Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I first express my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Nash for calling this debate. I think it is fair to say that nobody in government or politics has done more than him to support the free school movement both as a sponsor who has been known to put his time, effort and money into opening schools and during his four years as the responsible Minister. His positive impact on children’s outcomes in this country has been profound.

With just two speakers so far, there has already been much discussion of the merits or otherwise of free schools. As a founder and trustee of Floreat Education, which operates two primary free schools, it is probably fairly obvious where my loyalty lies, but I want to use this debate to revisit the reasons that the Conservative Party proposed and implemented the free schools programme in the first place, because I believe that it is against those intentions that the programme should be judged.

Having said that, there is another interest I have to declare, which my noble friend has already alluded to. Success has many parents, but I think it is fair to say that the Minister and I have particular reason to claim parentage of the free schools movement. As he said, the story began with the publication of a report for Policy Exchange in December 2005, authored by myself and Charlotte Leslie: More Good School Places. In producing that paper, we were strongly supported by one our trustees at the think tank—plain Theodore Agnew, as he was in those days. The purpose of that report was to suggest changes to the schools system in England in order to raise standards. Its analysis relied on the emerging literature on school choice and competition from the US, Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

I will not detain your Lordships with all the specific proposals in the report. Some of them were subsequently adopted by the Conservative Party when I became director of policy, including an early version of the pupil premium—the great cause of common interest with the Liberal Democrats and a foundation stone of the coalition education policy. Another proposal was to create a non-LEA-based route to setting up new schools. Others, such as locally elected pupil advocates, were not accepted. I believe that the key insight of that report still stands, which is that it is the Government’s job to help to create more good school places. The DfE is still using that language 13 years after we first coined it.

So how does the free school programme measure up? In that report we proposed that excellence should be achieved through two means. First, there needed to be an expansion of the number of good school places, making it radically easier for new providers to come into the state sector to open schools, challenge underperformance and bring new ideas.

Secondly, we proposed the creation of what we called an equity challenge: making sure that in this system those who had the least—who had been failed by schools—were given extra support, including extra financial support, to make them attractive to successful schools, and had the resources needed to address their educational challenges. Expansion challenge and equity challenge were, we posited, the way to achieve excellence. It is against those yardsticks that we should judge the success of the programme.

On the expansion front, the evidence is incontrovertible. The preceding Labour Government had inexplicably allowed 1,500 schools in England to close between 2001 and 2010, despite the birth rate increasing by 128,000 per year over that period. The Government have opened—as my noble friend mentioned—442 new free schools, which will provide 250,000 places when full, and 261 further free schools have been approved but are not yet open. According to the New Schools Network, 83% of open free schools have been opened in areas of recognised need—because of a shortage of local places, a lack of choice, or poor local standards.

Expansion is not just a numbers game: it is also about innovation and choice. The free schools programme has allowed the creation of an extraordinary range of schools—schools such as Floreat and the University of Birmingham School that have a major focus on character development; schools such as Michaela and the West London Free School trust that have pioneered a modern approach to knowledge-based learning—as well as a range of other exciting provisions, including new boarding schools such as Holyport College and Dixons Music Primary. In a way, that is the greatest achievement of the programme: to have unleashed—to take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—dynamic leadership, followed new ideas, challenged the status quo and delivered higher standards.

The free schools programme also measures up well on the equity challenge. According to the New Schools Network, free schools are three times more likely to be set up in the most deprived areas of the country than in the least deprived, and are more than averagely likely to attract pupils with a first language other than English. There is more work to do to attract the least well-off pupils to the schools, but from first-hand experience I can tell the Committee that it becomes much easier to attract those families when a school is up and running, because they are often very risk-averse, wanting to stick with the known rather than taking on the risk of being a pioneering group of parents. Once that risk has gone—once the school is established—the number of children on free school meals tends to go up.

The result of getting both expansion and equity challenges right is excellence, of which my noble friend outlined many examples in free schools: they are more likely to be judged as outstanding by Ofsted, the average secondary free school Progress 8 score is the joint highest of all school types, and there are many other examples. These considerable achievements will only increase over time.

As we look to the future, however, it is important not to be Panglossian, and to accept that the programme needs to evolve and improve further. As my noble friend Lord Nash said, the DfE has sometimes struggled to find the right sites for free schools. Indeed, the lack of a permanent site forced the deeply regrettable closure of the Floreat school in Brentford, a heart-breaking event for pupils, parents and staff. The creation of the LocatED group within the DfE should stop this happening again, but can the Minister reassure the Committee on that?

Furthermore, while there has undoubtedly been a need to generate more school places to meet a rapidly growing school-age population, the birth rate is now falling. For me, that means that the programme should shift back towards creating new provision in areas of underperformance or lack of choice. There was an imperative to create seats for the many extra bums, but that tended to favour large incumbent academy trusts. Does the Minister agree with me—and with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—that the time is right to recapture some of the dynamism of the original programme, which was more supportive of teacher-led start-ups?

Finally, many open free schools now find themselves in single-academy trusts or small multi-academy trusts. Such organisations, which often have only a few year groups, can be vulnerable to events outside their control, and there is a need to bring these schools together into larger, less fragile groups. Will the Minister say what the DfE is doing to make this happen?

To conclude, the free schools programme has been highly positive for children in our country. Combined with other reforms, such as the creation of a much more rigorous curriculum and exam system, it is leading to consistently better educational outcomes. An expansion of choice, combined with a focus on equity, has indeed led to excellence, with hundreds of thousands of pupils benefiting. That is a wonderful achievement, of which we should all be proud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

There were 200 out of some 22,000 schools. My noble friend Lord Harris was not a parent. We certainly built on the early foundations that Labour created in the academies programme, but there was not a great deal of evidence in those early 200 of parental involvement in their creation. Specifically, the programme went on after very experienced, dedicated people such as my noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Harris, became involved. They were well beyond parental age at the point.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

This is a really important point. I pay absolute tribute to the Labour Party for the academies it set up, which were obviously based on the CTCs and on a principle of autonomy at school level, of competition of choice and variety and innovation. But it must be pointed out—it is a while since I opened a free school or applied to open one—that you physically had to go round to parents, even if you were not a parent group yourself, and get them to commit to send their child to your school. It was baked into the creation of schools in a way that has never been done in this country, regardless of the nomenclature of free schools, academies or anything else. That alone is one of the unique and extremely welcome features of the free school movement that must continue to play a critical role in whatever form. I agree with my noble friend that the security of being in a multi-academy trust can be helpful, but that parent-driven demand is critical to its success.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned off-rolling and picked out a single school, the Hewett school—which strikes a slightly raw nerve, as I was the chairman of the trust that took it over. That school was a wonderful example of what we were dealing with in the reforms that we brought to education. The school was built for nearly 2,000 pupils and run into the ground by a local authority. At one point it was the largest secondary school in England, but the local authority hung on to it, delivering appalling education until, finally, when my trust took it over, there were fewer than 500 pupils. It was in chaos. Sorting out such situations, where a trust inherits protracted and entrenched failure, is no small undertaking. That ex-local authority school is a classic example of why the nirvana of so-called local democracy is meaningless in many cases.

We want to go further, to make sure that no one is left behind, by extending the programme to areas of the country that have not previously benefited from it. To this end, we launched Wave 13 last year, targeting the areas of the country with the lowest standards and the lowest capacity to improve. These are the places where opening a free school can have the greatest impact on improving outcomes.

National Funding Formulae for Schools and High Needs

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I was not intending to get involved on that particular topic but, as noble Lords may know, I have been involved in setting up primary schools. Much as I would like even more money for primary, it is the case that as you go through secondary and have to have specialised teaching in specialised subjects—whereas in primary school it tends to be whole class—there are other costs involved, because classes tend to be smaller, particularly if you are teaching niche subjects.

Despite some of the negativity around these plans, I want to encourage the Minister and the Government to go forward with them. Through the Floreat academy trust that I founded, we have opened schools both in one of the lowest-funded local authorities in the country and in one of the best funded, in inner London. The pupil needs in the schools are not so different, and the requirements in terms of hiring staff are the same, so it is quite palpably unfair. Indeed, for multi-academy trusts that span a number of local authorities, it causes problems in the trust and among the schools if there is a concern—or, if you like, sometimes a sense of unfairness—about what has happened. Notwithstanding the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves with the overall funding element, righting that historic wrong is incredibly important and cannot come soon enough.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for my noble friend’s support for this. Of course, he speaks with considerable knowledge in this area. As I said earlier, the first stage of the consultation was extremely well received and we believe that the second will be, too—but I invite all people who wish to make representations to do so.

Educational Attainment: International Rankings

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

That is a rather precise question. However, it is clear from the report that selection does work, and I will write to the noble Baroness with more detail.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, the PISA study showed that teacher-directed instruction had a positive impact on science outcomes, whereas inquiry-based learning had a negative impact. What are the Government doing to make sure that this traditional, teacher-led approach is practised more widely in English secondary schools?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The PISA study showed that pupils who report teacher-directed instruction do better in all but three countries, whereas pupils who report inquiry-based instruction do worse in the majority of countries. To support a knowledge-rich curriculum, which is so important, particularly for pupils from a disadvantaged background, clearly more teacher-led direction is necessary.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

I listened to this debate in Grand Committee in considerable detail and I certainly have a vested interest in securing our social work and the Children’s Act statutory provisions. I think that the provision made in the Bill is misunderstood in some quarters. As I listened to the debate today and on the last occasion, I formed a view that some of those contributing may not have fully understood the purpose of this provision. It is not about allowing local authorities to innovate at their whim; what it does is to ask local authorities that if they have an innovation that they think will improve the lot of children, and they find that that innovation is inhibited or prohibited by some statutory regulation or provision, they should be able to ask the Secretary of State to use the powers—which are strictly limited by the amendments that have been put in—to authorise that amendment for a limited time.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, quoted what my noble friend the Minister said in Grand Committee about there being no limit to this. Of course, it depends what you are looking for. There is a terrific limit to it but it has to be for the benefit of the children. It is not limited in the sense that it may be about a statute or a statutory regulation, or indeed some form of guidance issued by the department, but it is very limited by the necessity to demonstrate that you want to improve. The noble Lord, Lord Low, for whom I have the greatest possible respect, asked what prevents innovation as it is. There is nothing to prevent innovation except that some innovations which you may want to make run counter to a statute or statutory provision. If you are faced with that, you cannot make that innovation unless there is some way of dealing with the statutory prohibition. That is what the Bill intends to do. Having listened to the debate in the summer, I suggested to the Bill team that there might be a slightly better way of framing this to make it a little plainer that that is exactly what it does, but that has not happened—as yet, anyway.

Much of the difficulty for social workers is that there are sometimes a lot of misunderstandings and misrepresentations over what this is about. It is not about destroying the system. I would certainly not support it for a minute if it was. It is to improve the way that the system works and, where you find something in it that constrains you not to do it in the best possible way, you would have a way of dealing with that.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of the power to test new ways of working and am therefore against those amendments which seek to remove the relevant clauses from the Bill. In doing so, I strongly associate myself with the comments of my noble friends. I have reflected carefully on the arguments made by the proposers of these amendments and I know that they are motivated by the best wishes for very vulnerable children. I take their warnings seriously. Noble Lords may know of my own involvement in running schools, so I am deeply aware that the duty of safeguarding young people and children lies heavily on the shoulders of those who look after them. Our first responsibility is to keep children safe; even more so when the home life of a child does not offer sanctuary. It is right to move cautiously before we put any of this at risk.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I did not take part in earlier stages of the Bill and it may be that the question I am going to ask was answered earlier, in which case I apologise. I would like the Minister to explain why the Bill contains no statement that, in his opinion, the Bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. My understanding is that that is what the Human Rights Act requires. It may be that there is a very good technical explanation.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak on this group of amendments not least because children’s mental health and well-being was the subject of one of my amendments in Committee. I am delighted that noble Lords have brought this issue back to the fore with their amendments, and I am even more pleased that, from Amendment 1, we can see that the Minister listened to those concerns, because the change it proposes makes explicit the importance of the mental health of the vulnerable young people who are the subject of the Bill. This is a significant concession. I congratulate the many noble Lords who have been working hard to achieve it. This is, surely, what those of us who put down amendments in Committee were seeking—for this to be taken seriously and put in the Bill. The Government should be congratulated on making this significant concession.

Schools

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree with the noble Baroness that the early years are very important and that sadly many parents do not engage as well as they could with the school system on behalf of their children. To me, that is why we should be very focused on primary schools. One of the things that we have said is that selective or independent schools may be able to help with primary education. Everybody gets so fixated on GCSE results but in fact the work, as we all know, has to be done in primaries. The depressing statistic is that if you do not get your required level 4 when leaving your primary school—your pass mark, effectively—then you have only a 7% chance of getting five good GCSEs.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to a meritocratic society and to increasing the number of good school places. My noble friend will know that the Government are veering into contested territory with this Green Paper, so can he confirm two things? First, will the Government consent to an increase in academic selection only if they are totally confident that the evidence shows that it will increase and spread the number of good school places? Secondly, following any increase in academic selection, will the DfE evaluate the impact of these changes on the schools system to ensure that social mobility has indeed been improved?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes some good points. It is our intention to ensure that the impact is favourable across the whole system and that there is a net benefit across it. We will of course continually monitor the impact of our policies.

Teachers: Academies and Free Schools

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for initiating this debate on a subject about which I care passionately. Before continuing, I bring noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests, in particular my role as founder and adviser to the Floreat Education Academies Trust, which operates both a free school and, as of today, two new academies.

It is a particular pleasure to speak after the typically compelling and funny maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Finn. I had the good fortune of working with my noble friend for our former Prime Minister—who sadly today announced his departure from politics. As anyone who knows my noble friend will testify, silence is not her trademark. It is fantastic that a change in circumstance means that she has finally been unleashed as a debating force in this House.

This debate is so important because, ultimately, the most significant determinant of the quality of a school is, as my noble friend Lady Finn expressed so movingly, the quality of teaching within it. Other things matter as well—parental attitudes, the rigour of the curriculum, good behaviour and so on—but education is a fundamentally human endeavour and it is the relationship between teacher and student that really counts. It is this insight that underpins the free school and academy programme. As Tony Blair eventually admitted in his autobiography, it is wrong to separate the pursuit of school standards from the desire to change school structures because one creates the conditions for the other. The purpose of the free school and academy programme is to provide teachers with the environment in which they are most likely to be the best versions of themselves.

Research tells us that in almost every leading education system around the world the trend has been to give heads and teachers more freedom. This is based on the fundamental view, with which I do not think anyone in this House would disagree, that professionals know better how to run schools than the Government. For example, the OECD has said that,

“the creation of more autonomous schools will lead to innovations in curriculum, instruction and governance, which in turn will improve outcomes”.

Similarly, the US academic Eric Hanushek has found that autonomy reforms improve student achievement in developed countries. It is for this reason—because heads, governors and teachers should be deciding the direction of a school, not bureaucrats and politicians —that free schools and academies have been given the freedom, if they want to use it, to employ unqualified teachers if they think that it is in the best interests of pupils.

As we can see from the useful House of Lords Library note accompanying this debate, the actual proportion of unqualified teachers in the system is fairly small—around 5% of the total—and has increased only slightly in recent years. We are hardly talking about an epidemic. I disagree with the description of this by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, as a dangerous policy. As I can tell the House from my own experience of hiring staff for Floreat schools, it is rarely the case that free school and academy providers set out to hire unqualified staff. Before our schools opened, this was something that parents inquired about—would we employ unqualified teachers? My answer was that we would always set out to hire qualified teachers but if the best person for the job did not have a qualification, we would do what was right for pupils, hire that person and then put them through the teacher qualification process. For example, if you are recruiting someone to teach four and five year-olds in reception and the best applicant is an excellent and highly trained nursery teacher who has been looking after three and four year-olds in a childcare setting but does not yet have QTS, it would clearly be wrong to prevent schools from appointing such a person.

The current system seems to provide an entirely sensible and practical solution, which has been made easier by the Government’s changes to increase the amount of teacher training that happens within schools. The School Direct and school-centred initial teacher training—SCITT—programmes mean that staff can gain their qualification while learning on the job. This must be the right approach: one that respects heads’ and teachers’ autonomy, and opens up non-conventional routes to would-be teachers but ensures that all staff have the right qualifications in the end. The development of this is precisely what is promised in the schools White Paper.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. How do free schools and academies actually perform? Some 26% of free schools were rated outstanding by Ofsted, compared to 20% of other schools, and the DfE has found that secondary converter academies previously graded good were more likely to improve and to retain their Ofsted grade than previously good maintained schools.

It is early days for both those programmes and, while I care deeply about giving heads and teachers the autonomy they need to flourish, I understand there is underperformance in some parts of the sector. However, enforcing a more draconian approach to recruiting unqualified staff is likely only to reduce the ability of free schools and academies to achieve excellence, rather than enhance it.

Independent Schools: Teacher Training

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness that all teachers should be well qualified. One of the most important things that Sir Andrew Carter’s review pointed out was that the most important qualification is qualification in subject knowledge. It is acknowledged across the teaching sector that, of course, you do not become a fully expert teacher after nine months of training. That is not to say that the training is not extremely valuable or that many teachers do not find it valuable. But others—for instance those with PhDs in subjects or perhaps a drama teacher from RADA—may feel that they do not need to go through that training and that they already have some of those basic skills.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lexden is quite right to point out the role that independent schools are playing in teacher training. Another route through which they can get involved in education is that of free schools and academies. How many independent schools are involved in sponsoring free schools and academies?

[Lord Nash]

I cannot give an accurate figure because that involvement is very varied, but we have many free schools that have been sponsored by independent schools. We have two London Academies of Excellence—one focusing on high-performing pupils in sixth form in the East End, sponsored by Brighton College, and another opening in Tottenham, sponsored by Highgate. We have Haileybury, which is sponsoring a school in Hertfordshire and we have Eton and Holyport College, of course. There are many other examples of independent schools engaged in the free school programme in one way or another.

Schools: Drama

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree that the Royal Shakespeare Company has a huge role to play, and has played a big role in our education system; and I am sure that the noble Baroness is pleased that pupils will now study a minimum of three Shakespeare plays during their secondary school career. In addition to the toolkit, earlier this year we provided funding to help the Royal Shakespeare Company stream “The Merchant of Venice” into all schools. I can assure the noble Baroness that we regard this as an extremely important part of the curriculum.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that although the noble Earl’s sentiment is correct—we must open up professions —the quickest way of opening up professions to people of all backgrounds, especially disadvantaged backgrounds, is to give them a very rigorous academic education that can act alongside arts subjects and other subjects, so enabling them to get into apprenticeships and higher education and opening the doors to those kinds of professions?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend: studies have shown that this has had the effect of doing that with pupils. As I say, that is why we are so heavily focused on the EBacc. It is appalling that, until a few years ago, so few of our pupils were accessing such a curriculum.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

I know that the Government are nervous about the word “statutory”. I shall not go into that but I do not think that “ensuring” that pupils receive social and skills education is controversial, and that word is used in other Bills. It is not about prescribed programmes; it is about the ethos of a school—for example, having children’s paintings on the wall, and the relationship between staff and pupils and between pupils and pupils. It is about policies on bullying and school meals. It is about assemblies, which foster good citizenship, civic duties and having a pride in the school and in oneself. It is about pastoral care, which links to other agencies. This is of course about the curriculum—about handling money and issues such as drug education, sex education, diet, first aid and so on. Of course, sport, drama and art reinforce personal development and relationships. I have discussed these issues with the Minister before and I know that he is very supportive. I hope that the Government will return to this at some point and look at the need for social and personal development, as well as academic development, in all our schools.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 78, which relates to Clause 4, which inserts, under the heading “Educational achievement of previously looked after children”, a new section into the Children Act 1989 in order to provide information and advice to previously looked-after young people and their parents.

In particular, my amendment affects subsection (3) of the new section, which provides local authorities with a power to do,

“anything else that they consider appropriate”,

to promote the educational achievement of these young people. This is potentially radical wording—whether that is intentional I am not sure—but, as I said at Second Reading, that ambition is very welcome. It is not quite on a par with the power to innovate described in Clauses 15 to 19 but I certainly think that it acts in that direction.

Without wanting to presage the debate that will take place around that part of the Bill, it is already clear that noble Lords will demand that any such powers to innovate will need to be very carefully designed to avoid negative and unintended consequences. It is that spirit which informs this amendment. I am concerned that the subsection does not include the necessary safeguards to avoid negative and unintended consequences for some young people.

Local authorities have a number of duties to several categories of vulnerable children—not simply looked-after children but, for example, children with special educational needs and disabilities. Even as we move towards an academy-led system, local authorities retain direct responsibility for placing children with special educational needs and disabilities who have educational health and care plans. I am sorry for the continued jargon. My worry is that as currently constituted, the subsection gives local authorities permission to provide extraordinary support to previously looked-after children, which is of course welcome on one level, but even if that is at the cost of pupils with SEND, for example, who are much more numerous and may have more challenging needs.

My amendment would add a simple caveat to make it clear that local authorities must take into account the impact of their actions on other children for whom they have a responsibility when considering how to raise attainment for previously looked-after children. I am perfectly willing to accept that it may be unnecessary if I can get the reassurances that I seek from Ministers that it is not intended or that other safeguards exist, perhaps in other legislation.

I turn quickly to Amendment 86, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I strongly support the sentiment on the delivery of high-quality PSHE in schools. That is what we do through our character programme in the Floreat schools that I set up. I am also involved in the “Developing Healthy Minds in Teenagers” programme, which is trying to do something similar in secondary schools. I very much support the spirit of the amendment but I am concerned that it might tip us into a statutory PSHE curriculum which, as the noble Baroness knows, I am not ready to support because, as Ofsted has said, PSHE teaching in too many schools is not yet good enough. We need to fix that problem before considering whether it should become a statutory subject.

[Lord Storey]

I shall speak to Amendment 86. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has been a worthy champion of PSHE ever since I joined the House of Lords. I thought that the battle was over when in reply to her question the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, said that yes, she thought that it was important that all schools taught PSHE. I raised my hand in the air thinking, “Great, we’ve got that”.

I was interested in the comment of the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. There is always this debate about whether we have to slim down the curriculum. It is said, “We don’t want to have statutory PSHE; we want schools—academies—to have freedoms”. Yes, I can subscribe to some of that but children are more important than them just having freedoms for curriculum development. There are really important things that need to be taught to all children and we have just heard a catalogue of them. It is hugely important that children have sex and relationship education and that they have financial education, and so on and so forth. I was fascinated by the noble Lord’s comments about the sort of work that he does in his schools. I pay tribute to that, but it should be for all schools.

I am not sure whether saying, “Let’s get the PSHE model right before we make it statutory” is the right approach. It should be the other way round. We should be saying that we will make it statutory for all schools—including free schools as well, incidentally, which I notice that the amendment does not mention—and then we make the resources, drive and determination to make that happen. That is probably one of the most important things that we can do for all children, but particularly for vulnerable and looked-after children.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, Amendments 77 to 79 and 86 concern educational support for formerly looked-after children. The trauma and experiences of children who have suffered from abuse and neglect can have a long-term impact on outcomes and life chances, even once they have left care through a permanence order. The Bill seeks to ensure that everything possible is done to help these children and young people overcome the difficulties that they have faced and to realise their ambitions.

Our intention is to place a duty on local authorities to extend the duties of virtual school heads to support looked-after children who have left care under an adoption, special guardianship or child arrangement order. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that we will consider his Amendment 77. We will be talking to government lawyers about whether the current drafting fully captures special guardianship or child arrangement orders. We think that it does for adopted children but if it does not and the current drafting of the Bill does not achieve that aim, we will consider a government amendment to Clause 4. I thank him for raising that issue.

While I understand the point made by my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy in his Amendment 78, I am not convinced that it is necessary to place a duty on local authorities to consider the impact of what they will do on other groups of children. Local authorities will need to ensure that they do not spend disproportionate time supporting one child or group of children at the expense of others. Virtual school heads must do this now as some looked-after children will require more intensive support than others. I reassure my noble friend that the new duties in the Bill are deliberately light-touch—just providing information and advice—to allow virtual school heads to effectively prioritise their workload.

The role of the virtual school head for formerly looked-after children will be different from their current role. They will not have to monitor each child’s progress as they do for children in care for instance, as the child’s parents and carers will do this. We are confident that with the other specific duties on local authorities to support looked-after children, previously looked-after children will not be disproportionately supported at the expense of others.

On Amendment 79, again I do not think it appropriate to specify in primary legislation that local authorities must ensure virtual school heads have the resources to do the job. Clearly, we will expect all local authorities to do this and we will, via Ofsted inspections, check the quality of the service provided by virtual school heads. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that a virtual school head will not be an add-on to other duties. Their sole focus will be vulnerable children. Many virtual school heads already respond to requests for advice and information from parents and schools in respect of children who have left care through, for example, adoption. Clause 4 seeks to ensure that all authorities offer this service. However, I have asked officials to ensure that resources for virtual school heads are covered in the statutory guidance we will issue to clarify their role.

Finally, Amendment 86 covers personal, social, health and economic education for formerly looked-after children. We agree that all young people should leave school prepared for life in modern Britain. The Minister and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that high-quality PSHE has a vital role to play in giving young people a better understanding of society and supporting them to make informed choices and to stay safe. The majority of schools and teachers already recognise the importance of good-quality PSHE education.

However, as I am afraid the noble Baroness has heard me say before, we believe it is not the availability but the quality of PSHE teaching that is the most pressing issue, as my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy highlighted. I say again: we will continue to keep the status of PSHE under review but in the short term we will prioritise working with experts to identify further action we can take to ensure that all pupils receive high-quality, age-appropriate PSHE and sex and relationships education. I am sure that the noble Baroness will continue to push us on this matter and that we will have many further discussions. I hope, on that basis, that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I am sorry to prolong the sitting. I am very reassured by what my noble friend said about looked-after children not suffering as a consequence but my specific question was about children with special educational needs and disabilities. I wonder whether she could write to me to provide that reassurance that local authorities’ duty of care to them is dealt with in other legislation so that there is that balance.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am very happy to write to my noble friend on that.