Relationships, Sex and Health Education: Statutory Guidance

Lord Polak Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes, as ever, an important point in thinking about the reality in the classroom for teachers. I suppose I would say a few things about that. First, that is why we are so grateful to our expert panel for bringing their expertise and judgment into the shape of the new guidance. Secondly, there is absolutely discretion for teachers, so if they identify a particular problem, it is clear that they can talk to their class about it. But they need to let parents know and to share the materials that they plan to use, and it needs to be age-appropriate. In relation to whether this is a new Section 28—I think the noble Baroness was giving it as an example, rather than suggesting that is where we are going—again, it is absolutely clear that teachers must teach at the right age about protected characteristics, sexual orientation and gender reassignment but, simply, they must stick to the facts.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, while I warmly welcome this Statement, while of course I have not read everything I would like to follow up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. During our consideration of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, we were able to hear from a young lady called Poppy Eyre. She gave her evidence, which was very moving. The problem was that she was being abused at home by her grandfather from the age of six. My worry is that, if everything is so black and white, we will have another problem. Let us turn it round: perhaps the abuse that she was receiving, which she talked about only once she was 11, could have been curtailed at an earlier stage, so I am just worried about babies and bath-water. So that I am clear, I think it is being suggested that above the age of nine there will be some sort of sex education. Will parents be consulted on that too? If a majority of parents in the primary school do not want that to happen, will it then not happen?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In relation to the very disturbing case that my noble friend cited, of course, primary school children are taught from a very young age about their personal safety, the safety of their bodies and the boundaries that should be respected. That is perhaps the age-appropriate way for such issues, we believe, to give a child like the one my noble friend mentioned a chance to talk to an adult safely and for the abuse that she suffers to be addressed. In relation to sex education in primary schools, parents cannot veto the curriculum. What we are saying is that parents have a right to see the curriculum and, of course, in primary parents also have a right to withdraw their children from sex education, if they so wish.

Schools: Financial Education

Lord Polak Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Sater for tabling this important debate. I also thank my friend Vivi Friedgut, who is here in the Chamber, the founder of Blackbullion, an educational technology start-up which is on a mission to empower millions of students to create a better financial future. The company is chaired by my noble friend Lord Fink, who was unable to be here this evening.

In discussion Vivi told me quite clearly that the current system is not working and that everyone seems to be looking for a single and simple panacea. No such thing exists. It is a journey, not a destination. From wanting as ever to be practical, I say to the Minister: we need more teacher education. If teachers are confident, they are best placed to weave it into a variety of subjects to bring them to life. Integrate elements of this financial education into other relevant subjects—maths, history, geography, economics, business, life skills—to create a holistic understanding and complement this with dedicated workshops or group work to provide real-world context.

Forever being practical, I urge the Minister to meet with Vivi and my noble friend Lord Fink. What they have done among students at universities has created a collaboration between the Bank of England and Pearson Education, and the educational help for financial education is enormous. Some 700,000 students, not just in Britain, are benefiting from the information. Surely, we can use that same technology to get this education across to children—because I notice that even primary school children seem to be holding mobile phones. So I urge the Minister, if he has the time, to meet with Lord Fink and Vivi.

Access to Musical Education in School

Lord Polak Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng—and, if I may, the three teachers who inspired him—for initiating this debate. I went to King David High School in Liverpool, a Jewish state school, where music was one of the top criteria for getting in. We had a school of 500 pupils, with four orchestras. You knew on the first day of the new term that if a child was not carrying a violin case then they were a pianist.

One of my closest friends is a lawyer, Stephen Levey, who has a real passion for music—so much so that, in his mid-50s, he left the law and became head of music at Immanuel College, Bushey. The inspiration that he shows to the pupils, as I have seen first-hand, is quite remarkable. For him to have left the law to do that and to follow his passion means that that passion is passed on. Maybe I should ask the Minister if she can find a way to have Stephen cloned, because clearly we are short of passionate music teachers. My own grandchildren go to Sacks Morasha school up in Finchley. I learned today that, since last September when the music teacher left, there has been no specialist music teacher at their school.

I shall concentrate today on a charity that I have got involved with—I am not a trustee but have just got involved—called Restore the Music. In many different ways, it does things that my noble friend Lady Fleet talked about. A friend of mine, Gordon Singer, who moved from the US to manage a hedge fund here, and Polly Moore, who left her work as a commodities broker, met and created this charity. In my view, the Restore the Music model is an answer to some of the lack of funding and resourcing of music departments. That model is quite simple: a capital grant programme funded by the private and charitable sector; the delivery of grant awards between £10,000 and £20,000 directly to schools; and a focus on highly socioeconomically deprived areas. The spending of the grant is bespoke to the school, allowing the teacher to build their own vision for their own school and their pupils.

That model gives young people a place in school, as we all know, to find their voice, to find their place and to follow their passion. As the charity says on its website, a young person in school is a young person not on a street or in a gang. I went to a “battle of the bands” that it did at a school not far from here a couple of years ago, and I was particularly moved by the 15 or 16 year-old guy who stood up, holding his electric guitar and ready to play, and said, “If I wasn’t holding this electric guitar, I’d be holding a knife and I’d be in a gang”. It does so much good, as we all know.

Over the last five years, the charity has funded 125 schools with £2.2 million in London, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham. I repeat that it is unique because it is bespoke to the schools; the schools are told to build a solution that fits their community. I ask the Minister if she will meet the founders to see not only how they can be supported in expanding their work but if they can be helpful in ensuring that the £25 million, which is extremely welcome, will be spent in the best way.

Education: Teacher Departures

Lord Polak Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department is very open to testing and exploring new ideas. I will take that back and discuss it with colleagues. We are seeing a lot of good practice, particularly in some of the larger multi-academy trusts, in managing these issues. I genuinely think that, through the pandemic, some of the strengths of that model, and the pressure it has taken off teachers, is something we can learn from going forward.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, 80% of teachers who qualified in 2019 were still teaching one year after qualification. If, perchance, I had ever attained 80% in any school examination, I would have been congratulated by a surprised, if not shocked, teacher. I therefore congratulate my noble friend and her department on these figures. I hope that the retention rates can be increased further. How do these figures compare to the retention of new recruits in the emergency or health services?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sure my noble friend is being modest about his exam results. The retention figures are relatively stable across public sector professions. Retention of primary school teachers is somewhat above the average, and retention of secondary school teachers is marginally below the average. We are committed to making sure teachers get support at every point in their career, and we have committed the funding to deliver this.

Religious Schools: Admission Policies

Lord Polak Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord talks absolute sense.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, although purporting to promote tolerance, the humanist campaign is in fact aimed at limiting access for people of faith to state-funded education. Does the Minister agree that, rather than give credence to those who want to limit parental choice, we should protect our British values, promote tolerance and respect the rights of parents?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My noble friend is completely correct. One of the most powerful things in our education system is diversity, and faith schools exist simply because there is huge demand for them. As I mentioned earlier, they have a higher level of oversubscription than most other school systems. They are required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum, and they are inspected by Ofsted on that basis.

Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education, and Health Education

Lord Polak Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I reassure the noble Baroness that we will provide further advice to support schools to improve the practice and training that could be delivered using the latest technology, including opportunities for face-to-face training for teachers. We intend to produce supporting information by September for schools on how to teach all aspects of internet safety, not just those relating to relationships, sex and health, and to help schools deliver this in a co-ordinated and coherent way across the curriculum. They will of course be free to seek advice from the department on whether the various forums that are out there are considered good. I mentioned that forum because I did not get to my notes quickly enough, but there are several others, such as the PSHE Association; the Royal Foundation, set up by the two Dukes, which focuses on mental health; and the Catholic Education Service, which has also created a model curriculum for primary and secondary schools.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this Statement, but does my noble friend the Minister agree that the press reports over the weekend suggesting that primary schools were teaching LGBT issues from the age of five cannot possibly be true? Can he also confirm that while there is no specific requirement to teach about LGBT in primary schools, they can cover LGBT content if they consider it age-appropriate to do so? Finally, can he confirm that age-appropriateness is ultimately a matter for the governors of a school?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

To reassure my noble friend, it is not correct that young children aged five or six will be taught about sexual education. We are quite clear that that is not required until a child moves into secondary education. On LGBT, the approach at a young age is more about letting children understand that families come in different shapes and sizes, to remove any sense of bigotry that could develop at an early age through ignorance.

Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord Polak Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the Committee to my registered interests. Incidentally, it is deeply appropriate that we are having this debate in the Moses Room: in Hebrew Moses is known as Moshe rabbim, or “Moses our teacher”. I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for bringing forward this debate and all his work in this area, and to the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, who has followed on. But I pay particular tribute to my friend, the right honourable Michael Gove, for making this important initiative a reality. Michael Gove is an outstanding politician, a great thinker and, most importantly, a great doer, who makes things happen—as with this programme.

The 2010 Conservative manifesto stated that the free school initiative would create a generation of good small schools with high standards of discipline. The programme is still in its infancy, but we should be encouraged by the findings of the report by the Sutton Trust and the National Foundation for Educational Research, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Winston. We can look at statistics in so many ways. I looked at the statistics that say that at key stage 4 pupils in free schools perform slightly better than those in other types of schools, and that disadvantaged pupils in free schools perform at the equivalent of quarter of a grade higher in each subject compared with their peers in other types of schools.

As with any new initiative, however, all is not perfect and we must learn from the mistakes. It is clear, however, that a solid start has been made, and I encourage the Minister to ensure a further rollout of free schools wherever serious and competent individuals are prepared to get involved in their running.

The process can be challenging. I had the opportunity, with colleagues, to create a free school in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire. I was a trustee of the successful Yavneh College, an academy of real excellence. As I mentioned in the Chamber recently, according to the Sunday Times, Yavneh College was the best-performing non-selective secondary school in the country. Following its establishment in 2006 and its remarkable achievements thereafter, it seemed obvious to all of us that a primary school should be added to the campus, and in September 2016 Yavneh College Academy Trust expanded to include Yavneh Primary School, a new free school announced by the then Secretary of State, Nicky Morgan, who was tremendously helpful in establishing it. The primary school is enormously oversubscribed. A new state-of-the-art building will open in a few months. Yavneh places an emphasis on love of learning, and on compassion and care for others. The school motto is “A world built on kindness”. The ethos has four key elements: respect, kindness, politeness and courtesy.

The Jewish community itself is blessed with a number of successful free schools, benefiting pupils in London, Leeds and Hertfordshire. One extremely positive initiative has been where free schools have joined together and created a network to give each other mutual support, and expanded into developmental school improvement and continued professional development for staff. Would the Minister take a look at this initiative and see whether this kind of co-operation can be replicated elsewhere?

One of the schools involved in this initiative is Etz Chaim Jewish Primary School in Barnet. The head teacher Yvonne Baron reflected how the pupils were involved from the foundation of the school. She said:

“They were literally the centre of every decision we made”.


So many things were the pupils’ ideas, from the colour of the lunch trays to the height of the furniture, from the annual talent show to the charity months. As a school, Etz Chaim has flourished. One teacher remarked about the excitement she felt setting up the year 4 and 5 classrooms from scratch, something she said most teachers will never experience.

The most recent recipient of free school status in the Jewish community has been Kisharon, a wonderful special school, often described as a jewel in the crown of the community. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his support and encouragement. Kisharon is now building a state-of-the-art campus, increasing its capacity from 40 students to 70. The new arrangement between the department and Kisharon has driven up educational standards and improved the facilities for learning disabilities. Becoming a free school has facilitated the opportunity to create specific expert learning zones for children with autism and other multiple learning difficulties and disabilities.

On the basis of this positive story, will my noble friend the Minister take a further look at the issue that, as things stand, a special school cannot be a special and faith school? The experience of Kisharon rather proves that this is not only possible but desirable.

Schools: Mental Health Support

Lord Polak Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is up to individual schools to deploy their resources as they see fit. Where school counsellors provide an important role, I am sure they are used, but as I said in answer to the supplementary question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, we are deploying more resources into this area in schools.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that the Jewish Leadership Council has just launched a scheme to improve mental health in schools? Trained counsellors/well-being practitioners are being recruited to five schools—two primary schools, Rimon and Broughton Jewish, and three secondary schools, JFS, JCoSS and Yavneh College—for a three-year pilot. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Yavneh College, Spencer Lewis, the head teacher, and the staff as, according to the Sunday Times, it has just been announced as the best performing non-selective school in the country?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, many faith schools are high performing and achieve consistently high exam results. I am happy to join my noble friend in congratulating Yavneh College. Many of the best schools focus on well-being as an intrinsic part of their job, so I welcome the initiatives highlighted by my noble friend. Promoting well-being can help prevent problems arising or escalating, ensuring that both the school and pupils are provided with the tools they need to achieve the best results.

Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018

Lord Polak Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Freud, because it fits well with what I want to say—but first I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Bassam for his powerful introduction.

The Government have prayed in aid the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee to suggest that there is not a problem about work incentives. Last week in Oral Questions the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said that when SSAC looked at the issue it found that there was no rigorous research evidence to show that the provision of passported benefits acted as a work disincentive. I am not sure whether the Ministers have read the report—I have it here; it is a right door- stopper—but it actually says that very little is known, which is slightly different.

However, the response to SSAC from the coalition Government was interesting. It said in its introduction to the report:

“The coalition Government endorses the SSAC’s view that the design of passported benefits under Universal Credit can have a key impact on incentives to work ... SSAC notes that there is mixed evidence about the impact of passported benefits on work incentives. However, it is important to highlight that the responses gathered in the review focus on the impact of passported benefits within the current benefits and tax credit system rather than the impact under Universal Credit. This is an important distinction as, currently, at the point some passported benefits are withdrawn, recipients often receive an increase in working tax credits that helps compensate for the loss of the value of the passported benefits”.


Quite—as my noble friend Lady Sherlock pointed out. But this was ignored by the Secretary of State when last week he told the House of Commons that there had always been a cliff edge. He seemed to interpret that as meaning “meal or no meal”.

SSAC’s fears have been borne out by the analysis by Professor Jonathan Bradshaw and Dr Antonia Keung, the Children’s Society and the Child Poverty Action Group—I declare an interest as its honorary president—which has already been referred to. I look to that report also to address a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. We have always known that what is happening currently is an interim arrangement, that is true, but the SSAC report was six years ago, in 2012. It is not surprising that some noble Lords have forgotten about that, because it was a long time ago.

However, the Government also said then that they would consult on new criteria that year to put in place the new system in October 2013. We have had to wait six years. What took them so long? I suspect that it was because they could not find a way round the cliff- edge problem, because SSAC repeatedly drew attention to the fact that if you go down the route of introducing an income threshold it creates a cliff-edge problem. It did not have an answer to it because there is no answer if you are not prepared to pay for free school meals for all those on universal credit. As has already been said, that undermines the foundational principle of universal credit. Perhaps that is why the noble Lord, Lord Freud—who did so much work on that benefit—is so concerned.

Yes, the Government made this clear in 2012—but the living standards landscape is very different from what it was then. For example, we did not know then that there was going to be a two-child limit on benefits for families. We did not know then that universal credit was going to be subjected to cut after cut. The CPAG has suggested that the average loss for working families on universal credit will be more than £400 a year. We did not know then that working age benefits were going to be frozen. Child benefit is particularly relevant here. Professor Jonathan Bradshaw kindly did some calculations for me—I am not very good at calculations—and calculated that for a two-child family child benefit is worth £2.66 a week less than it was in 2012 when the Government first suggested that they were not going to give it to everyone on universal credit. It is £5.44 less if we go back to 2010. That is in the context of the Resolution Foundation pointing out that for a two-child-plus family, child benefit is less generous than at any point since it was fully introduced in 1979. So, as they say, when the facts change, perhaps the policy should change as well.

Many of these matters come down to how things work in practice, so perhaps I may ask a few practical questions. We know that the earnings of people at the lower end of the labour market fluctuate repeatedly. The Government have addressed how they are going to estimate what those earnings are, but if they are going to be recalculated every month—as in the briefing referred to by the right reverend Prelate from the representatives of the Children’s Society—this will be an absolute nightmare. I cannot see any reference to what will happen to people on zero-hours contracts or self-employed people. Can the Minister explain how their earnings will be calculated?

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have the Government given any consideration to decoupling free school meals eligibility from pupil premium eligibility? As I understand it, it is the latter that costs so much, not free school meals. So it would be possible to pay for free school meals for everyone on universal credit at not a huge extra cost and treat the pupil premium separately.

Finally—I hope this is not too cheeky—when the Minister responds, will he respond to what has actually been said here today? Last week in Oral Questions I got the sense that officials had expected us to say the same things that had been said in the House of Commons the day before. We did not, but that was what the response was to.

I say the same to the noble Lord, Lord Patten. My noble friend Lord Bassam made it very clear what he was talking about. He produced facts from the Children’s Commissioner which showed that the facts that the Government have been presenting over and over again—that 50,000 children will be better off—are fake facts, to quote a certain President. So let us get our facts right and address what people are saying in this House rather than what we expect them to say.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. His words about his experiences and circumstances as a child were very moving. However, change is often difficult to deliver. As George Bernard Shaw said, progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

The introduction of universal credit transforms the benefits system by making work pay. At the same time, public resources can be targeted at the families most in need, and that must include setting a threshold for free school meals.

I was particularly struck by the contribution to the debate in the Commons by my honourable friend the vice-chairman of the Conservative party Maria Caulfield. She too talked about her experiences of being brought up in a working-class background where there was no hope and no ambition for working-class kids other than a future life on benefits. Universal credit, I am sure noble Lords will agree, will help such families and such individuals. I will not repeat the arguments made and the reply to the Labour smears of last week; suffice it to say that as a result of the changes we are told—facts—that 50,000 extra children will get free school meals by 2022. I have called them facts; we cannot call them facts because only in 2022 will we know the real facts on any of the projections, but those will be as a result of changes brought about by the Government. As Maria went on to say last week, what some Labour Members did was to spread fear in a political, point-scoring way and use working-class families, shamefully, as a political football. That was clear. It was clear if you read what was in the press.

I was absolutely sure that it must be right that free school meals are intended for the most disadvantaged families on low incomes. Thus, targeting taxpayers’ money at those most in need is the right thing to do. I support the Government’s position, which is good for all, and I remind those who will not accept change of the words of the late Harold Wilson:

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery”.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Bassam for opening this debate so effectively and, like other noble Lords, I was certainly moved by his personal story. These regulations have brought widespread resistance from opposition parties and Cross-Benchers, as evidenced in this debate, as well as from the children’s welfare and education sectors in recent weeks and months. Apart from the effects of the regulations, anger has increased with the realisation that, inexplicably for such an important matter, no impact assessment was carried out by the Government. Can the Minister explain why?

I agree with the wording of the regret Motion regarding a six-month delay while that impact assessment is carried out; if it was not seen as necessary at the start, when the Government first devised these regulations, it certainly is now, because of the issues that have been raised in debates in the other place last week and in your Lordships’ House this evening. When they were debated in the other place last week, when the Opposition prayed against them, the Government lost the argument that day but fended off the Motion to Annul with the help of the Democratic Unionist Party—hardly surprising, since the Prime Minister had enlisted their support, I would say cynically, by producing a rabbit from a hat by announcing that the regulations will not apply in Northern Ireland. The Government have no such cover in your Lordships’ House.

As noble Lords have said, not receiving free school meals would cost a family around £430 a year for each child. Labour policy is that the children of all families in receipt of universal credit should receive free school meals, and of course that comes at a cost. However, not providing free school meals to the children of families stuck in poverty despite one or both parents being in work also comes at a cost, a cost of a different kind, because a key issue from the education point of view is that free school meals often act as a passport to other support, such as help with school clothing, trips, music lessons or discounted access to leisure facilities. This means that entitlement to free school meals can be worth significantly more to struggling families than the direct value of the meal itself.

The Government say they want to target the families that need free school meals most, and that is understandable and perfectly acceptable, but what about the families that may need it slightly less, but nevertheless genuinely need the benefits of free school meals? The Minister may not appreciate this fact, nor indeed some of his colleagues, but for too many children in poverty, free school meals are the difference between getting a hot meal during the day and going without. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lady Lister said, teachers know only too well that an undernourished child is in no fit state to be taught effectively. The Government should adopt the policy of the Opposition and support all children living in poverty by continuing with the transitional arrangements.

The government position is that it would cost too much: by most estimates around £3 billion a year. But if free school meals were decoupled from universal credit, as other noble Lords have suggested, and as has already happened with infant school meals, which are universally free, then the cost would be substantially reduced, probably to around £500 million a year. That is not an insignificant amount of money, I am not suggesting it is, but is the Minister going to get to his feet and tell your Lordships’ House that his Government cannot afford that relatively modest amount to ensure that children from poor in-work families—I repeat that these are in-work families—are provided with a nourishing meal each school day? If so, then the Prime Minister’s claim to be supporting the “just about managing” will be demonstrably empty rhetoric. If their aim is to target the families that need free school meals most, the Minister has to answer the point made very well by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, as to how children should be treated during school holidays: in many cases they suffer considerably without any access to free school meals in that period.

Children: Missed Education

Lord Polak Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, we are a tolerant and diverse society in which home schooling plays a part. However, there should be a register of these institutions to ensure better safeguarding, and certainly premises should be looked at from a health and safety point of view. Who is driving the agenda for secularisation? Will the Minister remind Ofsted that the humanists are not the only minority group with opinions? Does he agree it is bizarre that it is they who are the most intolerant and are being evangelical in wanting everyone to conform to their views?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we try to represent a broad coalition in education. I am proud that we live in one of the most tolerant and inclusive countries in the world—as I said in an article in the Times today—and we have to meet the concerns of all people. The humanists have to be reasonable, as do any of the other religious groups, and my job is to ensure that we reach a compromise for all concerned and that children are safe.