Schools Update

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point. We have had a very wide response from all areas of the country. It is clear, particularly in those areas of the country that historically feel that they have been underfunded—we have discussed here before the vast differences in funding per pupil that can occur between two schools not that far apart—that this news will be welcomed by schools, despite what some Peers have said. It will be very welcome to move to a system that is not a postcode lottery and not based on very out-of-date information. I am certain that this will be welcomed by schools.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister kindly answer the question asked by my noble friend Lady Kramer regarding the efficiencies and savings mentioned in the Statement? Some £315 million is going to be saved from the healthy pupils capital fund. Will the Minister confirm that that is actually a £315 million cut, as suggested in the Statement, which says:

“This reflects reductions in forecast revenue from the soft drinks industry levy”?

[Lord Nash]

Well, that has only recently been announced and I have to say that our plans on it were not very far advanced, so I think describing it as a cut is rather unfair. As I have said, we are making sure that resources are focused more on core school funding and in the hands of head teachers.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

I will be honest about the fact that I do not feel that parents should have the right to remove children from this life-saving information at all, but I am not pressing that point today. I want to ensure that the consultation will be wide enough—I hope that I will be able to contribute to it—and that the Government bear in mind those principles to which we are already a signatory and look at examples such as Gillick competence, which relates to children’s ability to make decisions for themselves about things such as contraception and the privacy of their medical records. We need to look at the child’s ability to understand the issues and make the decisions for themselves. Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, they have a right to do that. This is just a probing amendment. I look forward to hearing what the noble Lord will tell us about the Government’s approach to the regulations.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 12D in this group. I apologise to the House for not having spoken at previous stages of the Bill, but this is a new clause that was introduced in the other place. In fact, I blame the Minister for dragging me into this—his officials, having noted my reference to compulsory sex and relationship education in relation to a debate on online pornography in the Digital Economy Bill, kindly invited me to the meeting on this subject with him.

I want to add my personal support for this major step forward in making sex and relationship education compulsory. In particular, with the proliferation of online pornography, teaching young people not to treat each other as portrayed in online pornography, teaching about connection, respect and love, and most of all, teaching about consent when it comes to sex are becoming increasingly important.

Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, as other noble Lords have said. I have particular concerns about faith schools being able to teach pupils that same-sex relationships are wrong or sinful, or that engaging in a physical relationship with someone of the same sex is wrong or sinful, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, has just mentioned.

I accept that there are strongly held beliefs in many faiths about sex generally and sex between people of the same sex in particular, and we have to be sensitive to them. But we also have to be aware of the psychological harm that can be done to young people from across the range of gender and sexual diversity. Bullying of any kind is to be condemned, but bullying based on gender or sexual diversity is particularly damaging. Those who wish to engage in such bullying take encouragement from those in authority who teach that same-sex relationships or sex between people of the same sex is wrong.

My specific concern is that we go from a situation where homosexual sex and relationships are not taught at all—Ofsted reported in 2013 that only 5% of pupils were being taught about such things—to a situation where homosexual sex and relationships are being taught in all schools, but in many schools, in accordance with faith traditions, pupils are told that such relationships are wrong or sinful. Research conducted in 2012 showed that 55% of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth had experienced homophobic bullying in school and 41% of those bullied attempted, or thought about, taking their own lives. Separate research in 2014 showed that of more than 7,000 LGBTQ 16 to 25 year-olds, over half reported mental health issues and 44% had considered ending their lives. I know from bitter personal experience as a young gay man who was a devout Christian that devastating consequences can result from the isolation, the guilt, the embarrassment, the shame and the bullying that emanate from intolerance.

This is a probing amendment to seek reassurance from the Minister that schools cannot use compulsory sex and relationship education to teach a one-sided and condemnatory view of same-sex relationships, including the physical aspects of such relationships. To say that same-sex relationships are not wrong in themselves provided there is no physical aspect to them is neither a realistic nor a humane position. What protection does the Equality Act provide, and what will be contained in regulations to prevent an increase in intolerance of sexual and gender diversity as a result of making sex and relationship education compulsory? The campaigning group Stonewall is repeating the 2012 research to which I referred earlier. This will provide a benchmark against which any adverse impact of these provisions can be measured.

As the Minister alluded to earlier, there are already 200 faith schools working with Stonewall to deliver good-quality, LGBT-inclusive sex and relationship education without undermining the faith ethos of those schools. How will the Government ensure that all faith schools follow this good practice?

I also support my noble friend Lady Walmsley in her concerns about parents’ ability to withdraw their children from sex and relationship education. I am concerned that in some faith schools, on the advice of the head teacher, all parents could withdraw all their pupils from these lessons, with the teacher facing an empty classroom.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to government Amendment 12, rather than to any of the amendments to it. The Government and the Minister will, I expect, have seen a recent statement by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, speaking as chairman of the Catholic Education Service. He emphasised that the aim and ambition of Catholic schools has always been,

“to educate the whole person. Our schools have a long track record of educating young people who are prepared for adult life as informed and engaged members of society, and high quality RSE plays an important part of this. We welcome the Government’s commitment to improving Relationship and Sex Education in all schools. Catholic schools already teach age-appropriate Relationship and Sex Education in both primary and secondary schools”.

I think it is important to emphasise the words, “age-appropriate”.

The statement continues:

“This is supported by a Catholic model RSE curriculum which covers the RSE curriculum from nursery all the way through to sixth form”.


In addition, the statement welcomes,

“the Government’s commitment to protect parental right of withdrawal”.

The statement continues, and I support it:

“It is essential that parents fully support the school’s approach to these sensitive matters. The experience of Catholic schools is that parental involvement is the basis for providing consistent and high quality RSE at home and at school”.


The statement concludes:

“We look forward to working closely with the Government to shape any new guidance to enable Catholic schools to continue to deliver outstanding RSE, in accordance with parents’ wishes and Church teaching”.

Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Storey in his regret Motion. He talked about an anti-immigration rhetoric, and we have seen the increase in hate crime, for example, which has occurred post-Brexit. However, it goes further than that.

In addition to the Government’s attempt to require companies to report the number of foreign staff they employ, which my noble friend mentioned, under the Policing and Crime Bill currently going through this House the Government will require people who are detained by the police, where the police suspect the individual not to be a British citizen, to produce their passport. I cannot tell which group of people who are arrested will be required to produce their passport, but I suspect that it may largely be dictated by the colour of their skin. What happens if the individual is a British citizen who does not have a passport? I raise this issue because it paints the picture of where the Government are going as regards immigration.

Under a provision in the Immigration Act recently passed by this House, when the police stop somebody driving a car whom they suspect not to be a British citizen, the police can search that person’s home for their driving licence without a warrant. Again, the question has to be raised: which drivers will be stopped by the police and taken to their home address to search for their passport? The whole thing shows the direction of travel that this Government are going in, which unfortunately not only provides—to use the current term—a hostile environment for illegal immigrants but does so for people who are here legally, and indeed for those who are born here but who do not appear at first glance to be British. So the charge my noble friend Lord Storey makes that the provision in the regulations smacks of racism is supported by these other measures that the Government have passed and continue to put through.

The Government say that the details that are asked for will be only for Department for Education use. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, made reference to the website Schools Week, which reports:

“The government has refused to release a new agreement that prevents the Department for Education from passing pupil nationality and country of birth data to the Home Office”.

All that the Department for Education would say to Schools Week was that,

“an old agreement that allowed the Home Office to access certain information from the national pupil database had now been ‘superseded’”,

but it refused to release the wording of that new agreement without a Freedom of Information Act request. If the Government are absolutely sure that none of this information will be shared with the Home Office, can the Minister please explain to the House why they will not publish what the guidance is and why they require a Freedom of Information Act request to secure it?

In a letter to my noble friend, the Minister apparently said that this information is intended to enable schools to receive more support. Can the Minister say why in London—where not only is there a higher proportion of low-income pupils eligible for free lunches than in any other region in England but around 42% of the city’s students do not have English as a first language, compared with the national average of just over 15%, and the schools overwhelmingly have larger class sizes than the national average—the schools are doing far better than schools in other, comparable regions in the country? What extra support are these schools going to need because they have pupils who are foreign nationals?

Unfortunately, all the evidence points to this being an immigration tactic rather than having anything to do with trying to improve the education of young people or supporting our schools.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been a historic tradition of separating school education from the state in the United Kingdom. Leaving aside the issues of selection by ability and admission arrangements, it has been accepted that, subject to a place being available, a child can attend a local school without any test of right of residence, nationality or language spoken at home. So the new requirement to collect information on nationality and country of birth could well be a tipping point, as these data could be used to assist the Government in pursuing their immigration policies.

It is safe to assume that, when the DfE decided last year to add these new components for the 2016-17 school census, it did not anticipate the furore that that would cause. After all, the DfE has collected data on pupils’ ethnicity for many years. Human rights groups would probably have raised questions, but the DfE might just have been able to fend them off with an appeal to “trust us”. However, that was last year and last year was, literally, another world, because in the intervening period we have had a referendum and now we are in the very messy process of extricating ourselves from the EU. The fact that the regulations appeared on the day before Parliament went into recess in July is probably an indication that the realisation had dawned within the DfE that this had become a politically sensitive issue.

Two effects have combined to cause the furore. One is that, despite the fact that schools are not allowed to ask to see children’s passports or birth certificates, there are reports that some have reacted to the new questions on birth and nationality by doing just that. The DfE has made it clear that parents are not obliged to comply, yet fears remain. What steps will the Government take to ensure that all schools make that information available to parents?

The fears emanate from the second effect—the fall-out from the referendum. The vote in favour of leaving the European Union has left the immigration status of EU nationals living in the UK much less clear than it was 12 months ago. Indeed, the International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, has suggested—in my view, appallingly—that they could be,

“one of our main cards”,

in the negotiations on leaving.

Then came the Tory party conference, with the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, saying that companies could be forced to reveal how many foreign workers they have. Then the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced plans to train more British doctors to replace overseas medics already here. With the Prime Minister also using her party conference speech to focus on immigration, there is now an unambiguous government culture of making foreign nationals feel unwelcome.

It is within that context that the implications of the SI we are discussing today are viewed. That is why DfE denials of any ulterior motive do not sound convincing. In a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, last week, the Minister stated that,

“given the sensitivity of the new information being collected we will not add this to the NPD, so no-one outside the department will be able to access it”.

That is a welcome development, and I am willing to accept it at face value on a personal basis. The problem for us on these Benches is that the Minister cannot speak for other government departments, nor can he control what might happen in terms of the Home Office gaining access to the information, should circumstances, or that department’s needs, change.

Given that a recent FoI request revealed that the NPD had been accessed by the Home Office on 18 occasions, will the Minister tell noble Lords what information about individual pupils will be provided by the DfE to the Home Office in future? And why has the DfE said that it will not make public the agreement with the Home Office that will prevent the passing of pupil nationality and country-of-birth data to UK Visas and Immigration? If the Minister wants noble Lords to have confidence that he can deliver what he says, why not produce the proof? Unless it has a statutory footing, any new agreement will have limited validity and lack clear oversight. Will the Government consider giving the new arrangement a statutory basis? That at least would prevent it being altered by a change of policy in the future.

Given that the department already collects information on the number of students with English as a second language, can the Minister explain in more detail how the addition of country-of-birth data will further assist the department in supporting schools with children who have English as a second language? Will holding country-of-birth data result in more resources being directed to schools with higher numbers of children with English as a second language?

Before announcing the new components of the census, what assessments did the DfE make of the additional burdens on teachers, school administrative staff and parents, and the additional costs involved?

The school census is clearly beneficial in assessing the impact of migration on schools, but academics and journalists conducting research also make extensive use of the database. The Government now intend to restrict such access to important statistics on schoolchildren. In future, those who use the database must not write anything about the data without first showing it to the Government, with 48 hours’ notice. With commendable candour, a government email admitted:

“This will reduce the risk that DfE are caught off guard by being asked to provide statements about research the appropriate people have not seen”.

Can the Minister say how many similar arrangements apply within the DfE or in other departments?

It is clear that the Government did not think through the political implications either of collecting data on pupils’ country of birth and nationality or of transmitting named pupil information, to be held by the DfE, which can be matched with data in other departments. Any difficulties they are now experiencing are entirely of their own making.

It is not too late for the Minister today to assuage the concerns of many noble Lords, and I hope that, by providing answers to the questions that I and other noble Lords have posed in this debate, he will be able to do that. My noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie attempted to give notice of our questions to the Minister last week through the Government Whips’ Office but I understand that that did not succeed. Fortunately, I was able to give the Minister a few hours’ notice of them this afternoon. If he cannot give the assurances we seek, he should be aware that my colleagues in the other place will be pursuing these issues with vigour.

Grammar Schools

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for the opportunity to debate this important issue and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, on her, if I may use the term, spot-on maiden speech.

I am a product of grammar schools, yet I have serious concern about selection at the age of 11 or at any other stage during pupils’ teenage years. Young people of school age have to cope with many pressures, and the potential that someone’s academic performance will be adversely affected, unrelated to their academic ability, is significant. Making hard decisions about which type of school a young person should attend at any age creates the possibility that able students are not given the stimulus and challenge they need to achieve their full potential.

I was coached to pass the 11-plus at a time in my life when I was unaware of my sexuality, but it was shortly afterwards, around the time that I moved into secondary education, that I realised I was different from the other pupils in my single-sex school. It was at a time and in a culture where homophobia was rife in society. At a school where none of the 600 boys identified as gay and in what I perceived to be a home environment intolerant of homosexuality, the feeling of isolation and loneliness was intense. At a time when most young people are exploring their emotions, I was frightened to engage in any friendship or relationship because of my sexuality. Others at the school began to sense my sexuality, and I became the subject of bullying, both verbal and physical. The emotional strain of such isolation was immense and, despite being totally dedicated to my studies, my academic performance was, as a consequence, disappointing.

I am talking about sexuality in my case, but it could be a whole range of other issues. It could be marital break-up in the home, domestic violence at home or a bereavement that impacts on someone’s academic performance. For those who like research into twins, I would lock myself in my room for hours on end studying, while my brother did his homework in front of the television in no time at all. He outperformed me in every department.

For me, school was a painful struggle, where I could not even achieve the three Cs at A-level that I needed in 1976 to go to medical school—I understand that standards have gone up since then. Thankfully, after five years in the police service, being more confident in my own skin and with my self-esteem restored, I earned a university scholarship and chose to study politics, philosophy and economics at Queens College, Oxford, where I excelled academically. My other academic achievements are a matter of record.

The conclusions I want to draw from this are twofold. First, I hope that noble Lords will accept that to write off any school-age pupil at any time during their schooling, when young people are having to cope with many pressures outside the academic arena, is potentially to put them into an inappropriate academic setting. I know that the Government propose that selection should perhaps happen at another time, but the disruption and potential stress imposed on someone part-way through an examination course of having to move to another school should not be underestimated.

The second point is this. If noble Lords are thinking that my story is of its time and no longer relevant, I say this. I am attending a charity event this evening in support of the Albert Kennedy Trust, to support young people who, even now, are being thrown out of their family home when their parents discover their sexuality—simply because they are gay. A survey carried out in 2014 by Stonewall showed that 86% of secondary school and 45% of primary school teachers said that pupils in their school, regardless of their sexual orientation, experienced homophobic bullying.

A comprehensive education system ensures that, at every stage, pupils can receive the education most appropriate to their needs.

Grammar Schools

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his compliment. I will take any compliment I get from him, backhanded or not. As I said yesterday, I am a great fan of Sir Michael Wilshaw. He has played a big part in improving our school system and I am delighted that he is in the Chamber today. I am fully aware that there are arguments on both sides of this debate. However, we do not want this to be a dogmatic, ideological debate. Just because things may not have worked well in the past does not mean that we cannot find ways of making them work in the future for all pupils. We will make any changes against a background of ensuring that we improve the system for all pupils and against our drive for social mobility. However, we need more good and outstanding school places and we want all schools in the system that are good and outstanding to help us to do that. As I say, we have not made a policy announcement but I am sure there will be further Statements in due course.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, it has been reported that the Prime Minister wants a new generation of inclusive grammar schools and yet selection at age 11, which the grammar school implies, excludes those who fail the selection test. Many young people do not reach their full potential until they are in their teens. To write them off at the age of 11 would deny them the opportunity to succeed. Why do the Government not concentrate on the Liberal Democrat achievements in the coalition, not just free early years education but also the pupil premium for disadvantaged youngsters and free school meals—measures that will deliver a truly inclusive educational system?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree that the coalition Government’s policy on pupil premium has been a clear success. We want an inclusive system. As I said yesterday, one of the ways that we think grammar schools can help improve their intake of pupils on free school meals, which I accept is very low, is by taking responsibility for some of their feeder primaries so they have a vested interest in them and can improve the performance of many more pupils on free school meals at an early age so that they can go to those schools. I take the point about the cut-off age of 11 and whether pupils cannot move at a later date. I assure the noble Lord that that is something we will consider and are looking at.