Education: Funding

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness refers to the Education Policy Institute, with which I am very familiar as I attended its one-year anniversary event only a couple of weeks ago. It is a very excellent organisation, ably chaired by my ex-colleague David Laws. As I have said, we are determined to make the funding formula fair. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, it is clear from what we have said that we have looked at the issue of losers. We will redress that in the fact that no school will have its budget cut on a per-pupil basis as a result of these changes. Certainly, as part of the consultation—the 25,000 responses we have had—the point made by the noble Baroness has been made.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister probably shares the concern of other noble Lords about the number of teachers who are leaving the profession prematurely—especially young teachers, some of whom have told me recently about the unbearable pressures and stress that they have had to endure, which is why they are pulling out of teaching. Given the great cost involved in training teachers to work in our classrooms, does the noble Lord share that concern? Can he tell us how many teachers have left the profession over the course of the last 12 months?

Schools: Bullying

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness’s pioneering work in this field in Cambridgeshire is a model of best practice, and I am familiar with Red Balloon’s work. I very much agree with her that, for some severely bullied children, the type of intervention she describes may well be the most appropriate provision to support a pupil returning to mainstream education. However, that will not always be the case. Severely bullied children are not a homogenous group and among them will be some with a wide variety of specific needs and requirements. Local authorities can commission appropriate provision from a wide variety of providers and are funded to do so.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, with the noble Baroness’s Question concentrating our minds on a toxic problem which is estimated to have led to at least 20 suicides each year, should we not be thinking of more imaginative and radical ways of co-ordinating our approach to bullying in schools? I commend to the Minister particularly the work of theatre companies such as Ten Ten, whose production I recently saw in a school setting and which, by working with young people, imaginatively addressed this issue of bullying. Does he agree that with one survey stating that 69% of UK children reported being bullied, and now with the phenomenon of cyberbullying and 31 million school days being lost each year through bullying, we need to take this incredibly seriously?

[Lord Nash]

I could not agree more. Suicide is a tragedy whenever it occurs. I am not familiar with Ten Ten but I would like to be; perhaps the noble Lord and I could discuss it later. We are particularly focusing on cyberbullying. Our central thrust is to send a strong message to all schools that bullying is not to be tolerated. We have focused Ofsted much more on four specific categories of which behaviour and well-being—including bullying—is one. We have also recently funded four organisations with £4 million to work with schools specifically on bullying.