intended to do with this Bill. I think there was a legislative slot marked “Schools Bill” and this Bill was tabled. It should never have been tabled as it was.

Things have been said about what might have happened had this Bill been presented in the Commons. Obviously, none of us knows. I like to think that that would not have happened, because someone would have seen its deficiencies and intercepted it. All the problems we have managed to surface through our deliberations—the lack of plan, the lack of vision and there being none of the pre-legislative scrutiny that ought to have taken place and which will now take place half way through the Bill’s progress, over the summer—would have been exposed.

It is very sad that we have come to this because, as the Minister rightly reminds us, there are parts of the Bill—those looking at children not in school and illegal schools—whose implementation may be delayed, as it is not clear that we will get this Bill back as quickly as we might have done had it not been presented in the way it was. Quite a lot of work will now have to take place. It has obviously been an appalling process. It is heartening to know that noble Lords are not used to being treated this way and that we should not expect this from the Government in future.

Some colleagues have referred to Amendment 5 tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Wilcox. To be clear, we did not table this imagining that it would be a favourite of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, or anyone else. The point was to demonstrate that the Government could have proceeded in another way. We will not push it to a vote, but it was tabled to show that you can go about these things in a much better way. There could and should have been much more clarity on what the Government wanted to do.

It is worth taking this opportunity to speak a little about this amendment—I will not go on—to make it clear where these Benches stand on some of the issues of substance that have come before us. It is important that we do that because, although the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and I have found common cause through the passage of this Bill so far, we have done so for very different reasons. It is important that we are upfront and clear about that—he would expect nothing different from me.

The first and most important line in the amendment is:

“Following the completion of the Academies Regulatory and Commissioning Review”.

Nothing should have been tabled along these lines until that review was complete. I welcome the fact that the Government now share that view; it is a shame that we have had to do it in the way that we have.

I want to highlight six points that we on these Benches feel are quite important and that we need clarity on so that we know where we stand. The first is the way that academies handle complaints. Then there are the minimum qualifications required by teaching staff; you will see that this amendment complements other amendments that we have tabled around complaints, admissions and qualified teacher status. We have included adherence to national agreements achieved thorough negotiating bodies for minimum standards of pay, terms and conditions of employment, trade union recognition, adherence to the national curriculum, and, importantly, a duty to co-operate with the local authority on school admissions.

That is where these Benches are coming from on this issue. We understand that that will be very different from where other noble Lords might be coming from, but we are not having a big row among ourselves on these issues. It pleases me no end to say that that is going to be the problem of the Minister when she devises her new clauses for us to consider, perhaps later in the year.

It is clearly not satisfactory that the Government intend to come back to us with these new clauses without us having had the opportunity to debate and vote on them in the way that we would have done had this process been a more normal one. Let us see what the usual channels come up with when they consider that point; it is a point that has been very well made, and one that everyone understands. It is very unfortunate that we have got to the situation that we have, but we are interested to hear about what the Minister wants to do over the summer, using the time that she has, to consult and engage with the relevant stakeholders.

I worry that, again, this is going to be rushed. The idea that some sort of consensus will emerge at the end of it is probably unrealistic. With a likely change of Secretary of State, we just do not know, from what the Minister has said in the past, where we are going to be led with this. It would be helpful if she could talk to us about the people who are going to be involved, the finer points of that process and what she expects. If we are right, and the Government did not know what they intended when they tabled this Bill and need to go through that process now, it is unlikely that the Minister at this point knows what the outcome is going to be, otherwise that is what would have been tabled in the first place. The more she could say about that at this stage, the better.

We will not be pressing our Amendment 5 to a vote, but it is really important that the House is clear where these Benches are coming from and how we would have approached this issue.

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Moved by
12: Leave out Clause 6

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Nash Excerpts
Baroness Berridge Portrait Baroness Berridge (Con)
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My Lords, I want to raise a point probably connected to the comments of my noble friend Lord Baker, which may help my noble friend the Minister. I raised on the first day in Committee the consideration of the legal vehicle that we are dealing with here, which is potentially affected when you move from the bilateral to the unilateral, and any implications for not just charitable status but the role of charity trustees, as well as that of company directors, as in most cases these are charitable companies. I know that my noble friend intends to write to me, but it may be that the comments that follow from that have a connected purpose to what my noble friend Lord Baker has said in relation to any effects on the charitable purpose as well as the vehicle. We are dealing with a legal entity, and the implications for that need to be fully considered in the change from a bilateral contract to the unilateral situation that my noble friend proposes.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I declare my interests as a chair of an academy trust and as a trustee of the Education Policy Institute.

I shall give a little background on trustees and their role and recruitment. When I became an academies Minister in 2013, it was clear that the very good initiative started by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—who I see is not in his place—to find academy sponsors, such as myself and my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Baker, had been put very much on the back burner by officials in the rush to academise; it took a very long time to warm these people up and it was a long process. I said I did not care how long it took to warm these people up; we must have this process. I did not care if we got chucked out of government and the Labour Party came back in and used all the people that we had found—good luck; it is a very noble purpose.

As it happened, we did not find too many nutters like myself and my noble friend Lord Agnew who were prepared to go from a standing start to being full academy sponsors in one move, but we found hundreds, if not now thousands, of people who were prepared to go on the boards of multi-academy trusts as non-executive directors, pro bono, to serve a very good public purpose. I wonder how many we would have found if they knew they could be chucked out by the DfE at its whim.

Lord Addington Portrait Lord Addington (LD)
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My Lords, it is really something for me to say that I agree with most of the noble Lords opposite on this. It is a very odd Bill and a very odd process that we are going through today.

One question that comes to mind when we look at all these amendments is this: could the Minister give us a rough idea where the Minister’s power to make a decision without consultation has been increased or decreased? If there is anywhere that that power has been decreased, I would be very glad to hear about it. But if it is only the case that “We will make something without going through a consultation process”, surely that shows up one of the major flaws in the Bill.

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Lord Triesman Portrait Lord Triesman (Lab)
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My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 169. I express my gratitude to both Ministers on the Government Front Bench for a very helpful conversation. In the course of what they will say, they may well be able to allay some of the anxieties that I have expressed about the position of adopted children in the past. I greatly appreciated that, and want my appreciation recorded.

Amendment 169 is not about the big issues on admission which we have been discussing, although I completely associate myself—if I can pick just one of my noble colleagues—with my noble friend Lady Morris about geographic and local coherence in the arrangements we make. This amendment may appear to be a small and detailed matter by comparison, but I can assure the Committee that it is of the first importance to the small number of people who are impacted by it. Amendment 169 addresses the difference in educational access and assistance experienced by children adopted from care internationally, contrasted with those who are adopted from care in the United Kingdom, and the impact of these differences on their education and life prospects.

I declare an interest as the proud father of a quite exceptional adopted daughter who became part of our family on the third day of her life and is a great blessing. When I first spoke about this matter in the House, she was 10; she is now 13 and, until the discussion I had today, it appeared to me that nothing had moved forward in those three years of her life. However, I think that we will hear something rather more different today.

Adopted children face many challenges which are well documented. Many have special needs, some far greater than others, and, in many cases, because some spend years in care before finding a loving family home, they experience many of these difficulties to a very great extent. The care they experience is of very mixed quality, especially abroad, and they carry that experience alongside the fundamental experience of loss of attachment throughout their lives. There are multiple studies in the leading peer-reviewed journal, Adoption & Fostering, which most Members of the House will feel establishes the facts beyond dispute. The impact on these children has also been largely experienced by children from particular countries: China, India, Thailand, Ethiopia, Guatemala and some from Russia. As your Lordships will easily detect, the impact of discrimination has therefore been far greater on children of colour.

The scheme of intercountry adoption is regulated by the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption 1993. It was ratified by this country, among the then 24 EU members, and it says that all children adopted from care overseas should have the same rights as those in the receiving countries. There was nothing at all unwilling about our participation, and I note that David Cameron was in the forefront of making all kinds of adoption, here and abroad, easier. I hope that in the course of this discussion, we will hear about changes being made to the School Admissions Code, so that it will require local authorities and other admissions bodies to give the same top priority for pupil places to children adopted from state care in this country.

In case it is not well understood, although I suspect that it will be, I add that most of the children who are adopted from overseas, once they are adopted, come here and become United Kingdom citizens. The question on their parents’ minds will be, “Why on earth would they have worse prospects than comparable United Kingdom citizens?”. It is acknowledged that this would be discrimination between kids adopted here and overseas, and it would violate the 2010 Equality Act which states in terms that there must be no discrimination in school admissions based on country of origin.

The data is strong. While I will not delay the Committee for long, it is always worth trying to use an occasion like this to underpin why the changes are necessary. Some 94% of peer-reviewed papers show adoption to be correlated with lower academic attainment and related behaviour problems. This is clear among very young children and gets clearer with age—it is most acute among teenagers. Of the issues faced by children, trauma around attachment and anxiety about the loss of attachment are absolutely distinct and significant in all the research. Some 80% of adopted children express profound confusion and anxiety at school; two-thirds report that they are bullied. Neither they nor their parents feel, in an overwhelming proportion of cases, that they have had an equal chance. To underline the point as thoroughly as I can: adopted children are 20 times more likely to be excluded than their classmates. In the first three years of primary school, they are 16 times more likely to be excluded. None of these data are spurious; they all meet high levels of statistical significance and confidence.

I was very grateful to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said a while ago about the role of parents, because I feel that I am talking about the same thing. It is inevitable in these circumstances—and I believe quite rightly—that parents have the central role. It is not a mainstream role for national or local government for obvious reasons, but I know first-hand that parents pay the closest attention to the attributes in the pool of school options in front of them. Parents are the ones who interact with the schools and local authority. I promise you that, as a parent, you come to know which schools are most attuned to social and emotional trauma issues, can sponsor and encourage executive functioning for your child, know about providing sensory diets to regulate behaviour and grasp the implications of neurological divergence. You form self-help groups of parents grappling with these issues where you learn a lot and enjoy a lot of support. You get to know—because you have to—where there is specific training and knowledge of attachment trauma and where the head teacher and specialist staff really know what they are doing, as distinct from knowing what they should be doing. It is the way in which you choose the mission-critical path for your child and it does not rely then on good luck in admissions. It is parent engagement and decision-making at its clearest.

Many schools are excellent at many other things, but they are not all necessarily excellent at everything and may not be excellent at this vital thing which I am describing, which could determine whether your child joins that absurdly high number of kids who get excluded or bullied, underachieve or are profoundly miserable. It matters not one whit to you whether your child was adopted from here or abroad.

I look forward to what the Minister will be able to say but, having commented on the Ministers in this House, I say that much of the running on this was made by Nick Gibb when he was Schools Minister. He told local authorities in December 2017 that they should include children adopted overseas for priority admission to schools identified by their parents to give the kids the best chance. Unfortunately, a significant number of local authorities would not take that advice from the Minister for Schools, which I think was very sad. But we are now in a position where we have a ministerial team that will, and I sincerely welcome that. I also welcome that there will be further thought on the pupil premium plus, which is also very significant for this group of students, and hope there will be further comment on that.

It turns out that we did not need, as I thought for some years we did, primary legislation to achieve the things that I think can be described by Ministers today. I welcome that for a very straightforward reason that is not all that much to do with personal experience, although of course that does bear on me. I welcome it because kids get one chance, and kids who have difficulties need all the help they can to take that chance. It is up to us to give it to them.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in this amendment. I have great respect for people who adopt. I personally support a wonderful organisation called Hope and Homes for Children, which has closed many orphanages in eastern European countries and allowed the children to be effectively adopted—it is not quite the terminology that most of these countries use. I took the Children and Families Act through your Lordships’ House, which was very substantially about improving adoption arrangements. I remember the noble Lord raising this point with me when I was a Minister. It seemed a no-brainer then and it seems to be so now, and I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will support him in making this amendment.

I would also like to speak briefly on the point about academies fixing their admissions arrangements to their advantage, which has been mentioned. As a rule, this is unfair. There are some schools—schools of different types, actually—which have rather complicated admissions arrangements and one sometimes wonders whether they are deliberately complicated. But, as I say, I think it is unfair on the vast majority of academies and multi-academy trusts.

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Portrait Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
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It is pleasure to follow the recent speakers, particularly my noble friend Lord Triesman. That was an exceptional speech and his personal experience really gave us food for thought. I echo what the noble Lord opposite said about people who take that life-changing decision for themselves and their families to adopt. I too am looking forward to what the Minister has to say in response.

I would also like to support my noble friend Lord Hunt and others in their desire for the Government to commit to the existing position on no new grammar schools. We understand that the Prime Minister is in generous mood with his Back-Benchers at the moment, and it would be a real shame for a change to the current rules to be made in that context. We are concerned about that, given some of the comments referenced by others, and want to make sure that it does not happen.

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Lord Agnew of Oulton Portrait Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
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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.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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I support my noble friend. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Blunkett, that if a teacher has been teaching in the private sector for 20 years and is well qualified in their subject—through university and through practising it for 20 years—are we really going to make them take a course for nine months, at the end of which there are no exams, so that they are qualified to teach? I think we need to be a little more flexible about this.

Baroness Morris of Yardley Portrait Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
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Just to add to that, I think there are—or there used to be—ways for teachers moving from the independent sector to the state sector which were far less than nine months.

I take the point about a subject like IT. I absolutely agree with the amendment: teaching is a profession, and all the evidence internationally shows that the better qualified the teacher, the better the achievement for students. That is what this is all about. But if the problem is that, in a fast-moving world, there are a set of skills such as IT that people need to come into education to deliver, there needs to be another way of meeting that need and getting those people in rather than saying to the whole of the school system that teachers do not have to have a qualification. This is not being used to get people with specialist IT skills into schools to help children. It is being used by headteachers and schools where they cannot get staff with qualifications in front of children in classrooms, so they go for those without qualifications.

Although I share with the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, the wish to get the latest skills into the classroom without making people do a year-long PGCE, we just need a bit more creative thinking in order to make that happen. It cannot be that we go back to a profession that not only is not a graduate-level profession but is not a qualified profession at all. The message that gives is something that none of us who are committed to the education of children ought to support.

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Lord Baker of Dorking Portrait Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
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My Lords, I agree with everything that the noble Baroness said; I congratulate her on saying it.

May I express the hope, which I think is in the interests of many people, that we might finish these clause stand part debates before the dinner hour? Every morning, as I leave my apartment to come to the House of Lords, my wife waves me away with the comment, “Don’t speak too much.” So I do not expect to elaborate again all the points that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, made. In fact, I do not intend to move my stand part notices for Clauses 8 to 14 at all because they use exactly corresponding words in the funding agreements. Clauses 16 to 18 are exactly the same; I do not intend to move my amendments on them in order to accelerate the movement of the House.

I will say a just few words on Clause 5, which gives the Secretary of State the power to give directions rather than advice. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and I did not have that power. I would not seek it. No Minister has had it since 1870. I do not believe that it is right for Ministers to interfere with the actual management of schools at the local level.

Clause 6 gives the Secretary of State the right to get involved in schools’ financial matters and the running of schools. Again, I do not believe that that is the right function for the Secretary of State.

Clause 7 is a significant clause because it is the one that allows the Secretary of State to appoint a new board, governor and governing body. Ministers have never had this power. In fact, the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash, operated the whole problem of failing schools very effectively by using funding agreements. I recommend that their practice should continue, and that this measure should not be attempted in the Bill.

That is all I have to say. I hope that we will be able to proceed quite quickly.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I appreciate that my noble friend the Minister is in a difficult position; I am sure that she is reflecting greatly on the points that noble Lords across the House have made. However, as we are here, I will make a few further points. Some of them might be a bit technical; I apologise if that is the case.

On Clauses 5 and 7, I should say at the outset that, as my noble friend Lord Baker said, when I and my noble friend Lord Agnew were Academies Minister—for a combined period of seven years—neither of us felt at any stage that we did not have enough shots in our locker or enough in our armoury to deal with difficult trusts. We feel that Clauses 1 to 18 are unnecessary, which is why we have joined our noble friend Lord Baker in trying to strike them out.

We will not be voting on it here in Committee, of course, but I hope that, when we get to our arguments that Clause 1 not stand part of the Bill, the Minister listens to our sweet reasonings and fundamentally changes the whole tenor of the Bill. Constitutionally, it is an abomination. We should have had consultation on it, but there has been none on it at all. This is a serious Bill, which gives Secretaries of State powers that they have never had—that I never had and that the present Secretary of State does not have—to intervene in running schools around the country. That is unacceptable and I am amazed that a Conservative Government have done it.
Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I have listened carefully to what everyone has said and do not disagree with much. I only ask what is wrong with the independent school standards, which all academies must follow. Surely this is a matter for Ofsted, not the DfE.

Lord Young of Norwood Green Portrait Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
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My Lords, I regret missing Second Reading, which, according to some noble Lords we heard today, was the DfE version of “Apocalypse Now”. Even the noble Lord, Lord Baker —I am an admirer of UTCs—joined the doomsayers then, as he reminded us again today. I am an admirer of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose advice is that

“to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”

He is probably right about that.

I am an admirer of this House when it is at its best—for example, the debates on Ukraine or on the jubilee. However, as referred to by my noble friend—he is still my friend at the moment, but might not be at the end of this contribution—the debate on the then Health and Care Bill, which was an overcomplex and lengthy Bill, brought out the House of Lords at its worst. Every hobby-horse noble Lords could ride was ridden for hours, whether on modern slavery or organ transplants, but the real challenges facing the health service seemed a sideshow, in my opinion.

Before I contribute on this Bill, I want to give your Lordships a quotation. I am always indebted to my noble friend Lord Bragg, who continues to educate me in my quest for lifelong learning. A recent programme of his was about a philosopher of whom, I must admit, I had never heard—that is probably my ignorance—a man called John Amos Comenius. He was a

“philosopher, pedagogue and theologian who is considered the father of modern education”.

What he proposed was fascinating—and bear in mind that we are talking about the 17th century:

“Comenius introduced a number of educational concepts and innovations including pictorial textbooks written in native languages instead of Latin, teaching based in gradual development from simple to more comprehensive concepts, lifelong learning with a focus on logical thinking over dull memorization, equal opportunity for impoverished children, education for women, and universal and practical instruction.”


If that had been written today, we might think it a modern prescription for education, but he arrived at it in the 17th century and travelled around advising a number of countries, so Comenius has a lot to recommend him to us and others.

I turn to my noble friend Lady Chapman’s amendment. Perversely, if we remove “may” and insert “must”, the Bill will give the Government the power grab that noble Lords are concerned about. To me, “may” means exactly that. I ask noble Lords if you really believe that the DfE has the desire or capacity to intervene in every school in the UK. Come on—even if it wanted to, it could not. That is my view, and people are free to disagree. Is this a perfect Bill? Of course it is not; that is the purpose of our debating it today.

I will just say this to the Committee. I hope this will not be a debate that says, “Academies bad, maintained schools good”, or vice versa. Actually, we have not mentioned free schools, which have made a contribution. My view about schools is that variety is not only the spice of life but makes an enormous contribution to education. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Knight reminded us, it was a Labour Government who, having seen the appalling record of maintained schools in London that were failing, introduced academies. They did a good job of changing that environment. Let us remember how important that is, because children get only that one chance. If these schools are failing, then that chance is denied them.

I was also interested when my noble friend said to trust in teachers. I do, but I will tell your Lordships who I put a bigger trust in, who I regard as the key component of any successful school: the head teacher. If you have not got the head teacher right, that school will not flourish. I will give as an example a good friend of mine, Liz Wolverson. She has recently retired, but she was the diocesan director of Church of England academy primary schools in London, in really challenging areas such as Newham, et cetera. They have rescued 10 failing schools. I asked her what her prescription was for dealing with failing schools. She said, “I go into the school, I look around, I talk to the head, to parents, to teachers and to pupils. Then I go back to the head and I say, ‘You’ve got six months to turn the school around, and if you don’t succeed, goodbye. That’s it’.” That is a tough prescription, but it is a necessary one if we care about that one main chance for our children. I believe we should.

I looked at the report from the committee referred to by my noble friend Lady Chapman, which talked about the terrible Henry VIII powers. I took that into account. It is right that the committee should draw that to our attention, but I also looked at what the Minister said to us in her reply to the debate at Second Reading, where these concerns were expressed. She said:

“My noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Lucas, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, also were concerned about the impact on the fundamental freedoms of academies. These reforms will maintain the central freedoms and autonomy of the academy programme. Our ‘strong trust’ definition and standards will set out clearly what we expect all academy trusts to deliver, but trusts remain free to design, innovate and implement operating models that they believe will deliver the best outcomes for their pupils.”—[Official Report, 23/5/22; col. 740.]


I saw that as a serious statement from the Minister. I hope she will confirm that today.

For me, that is an important pledge by the Government. I welcome the coverage, investigation and analysis of the Bill, of course I do. I am sure there are parts of this Bill that can be improved, like any Bill, but I ask the Committee to consider carefully what it is trying to do with Amendment 1. Time is not on our side. I do not accept the argument that we should throw it all out, take our summer break and then come back again. I have never seen anything that appears in front of this House that we are completely satisfied with. If there is such a thing as a perfect Bill, no doubt it exists in some other version of the universe that we have not yet encountered.

I rarely give advice, because it is freely given and freely ignored, but I participate in the Lords outreach service. It is a great institution. This Friday, I am going to speak to a Catholic academy in East Finchley. I am looking forward to this. I will get an opportunity to talk to the pupils. I like to say to them “If you were Minister for Education, tell me where you would put the money.” That always gets them going because I remind them that politics is about the language of priorities.

The other interesting thing about it is that it is a Catholic school. When I spoke to it and we got to the end of our discussion, I said, “By the way, what is your admissions policy?”, and I was told, “Anybody can come to our school. They do not have to attend a church service or anything else.” We will go on to debate faith schools, an area where I suspect there will be further disagreements. All I can say on that subject is that a large percentage of the public have faith in faith schools because they believe they deliver good education with good discipline, so they participate in them.

I hope I have not lost all my noble friends with this contribution. I seem to be the only person who has contributed so far who has given the Government the benefit of the doubt. I believe that what they are trying to do is in the interests of every Member of this House, which is to improve the quality of the education that we deliver to our children.

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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I apologise; I should have declared my interests earlier as a chair of a multi-academy trust and a trustee of the Education Policy Institute. It is not particularly helpful—I agree with a number of points that have been made—for us to argue in this Chamber about the success or failure of one type of school, but I support the noble Lord, Lord Knight. Other research I have seen recently says that MATs have done an excellent job at turning around schools that were previously failing. More than seven out of 10 academies, which had taken over schools that were formerly failing and underperforming as local authority-maintained schools, were rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding at their next inspection.

Lord Lexden Portrait Lord Lexden (Con)
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My Lords, very briefly, when my noble friend replies, could she explain to us how the matters that have been discussed proceed from the last Conservative Party manifesto and how they emanate from Conservatism, which abhors nationalisation and delights in diversity?

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I hope that the Government will reflect. We do not have much time. We rise on 21 July. That is really soon. There is little more than four weeks to do this and the Government want to get Committee through in June. It will be very difficult for them to refashion a completely new set of proposals and plans to amend the Bill so fundamentally. It might be a good idea to put off Report until the autumn so that they can reflect and focus on what is really needed to help failing schools. I hope the Minister will listen and that your Lordships will support these amendments.
Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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Although I share some of the noble Lord’s concerns about simplifying the regulatory system, as a lawyer—and, I admit, an academy sponsor—I struggle with the concept of producing legislation that overrides contracts that have been negotiated between the Government, proprietors and trusts unless absolutely necessary. The officials might say that they do not understand them because there are so many of them. Frankly, I think that they should. They are not that different. The trusts certainly understand their own individual contracts.

Before the Government seek to overturn these agreements and add a vast array of powers to them, they need to explain precisely why that is necessary, as a number of noble Lords have said. I believe that the DfE already has sufficient and substantial intervention powers and that these clauses are therefore unnecessary. As we go through the Bill clause by clause, I will articulate why I think the Government already have the powers and they need just to use them where necessary.

The MAT sector is in good shape. As my noble friend Lord Baker said, the number of cases where the DfE feels it now needs to intervene is extremely small, and the kitchen sink approach in the Bill seems like a sledgehammer/nut situation. However, if we can be satisfied that any of these clauses or something like them are necessary—it is clear that there is consensus for this across the House—we are prepared to work with the Government to craft them appropriately, but we need time to do so.

The Minister mentioned that when I took the Children and Families Bill through your Lordships’ House in 2014, we added free school meals. We had to do that because they were not covered by funding agreements. Much of what is in the Bill is already covered by funding agreements, so the Government need to explain why they need to bring in a lot of these clauses.

Baroness Blower Portrait Baroness Blower (Lab)
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My Lords, I find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I wanted to say that it was a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, but it is equally a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I have very little to say on the report since it has been covered fully by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I say in passing that the wisdom and clarity of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, was a very good contribution to the debate.

As we have heard from all sides of the Committee, the extremely long, but apparently inexhaustive, list in Clause 1 appears to be overreach at an extraordinary level. As was said at Second Reading and earlier today, it is really a power grab by the DfE without any real understanding of what the purpose of all these things then residing with the Secretary of State would be. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, they are things that have never been seen. It is remarkable. It would be remarkable for school governors and staff to think that head teachers were going to be appointed in Sanctuary Buildings. It seems so remarkable as to beggar belief. These are unacceptable propositions.

As I thought about speaking today, I reflected that when I started teaching in the early 1970s, we thought of and talked about education as a national service locally delivered. That is what I would like to continue to see it as. I think all noble Lords would agree that the aspiration of the education service in England should be a good local school for every child. That seems to chime both with the title of the White Paper, Opportunity for All: Strong Schools with Great Teachers for your Child, and with the SEND Review: Right Support Right Place Right Time—it does not say local, but it has that sense of local.

Where is the local dimension in Clause 1? It is absent. It resides with the Secretary of State. Some matters are best dealt with at national level—my noble friend Lord Knight referred to one—such as remuneration, salaries, conditions of service, pensions and so on. That means that there would be coherence across teaching and education staff nationally, which has massive advantages because it means that teachers are free to move around the country and take their expertise from one place to another. In particular, when thinking about women teachers, it means that they do not have to worry when they move from one school to another about what their situation might be with, for example, access to maternity leave and maternity pay. However, if all these things are different, as they are at the moment, that is a significant problem. Clearly there are things which would be better done at national level, although it is my contention that salaries, pensions and conditions of service would be much better done through a framework of sectoral collective bargaining rather than by being imposed by the Secretary of State.

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Baroness Blower Portrait Baroness Blower (Lab)
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My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to Amendments 23, 24, 25 and 27, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 26, which, alas, I overlooked but with which I absolutely agree. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the APPG for Parental Participation in Education. The bulk of these amendments are obviously about the role that parents could and should have in their children’s schooling. It simply cannot be right that the voice of parents is absent from the fora in which important decisions are made. These amendments provide the opportunity to fill what I hope the Minister will acknowledge is a gap in the Bill.

Amendment 24 sets out the requirement for community engagement to make sure that it is not overlooked but is indeed strategic and effective, supported by the requirement in Amendment 26 for a parental council, for which I am sure all noble Lords would like to thank my noble friend Lord Knight.

Amendment 25 deals with local governance in the round to ensure that each constituent academy of a MAT has a local governing body, to which at least two parent governors should be elected. This seems to me an absolutely basic and essential requirement because if these things are done without parents, then when we want their help they will feel on the outside rather than being part of what is going on in those schools.

Amendment 27 is crucial to the local dimension of academies in a MAT. I am bound to say—I have some experience of this because it is going on at the moment—that it is all too easy when an individual school or academy is in the process, with a representative of a MAT, of their school possibly being absorbed into that MAT for it to be told in response to a variety of questions: “Yes, of course, that is an individual school decision.” That comes in response to a range of things that might be asked by parents or indeed staff. The fact is, however, that it is not clear that it necessarily will be an individual school decision, unless there is some requirement for it to be so.

Amendment 27 sets out the requirement that a multi-academy trust must devolve some responsibilities to the governing bodies of individual academies within the trust. That seems only sensible. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, that there was a trust with two schools in Norwich, one with presumably a relatively white demographic and one not too far away that was completely different. The noble Lord said that 25 languages were represented, which suggests a slightly different demographic. So of course, it has to be that some of those things are school-level decisions because the constituent schools are different institutions. It is central that local decision-making and engagement should be carried out by that local governing body.

The responsibilities suggested are all specific and ensure that each school within the MAT has the authority to determine, within its own local context, its strategic direction. The parties involved in a particular school would see these responsibilities as entirely appropriate and better held at the individual institution level. One example in particular is

“the professional autonomy of teachers over curriculum and content”.

This is not to say that each individual teacher goes in and does whatever they like; it is about developing curriculum content within the particular context of the school and with other teachers. In a primary school, it would be likely to be the whole school. In a secondary school, it might be at department level. It is logical to protect the professional autonomy of teachers so that they can make choices about curriculum content and, in particular, that they can make some decisions about pedagogy.

Most schools—obviously, I cannot speak for them all—would say that they are proud of their distinctive ethos. It is something all schools say. It is why it was quite appalling that someone once said “bog-standard comprehensive”. There is no such thing; there are schools that have differing ethoses. This amendment would ensure that the enhancement of that ethos would be with the local governing body and would be its responsibility—a local governing body, where all the voices of all the stakeholders would be able to be heard. Taken together, the amendments in this group could provide a significant improvement to what we have heard this evening is not, as it stands, a particularly good Bill.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I will comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about the benefits for an outstanding school of moving into a multi-academy trust, given that it is already outstanding. One of the biggest benefits for schools in multi-academy trusts is the career development opportunities for teachers. Lots of multi-academy trusts are now run by people who used to run one school and now run a group of schools. They consistently tell me that, although it did not necessarily occur to them when they got involved in MATs, the best benefit was career development opportunities for teachers. They used to lose all their best staff when they ran one school because they had no career pathway for them. Now they can give them career pathways. They can identify their rising stars and move them around. That is a major benefit.

Baroness Blower Portrait Baroness Blower (Lab)
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I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I had the experience of being a teacher from the early 1970s and what the noble Lord describes in a multi-academy trust is exactly what happened in many local authorities. There were many teachers—for example, primary teachers—who did not particularly want to go into management but had a particularly useful skill to spread around. They could be seconded from their school to the local authority to work in lots of different schools, enhance the skills base of their colleagues and perhaps enhance their own leadership skills. I recognise exactly what the noble Lord is saying, but that was entirely possible in local authorities prior to the MAT arrangements.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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I do not doubt that, but it is unlikely that in a local authority you would have a person working in one organisation who could be developed thoroughly by that one organisation. You may have people in the local authority who know who their stars are, but they are all in different schools, so I would say that this method is even better.

The other area where multi-academy trusts can greatly help teachers is in their workload, by developing curriculum and teaching resources that teachers can use in the workplace. I am sure that in schools that the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, was involved in there was not a question of everybody doing what they liked but, sadly, if we go back in the school system many years, that was exactly what did happen all too often when every school—if not every classroom—was a little island. There was too much freedom and too many teachers were, frankly, having to develop their curriculum resources from scratch. That is a real challenge for young teachers. One great advantage is teacher development. There are the other advantages, but I would say, therefore, that a school that is outstanding may well have a greater chance of staying outstanding working in a multi-academy trust.

The Marshalled List says that this group has been marshalled additionally in relation to Clauses 5, 6 and 7, so I will now briefly talk about those clauses. I said earlier that I would comment on why a number of individual clauses were unnecessary. Clause 5—

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Portrait Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
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My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but is that right? I thought that the Questions that Clauses 5, 6 and 7 stand part were in a further group.

Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Con)
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I believe that is currently group 9, which we would reach on a future day. Of course, future days’ groupings are finalised, before they take place, with those involved.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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Perhaps my noble friend can help me with the fact that Amendments 39A, 39B and 39C are not on this Marshalled List at all.

Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Con)
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I believe that may be because they have been submitted later in the process. They will go through the grouping process through the usual channels and will be reached for debate in Committee, just not now.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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Then I will defer to the noble Lord, Lord Knight.

Lord Knight of Weymouth Portrait Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
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Only if the noble Lord has finished; I do not mean to interrupt.

This is a really important debate on a very important set of amendments. They are essentially about two issues: parental involvement in the running of schools at a local level and whether every academy should have a local governing body. I see the two as being slightly different issues.

I support Amendment 23, and I probably support Amendments 24 and 26 as well. In thinking about this, I thought it might be worth telling the story of two multi-academy trusts. I know about one only through an article in Schools Week, so I therefore do not claim to really know anything about it at all and can only repeat what I have read. The other is the academy trust that I chair.

The Anglian Learning academy trust won the National Governance Association award for outstanding governance this year. I understand that it has 14 schools and its CEO, Jon Culpin, talks about empowering local governing bodies, not fearing them. His approach is that every academy in the trust has a local governing body, and it works very well. My understanding from reading about it is that the MAT board very much looks after the core operational side of the business—the finances and the schools’ capital—to take that burden away from the school business managers and heads. The heads then lead the teaching and learning on a school-by-school basis in conjunction with their local governing body. That works very successfully for them, by and large.

In one or two cases, they have had to essentially impose interim executive bodies as a MAT board because they have not been able to appoint local governing bodies, they have struggled to recruit, or there has been a problem. By and large, that has worked very well for them, and that sense of being really clear about where the MAT board adds value, and where a local governing body adds value, is important when thinking about this relationship and this issue around local governing bodies. Of course, parents would have been represented on every one of those 14 local governing bodies.

Long before I was involved in E-ACT, the previous CEO but one inherited the situation where a significant majority of our 28 schools were failing and were in low Ofsted categories—I think that maybe 25% were not. It was in a pretty poor state, academically as well as financially. I am sure that it was bleeping very largely on the radar of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, when he was the Academies Minister at the time. At that point, it had local governing bodies in each of the schools. However, the decision was made by the then CEO to remove all those local governing bodies because he had to make a lot of difficult decisions very quickly to turn around the finances of the organisation and the educational performance of the schools. As a result, we currently have no local governing bodies and I am effectively—in legal terms—the chair of governors of 28 schools. That is quite a considerable pro bono burden on my time, as counsel any Members of your Lordships’ House who are thinking of doing this. I get all sorts of letters from Ofsted and the department on all sorts of things about which, frankly, it is very difficult for me to know exactly what is going on, because they are about individual schools. I do not think that this situation is ideal either.

We have local ambassador groups in each of the 28 schools. The latest version of the academies handbook is encouraging us further around parental involvement and hearing from every one of those local ambassador groups if we do not have parental trustees on the trust board. I perceive quite an encouragement from the department for us to do that. In the next round of recruiting trustees, I am very keen that we should recruit parental trustees. This is why, in the end, I support Amendment 23 and have put my name to it. This is probably an issue for the articles of association—the department can then advise us on how they should be updated—rather than standards in the Bill. Nevertheless, that is a technicality, and it has allowed us to have this debate.

One of the other problems that exists when you have a large, geographically dispersed MAT, like this one, is that the trust board cannot possibly know all the details about what is happening in all 28 of those schools and communities. Therefore, it must delegate quite a lot of governance function to the executive leadership team, and there is a danger that they are then marking their own homework on some of the decisions they are making. That is another difficulty and tension within the system as it is currently constructed.

One of the things we are doing in my particular MAT is commissioning an independent external review of governance to see how we can resolve some of these tensions. I hope that we can do this. I do not want to anticipate how that will end up, but I want to ensure that we end up with better local intelligence at a board level about what is going on, so that we are cognisant of the culture and the views of parents. When I last visited our two academies in Sheffield, I had a great meeting with our ambassador groups; they are all parents, and I had great feedback and input from them around what was going on in those two schools. In the end, however, I do not think it is quite enough.

Does that mean that I think that we should impose local governing bodies on every single school, even though I agree that it is perfectly reasonable to have two trustees who are parents on the main trust board? If they were local governing bodies, they would have to have two parental trustees on each one, so to aggregate that up to two out of 28 does not seem unreasonable. However, I do not, in the end, agree that we should impose local governing bodies in every case. There are circumstances, such as the one that happened at E-ACT some time ago, where we might want to be able to impose things while we turn things around and sort problems out, and then, hopefully, have the maturity and the reflection to decide, “Okay, we now have everything running well”—as, by and large, we do at E-ACT—“and now might be the time for us to re-empower schools and re-empower governance at a local level.” However, I am not sure that a blanket approach is appropriate. It is appropriate for the MAT board and the central MAT team, particularly around the educational activity in schools, to have more of an attitude that they are servants of the schools and not the masters of the schools—culturally, that is better—but there are other operational aspects where we want to be the masters, because in the end we can move resources around and sort things out. It is going to be different on a case-by-case basis.

So, in the end, my counsel to your Lordships is not to go with the imposition of every academy having to have a local governing body, but to ensure that we have better parental representation across the piece than we might have at the moment.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Nash Excerpts
2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part two
Monday 23rd May 2022

(3 years, 1 month ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, I declare my interests as a sponsor and chair of Future Academies and a trustee of the Education Policy Institute. Unsurprisingly, I am delighted that the Government are promoting multi-academy trusts, with all the benefits of schools working together in groups. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who is not in her place, for her kind words in this regard.

The benefits are not just the obvious ones of economies of scale, efficiencies and an ability to standardise procedures; I believe that the biggest benefit is in improving the career development opportunities of teachers. MAT leaders who formerly ran one school consistently tell me that, when they did so, they used to lose all of their good people. Now, they can offer them clear career development pathways and promote them, and help develop teachers’ careers in this way. They can offer them evidence-informed CPD and, increasingly, we are seeing MATs providing their teachers with excellent teaching resources that greatly reduce their workload and enable them to focus on delivery and the very difficult task of differentiation between pupils of different abilities. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, that I have taught, and I found it absolutely terrifying at times.

Much in the Bill is good. However, while I agree that the Government need powers to intervene in the event of what my noble friend the Minister describes as the “serious failure” of MATs, the Bill purports to go far further than that. The academy and MATs sector is very concerned about the far-reaching, vague and potentially draconian provisions that the Government appear to be seeking in the Bill in relation to intervention powers. They are effectively seeking to tear up many of the existing funding agreements, which are clear contractual arrangements, and to give themselves the power to tear up the rest of them for any breach whatever, apparently, and replace them with vague and draconian powers, and to give the Secretary of State very wide powers indeed to set standards.

This appears to be an attempt by the department to micromanage schools, which it is ill equipped to do and which should be left to education professionals. It is an attempt to drive a coach and horses through academies’ fundamental freedoms. This is a long way from intervention powers for “serious failure”, and I share the concerns of my noble friend Lord Baker and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, about this. Will the Minister confirm that academies’ fundamental freedoms will not, in fact, be tampered with? Will she agree to meet me to discuss how the Bill can be amended to achieve this and to remove the potential micromanaging of schools?

The Bill gives the facility for local authorities to academise some or all of their schools. I urge caution here. We have been here before when, in a rush to academise, the department allowed some groups that were not well constructed to develop. I hope the Government will ensure that there is thorough scrutiny of the record and construction of these groups, the balance between good and bad schools and their geographic focus, and that sufficient independent directors are appointed to their boards.

Turning to elective home education, I am delighted to see that the Bill proposes a register. It has been estimated that the number of children in home education has risen over the last 10 years from 20,000 or 30,000 to 80,000 or, in some estimates, 100,000. The home education lobby is very powerful and consists of some extremely able and articulate people. They will have concerns about the register, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said—I pay tribute to him and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for their work in this regard. However, I invite them to see the bigger picture. Although I have little doubt that the members of this lobby are perfectly capable of educating their children at home, I suspect that, quite possibly, 70,000 or more of that 100,000—if that is the number—are not receiving a suitable education at home, if they are receiving any education at all. I invite the home education lobby to see the bigger picture. The Government are not concerned with them— they have nothing to fear from the register. They have a right in legislation to educate their children at home, but I believe there is a fundamental human right for a child to receive a good education, and that trumps a parents’ right where they are not able to provide it.

If I am anything like right in my view as to how many children are not receiving a suitable education at home, this is not doing the reputation of home education any favours at all. Of course, many parents elect for home education because they are concerned about the reputation of alternative provision and the particular PRU that the local authority will send their children to. This is why I believe we need clear accountability standards for PRUs. I am delighted to see that in the SEND Green Paper the plan is for all AP providers to be in MATs and for MATs to open new ones. However, under the initial existing arrangements the initiative to create new AP provision rests with local authorities. I urge the Government to look again at this, as I believe that some local authorities do not recognise the low quality of their existing AP provision, and the system would benefit from more competition and more AP free schools. I am pleased that the Government are encouraging MATs to set up their own AP provision but, with the exception of very large MATs, most MATs will not have enough students of their own to make this provision viable without pupils from third-party schools. We know that the local authorities control the funding in this regard, which is why it is important to involve them in this.

On primary schools, I am delighted to see that the Government are seeking to raise standards here. There is a tendency for people to focus on secondary education because of the importance of GCSEs and A-levels, for parents to believe that primary is all about happy days, and for people to believe that pupils can catch up in secondary—which of course they can. However, the fact is that, on average, if a child does not do well in primary, they have very little chance of doing so in secondary. During the five years when I was a Minister, if a child did not receive what we regarded as a pass coming out of primary—a level 4B—depending on which year it was, they had only a 6% or 7% chance of getting five good GCSE. I hope that Ofsted’s focus on a coherent and sequenced curriculum in primary—I have to say that a lot of primary curriculums are not well constructed—will help in that regard.

Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord Nash Excerpts
Thursday 10th January 2019

(6 years, 6 months ago)

Grand Committee
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Moved by
Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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That the Grand Committee takes note of the contribution made by free schools to improving educational standards.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Con)
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My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to open this debate on free schools and the programme of this Government and the previous coalition Government, which I think I can safely say has been an unqualified success. It has been a success on many fronts: on quality and on bringing capacity, choice, innovation and competition to the system.

I will deal firstly with quality. Some 32% of free schools inspected have been judged outstanding by Ofsted, compared with 21% of all other schools, and 86% have been judged good or outstanding. This is truly remarkable, considering how early in their life free schools are inspected, when they have little if any test data to show and Ofsted inspectors generally are not rushing to award outstanding ratings to schools with few or no results. It shows that the pupils in these schools must be making good progress and that the schools must be demonstrating this to Ofsted.

It really is striking that free schools are 50% more likely to be rated outstanding than other schools. Last year, for the fourth year running, primary free schools were among the top-performing schools in the year 1 phonics screening check and key stage 1 SATs tests. Last year, for the second year running, secondary free schools were the highest performers at Progress 8, with an average score of +0.24. Indeed, four out of the top 10 performers at Progress 8 last year were free schools: Dixons Trinity Bradford, Eden Girls, William Perkin Church of England and Tauheedul Boys. At key stage 5 we have the London Academy of Excellence in Newham sending many of its pupils to Russell group universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, clearly raising the game of other sixth forms in Newham. At King’s maths school last year, 99% of students achieved an A or A* in maths A-level.

On capacity, 442 free schools have been opened, providing nearly 300,000 new school places. Adding those approved and in the pipeline but not yet open brings the total to more than 700. Half have been opened in the 30% most deprived areas of the country, and 83% address a need for places.

I must pay tribute to the free schools team at the Department for Education, headed by Mela Watts. You do not normally become a civil servant expecting to find yourself as a kind of venture capitalist opining on the merits of new organisations, but the people in the free schools team have adapted brilliantly to that challenge. I must also recognise the very significant role now played by regional schools commissioners in assessing free schools proposals.

On costs, free schools have been brought in at a cost one-third lower than under the preceding Labour Government’s BSF programme. Finding sites for these schools obviously is not easy, particularly in inner cities. I must also pay tribute in this regard to the Department for Education’s property arm, LocatED, very ably run by Lara Newman, which has been particularly effective and imaginative in this regard. Free schools have been opened not just in former offices and factories but in former police stations, a church, on top of a supermarket and in one case in a former fire station. I remember visiting that school. The planners had insisted for some reason that the pole that the firemen used to slide down had to be kept in place. I was particularly upset that, for health and safety reasons, I was not allowed to slide down it. I am delighted that 34 specialist free schools have been opened and 41 AP free schools, with more to come.

On innovation, the Sutton Trust has found that one-third of free schools have been shown to demonstrate a genuinely innovative approach to ethos and curriculum. Unfortunately, a limited number of schools have engaged with the knowledge-rich curriculum and teacher-led instructional approach now shown to be the most successful compared with the now debunked more progressive approach followed in this country for the past 30 years. As that approach is favoured by the Government, with hindsight it might have been better if the Government had been more prescriptive in this regard and aligned their policies more. I exhort them to do that in future.

However, there has been innovation in other areas. Dixons Trinity Academy, Bradford, follows Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” approach. There is innovation at the four maths schools at King’s College London, in Exeter, in Cambridge and at the University of Liverpool—the latter two are in pre-opening—at Saracens High School, Barnet, which is supported by Saracens rugby club, and at Bolder Academy in Hounslow, which has teamed up with Sky—to name but a few.

Of course, the free schools programme has provided much-needed competition for the state school sector, as has the academy programme. All monopolies suffer from a lack of competition, which breeds inefficiency and complacency—a point that Marxists always seem to miss when they are keen to create yet more monopolies. The free schools programme has been particularly effective at providing competition and creating an environment in which a rising tide lifts all boats.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to my right honourable friend Michael Gove, my noble friend Lord Hill—I see that he is in his place—who started the programme, my noble friend the Minister, who continues it so well, and my noble friend Lord Baker, who has been involved in it so much. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy—I see that he is also in his place—who invented the programme with his 2005 paper, More Good School Places. I particularly want to mention the teachers, school leaders, MATs and sponsors who have supported the programme since its early days, when it often faced significant opposition. In this regard, I will mention in particular Katharine Birbalsingh at Michaela Community School, Ed Vainker at Reach Academy, Feltham, Hamid Patel at Tauheedul and Luke Sparkes at Dixons Trinity, Bradford—but there are many more. Those of us who have been involved in starting new ventures, organisations and schools know how challenging it is; we should be extremely grateful to these social entrepreneurs and pioneers.

Lord Baker of Dorking Portrait Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
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My Lords, I cannot speak in the debate, unfortunately, as I must be in the Chamber because I will be the last speaker on Monday night. I want to place on record the educational world’s thanks to my noble friend Lord Nash for his enthusiasm in creating the free schools movement. Without him and my noble friend Lord Hill, we would not be where we are.

I was a bit disappointed that my noble friend Lord Nash did not mention UTCs, which are a form of free school too. They are funded in the same way, are independent of local authorities and have some of the best results in the country, which we are proud of. We produce 30% of apprentices compared with 7% from other sectors, and 47% of our students go to university, three-quarters of whom do so to study STEM subjects. My noble friend supported us strongly in that, for which I thank him. Indeed, the UTC in Pimlico will join my noble friend’s MAT in Westminster later this year.

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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I am flattered by my noble friend’s remarks. I am sure that other noble Lords will mention UTCs, which are of course an important part of the programme.

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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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My Lords, I have greatly enjoyed today’s debate. As always, I found myself agreeing with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, although I struggle to accept criticism about costs—the same applies to the noble Lord, Lord Watson—bearing in mind the many examples of profligacy that we found in the education system when we took over in 2010, including the Building Schools for the Future programme, which ran, by some estimates, £10 billion over budget. People in glass houses, as the saying goes.

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about changes to the free schools programme, new products and new ideas evolve and change. As she said, the key is to create good schools. As she also said, perhaps the programme should evolve further to be, in some cases, more prescriptive. I agree entirely with her and my noble friend Lord Hill that sometimes we are far too focused on structures. However, I think that structures are important. As I think Tony Blair said, unless you get the structure right, you cannot move on. However, I think that the noble Baroness missed off her list of what makes a good school two very important points: what is taught and how it is taught—which leads me back to my point about prescription.

It was very good to hear from my noble friend Lord Harris. As my noble friend Lord Hill said, his role in education in this country has been truly transformational. I was very glad to hear him mention Sir Dan Moynihan, who runs the Harris Federation extremely well. He also mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, without whose help none of us involved in schools in this way could be here. I was interested to hear from my noble friend Lord Kirkham about his involvement with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the Outward Bound Trust—organisations that schools in my academy group engage with actively. Evidence from the United States is quite clear that the single most important experience for raising pupils’ confidence and self-esteem is Outward Bound trips.

It was kind of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to say what he did about staying-put arrangements for children or young people in fostering after the age of 18, because that was in fact entirely thanks to him and his perseverance. He badgered the Government endlessly on this point and that resulted in my going to see Michael Gove. This was at a time when we were trying to recover from the dreadful economic mess we had inherited, saving money wherever we could. I explained to Michael Gove why I thought this was a good idea but said that it would cost £25 million a year. However, it took him less than a minute to see the sense of it and he agreed to it. My noble friends Lord Polak and Lord Hill paid tribute to my right honourable friend Michael Gove. In this instance, he again showed that he is a truly principled politician who is also prepared to be highly action-orientated.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, referred to Imperial College’s outreach programme, which I know from personal experience does great work. I thought that his point about the importance of non-scientists understanding science was extremely well made—and I say that as someone who went through his entire education studying no biology at all.

A number of noble Lords opposite mentioned failure. Perhaps I may split the programme between free schools, pure free schools, UTCs and studio schools. In free schools there have been very few failures—although, as the Minister said, we are keen to learn from those there have been—and a great many successes. It is true that there have been many closures of UTCs and, in particular, studio schools—but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said to me when we took T-levels through your Lordships’ House, we desperately need to improve technical education in this country. That is a very difficult challenge. Successive Governments on both sides have tried and failed. We need to persevere and learn from our mistakes but stick at it.

My noble friend Lord Polak mentioned his involvement in a number of free schools. I know from personal experience that his help has been invaluable. I was very glad to hear my noble friend Lord Popat mention my noble friend Baroness Evans’s and the New Schools Network’s central and very important involvement in the free schools programme.

It was very good to see the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on such good form. I too always enjoy our contests. I was a little disappointed to hear how negative he is about the ideology of the free schools programme, including the statement that free schools have driven a coach and horses through the sensible planning of new school places. At least we have a policy on this. As my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy pointed out, the Labour Government had no policy whatever for new places, despite presiding over 13 years of uncontrolled immigration. In fact, they cut the number of places. I will forgive him for his comments, as he is a Marxist by his own admission. He invited me to read up a bit more on Marxism. I would be very grateful, in a spirit of mutual open-mindedness, if he could send me a reading list.

I greatly enjoyed today’s debate and I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.

Motion agreed.