Schools: Swimming and Life-saving Skills

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the swimming and life-saving skills of children provided through schools.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a patron of the Royal Life Saving Society. I thank those organisations which have sent briefings, particularly the Royal Life Saving Society, the MCA, the RNLI, the Local Government Association and our own Library, all of which have been very helpful. I thank, too, those few Members who are here; I am sorry that the debate is happening so late.

Swimming is a bit like riding a bike. Once you learn to do it, you never forget it. The best time to learn to swim is when you are very young, although taking 30 infants to the swimming pool once a week was a nightmare in terms of getting them dressed and undressed.

I was asked last October to go to Worcester Cathedral, where the Royal Life Saving Society has its annual awards for volunteers. Before that event, a family went into one of the private chapels and lit a candle, because their son had tragically died in a drowning accident. I can think of nothing worse than receiving the telephone call, the knock on the door or the visit from the police or emergency services to say that family or friends have died in such tragic circumstances, yet, every year, on average 600 people lose their lives through drowning.

Quite rightly, we are at the moment concerned about knife crime and asking, “What can we do to prevent knife crime?” That is a tragic occurrence and lives are needlessly lost. Equally, through drowning, lives are needlessly lost, but there are things that we can do about it. One is to ensure that children and young people can swim. It must be concerning that only somewhere in the order of just over 50% of children leave primary school being able to swim. That really is quite a worrying figure.

I want to praise the Government first of all. The decision to introduce CPR and first aid as part of health education is a very good move forward. I congratulate them on that and thank them. They should at the same time realise that, just as we will be teaching children first aid, we should also be teaching them water safety. Children and young people need to know that if they see someone in difficulties, they should not automatically jump into the sea or the lake or the river or the canal to help them because they might put their own life in danger. There are simple things they can do: they need to know the colour of the various flags being flown at the seaside and a whole host of other things about water safety. It seems to me to be a really good fit to learn CPR, life-saving skills, first aid and water safety. I put down a Written Question about this a few weeks ago, and the Minister gave a very detailed reply. I hope that in his response, he might add to that.

Swimming is, of course, one of the best defences against drowning and we must ensure that we teach children to swim. I am sure that in his reply, the Minister will tell us that swimming and water safety are taught in primary schools and are a compulsory element in the PE curriculum. However, I question that because they do not have to be taught in all schools: they do not have to be taught in free schools or academies, and he will know that more than 1,000 schools do not teach them at all. Perhaps it is no wonder that just over 50% of children are leaving school unable to swim. We should ensure that every school has the facilities. If there are no swimming pools—if they are in a rural area, for example—there are ways around that. For example, there are mobile pools that can be inflated—children can get into them and learn basic swimming strokes.

We should be bold enough to say, “We want to ensure that nearly every child who leaves primary school can swim. In every school, every city, every village, every town and every county, every child should learn to swim”. Perhaps we should suggest targets: we are good at setting targets on the number of apprentices we are going to have. Why not set a first target that over the next period—say over the next three years—we want 60% or 70% of children, when they leave their primary school, to be able to swim? Just think of the lives that we would save.

Of course, it is not just the people who drown whom we are discussing. It is also the non-fatal drowning cases, sometimes referred to as near-drowning. For every person who loses their life through drowning, there are six hospital admissions through near-drowning. This is, again, unacceptable. If we were to sort out the issue, it would also relieve pressure on our hospitals.

I know that the Government are anxious about this. They set up the Swim Group to submit an independent report with recommendations for curriculum swimming; its final report was submitted to the Government in the spring of 2017. It focused on six key areas and made 16 really good practical recommendations for improving curriculum swimming in primary schools. New guidance on the PE and sport premium has been released to help schools understand how they can use this funding to support swimming and water safety sessions. There is also a requirement to show the percentage of pupils in year 6 who meet the minimum national curriculum standards.

I have a question for the Minister. I think I gave him notice and if I did not, perhaps he could tell me in writing. One of the issues about the whole question of drowning is that it is left to the voluntary organisations—which do fantastic work and, in common parlance, I give a big shout-out to them and all their volunteers—to do the recording of drowning incidents. It would make their job significantly less difficult if the statutory bodies were required to contribute to the database, either directly or through one of these voluntary bodies. Will the Government make the reporting of drowning to the National Water Safety Forum mandatory for the NHS, coroners, the fire and rescue service and the police service, so that we can know, quickly and accurately, the number of people who have drowned and the lessons we can learn? I am happy for the Minister to write to me about that.

I want to raise one other issue. There has been, over the last few years, an increasing number of students at our universities losing their lives through drowning, often, or in most cases, alcohol related. There was the recent tragedy of a student at, I think, Reading University, who died in the lake on the campus. We ought to be writing to student unions at universities, copying in vice-chancellors, suggesting that they should make their students aware of the issue and give them some simple and non-patronising advice about how they should conduct themselves, because the trend is an alarming one and we must do something about it.

Finally, I quote Steve Parry, who, noble Lords will remember, was an Olympic swimming medallist:

“Water safety is the only part of the national curriculum that will save children’s lives, it can’t be treated as an optional extra”.

Social Mobility: Regional Attainment Gap

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, all our efforts around social mobility are aimed at helping all those who are not getting a fair crack of the whip. We have 12 opportunity areas operating at the moment and, just to take the case study of Derby, where money is being specifically targeted to help children who are struggling to read or have English as an additional language, we are already seeing improvements at key stages 1 and 2. Things are improving faster in Derby than nationally.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, may I raise another issue from the report? It highlights the problem of teacher retention, and teachers feeling that their professional status is not being invested in. Across the OECD the average amount of time spent on high-quality continuing professional development is about 50 hours; in the UK it is half that. Have the Government any plans to increase the availability of continuing professional development?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we have recently announced the recruitment and retention strategy, and I agree with the noble Lord that retention is probably the greater priority, because it is a terrible waste when good young teachers leave the profession. We have put much more focus on ongoing CPD for teachers, particularly in the second year, reducing their teaching load so that they have more time for support. We have announced a £30 million investment in tailored support for certain schools with recruitment and retention challenges, which is designed to help schools improve existing plans, join national programmes, build local partnerships or fund new initiatives.

Education, Health and Care Plans

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I absolutely take my noble friend’s point. As all parents know, a parent can never be happier than their least happy child. There are huge emotional issues involved in this. That is why we are continually reviewing the policies, as we did in December last year, as I mentioned in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Watson. We are also increasing the capital funding available to special schools where they have severe difficulties relating to autism.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is very easy to forget when talking about tribunals and costs to local authorities and to government that we are talking about children and young people who have special needs—in many cases severe special needs. The Minister will remember that when we established education, health and care plans in the Children and Families Bill, everybody celebrated. Now that celebration has turned into a nightmare as parent after parent does not get the package they need. The fact we now have parents going to the High Court demanding a judicial review is surely an indictment of where we are at.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I mentioned in response to an earlier question, the percentage of appeals is 1.5%. Broadly, that is not much higher than under the old regime, which changed in 2014. This is a new way of dealing with children with needs and we need to remember that; we are still on a learning curve. We have made significant investment in this since it was rolled out—£391 million in total—dealing with a whole range of things such as the parent carer forums, where a key part of these reforms is putting parents at the centre of the process. But I accept that any level of appeal is causing distress and we are working to reduce it.

Multi-Academy Trusts: Salaries

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of salary levels in multi-academy trusts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, multi-academy trusts achieving value for money is at the forefront of my priorities. It is essential that we challenge trusts paying high individual salaries or with high leadership team costs. We have been doing this for more than a year, we have recently re-emphasised its importance, and we will continue to do so throughout 2019. High salaries and leadership costs need to be justified, with evidence of robust processes for setting salaries and reductions where appropriate.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. I know that he is concerned about this matter. I was interested to read an advert by the Floreat free school for a PA to the chief executive and for finance officers. These important posts are all to be volunteers; clearly, the school does not have money in its budget to pay for them. At the same time, the chief executive of one of our multi-academy trusts is on a salary of £440,000—nearly three times the salary of our Prime Minister. At a time when schools are having to make cuts and struggling with their budgets, does the Minister not agree that this issue needs to be properly addressed?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I will deal first with the second part of the noble Lord’s question. The trust to which he refers is the Harris trust. Frankly, it is delivering the most extraordinary outcomes for children. If you take the cost of the chief executive’s salary and divide it by the number of pupils, it offers some of the best value for money that government could ever achieve.

Schools: Climate Change Strike

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

To give the noble and right reverend Lord some reassurance, I say that we have recently issued new guidance for Ofsted inspections and all these points are being moved up the profile for children. Today’s first Question—it showed the House working at its best, with cross-party debate—was about the use of plastic, which is something children can be much more active in. How many young people do noble Lords see on the Tube drinking bottles of water which are then thrown away? Young people can actively participate in that, much more than on long-term climate change, which we are already dealing with.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, first, can we applaud the fact that young people really care about this issue? We quite often moan that they do not bother about anything. Secondly, I remind the Minister that his former Secretary of State, Mr Gove, tried to remove climate change from the curriculum. It was thanks to Ed Davey in the environment department that we won that battle. Finally, given that this is such an important issue, why do we not have a national climate change day, when schools and communities could discuss this important topic?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is up to schools to find the specific parts of their curriculum. We announced £10 million of investment to support schools to share best practice on behaviour management, and indeed on matters of this kind.

Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I thank the noble Lord for his questions. Dealing with the ones that I can address straight away, I reassure him that academies will be included in the early-career framework. This is a strategy for the entire state-funded system.

Regarding the question on teaching schools, we are reviewing this at the moment and have not fully completed our thinking. One issue of concern to us is that there are too many teaching schools that between them are not receiving enough money to meaningfully engage with the surrounding areas that they are being asked to help. We are looking to rationalise that. We hope that good multi-academy trusts will play a role in that, but we are certainly not seeking to exclude good schools.

I agree with the noble Lord that retention is more important than recruitment, because there is no point pouring people into a bucket with a hole at the bottom of it. We have given a lot of consideration to how we improve retention. A big problem is the workload and how it is being imposed, particularly on young teachers. We are aware from the figures for those leaving the profession that the percentage of younger, newly qualified teachers leaving the profession is one of the highest categories. We are working on that. There are several areas of concern; for example, the pernicious expectation that young teachers should be responsible for planning their own lessons, when we want to encourage schools to provide much more support.

I shall write separately to the noble Lord to address his concerns on mental health.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his Statement, in which he gave the context and rationale for the teacher recruitment and retention strategy that was published yesterday. I am delighted that the Government have worked with the co-signatories listed on the inside cover. The tone of the strategy is very positive.

I do not agree however, that it is a full national strategy, as there is more work to be done. How are middle leaders to be developed, and do those who manage MATs need knowledge and perhaps experience of how schools work? While the partnerships in the document reflect a new beginning for schools, what role do the Government see for local authorities, which, after all, are the largest employers of teachers? What a pity they were not involved in the formation of the strategy.

The strategy starts by stating that,

“there are no great schools without great teachers”.

Hear, hear.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the focus is on early-career teaching at this stage. We have outlined four key areas. One is funding, which will allow teachers in their second year to reduce their timetable by 5%. We are encouraging a reduction in teacher workload, which I covered a moment ago, and a more diverse range of options for career progression, which will help teachers further along in their career. We want to continue to make sure that teaching is considered a great career for those coming into it. We launched an initiative last year called Discover Teaching. Some 13,000 potential recruits have been through that system.

We need to see how the first phase of this programme evolves. We are rolling out some pilot areas in September next year: Bradford, the north-east and one other area which I shall find in my notes in a moment. We will learn from our experience of how those work before we implement the programme across the country.

Children: Special Educational Needs

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree with the noble Lord that residential special education is extremely expensive. One of our current problems is that local authorities tend to send a lot of children out of area to expensive residential solutions. We are trying to deal with this by increasing the number of specialist free schools around the country; we announced a £50 million capital funding pot in May of last year, bringing the total to £265 million, and in March we announced sponsors for 14 new special schools. In the announcement in December, to which the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred, we also agreed to remove the cap on applications for new special and alternative provision free schools.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will perhaps know that up to 2,000 young people on education, health and care plans have received no provision at all. Increasingly, parents are taking legal action against local authorities. Are we not in danger of replicating what is happening in the National Health Service, where litigation costs have become astronomical?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is right that we are concerned about tribunal costs—indeed, he has asked a Question on this subject that will be taken in a couple of weeks’ time, so we will be able to deal with it in more detail then. Last year, we introduced a new measure to see how many appeals were going to tribunals: it showed that, of all the decisions made in the year by local authorities, only 1.5% were appealed by parents, and a number of authorities are seeing zero or near zero appeals. So the challenge for us is to spread the good practice of those local authorities that have very low levels of appeal, to ensure that those which are less good are learning.

Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, first, I ought to declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a former head teacher of two maintained-sector schools in deprived communities. I say that because this has been very much a debate about free schools, but they have to be put into perspective. Of course the noble Lord, Lord Hill, is right that among the speakers we have the three architects of free schools and our last three Ministers of Education in the House of Lords. All three have brought real care, understanding and consideration to that office, and I thank them for that.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for facilitating this debate. I do not suppose it is a surprise that we are having this debate, given how many Conservative Peers are involved in the free school movement and how the—I shall use the word “tentacles”, but it sounds a bit harsh—tentacles of the new school network have gone into government. Indeed, our current Leader of House was involved in the free school movement. The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, was right and wrong. First, he was wrong about his policy statement and his idea of free schools. Free schools started in the 1960s and 1970s. There were two free schools in Liverpool. A character called John Ord started one of them. They did not believe in a set curriculum; it was about what they wanted to do. They did not believe in hierarchy. They certainly did not believe in paying their head teacher, if one existed, huge sums of money, or the chief executive, if one existed. So he is wrong about the history of free school movement, but he is right that systems cannot improve outcomes.

Teachers and leadership improve outcomes. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who said virtually the same thing. He said we should not believe that structures improve our education system—they do not. I lived through a period in Liverpool when the then Labour Party believed that all small, single-sex secondary schools should be closed. It believed we should not have small, single-sex schools. It did away with them all and we had large, co-ed, community comprehensives. That did not improve teaching at all. What improves teaching is quality. We mention countries such as Finland, which was of course top of Mr Gove’s list at one stage; one of the things such countries all have is a belief in teachers. They are well paid and well trained and have continuous professional development. That is what we have to do in this country.

I was slightly disappointed when the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned a particular academy he had been to. I think anybody who speaks on education should visit a variety of schools, so that they know what they are talking about. Sadly, we are focused at the moment on just one type of school. I would like to take him to my old school in Halewood, one of the most deprived parts of Liverpool. That three-form entry school had results above the national average and a gold standard arts award. I could take you to dozens of other schools like that. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, talked about these wonderful, successful schools, but I do not like playing one school off against another. I do not like saying, “This type of school is successful”, implying that other types of school must be failures. I notice the noble Baroness did not mention the £138 million spent on opening 62 free schools, UTCs and studio schools that have either closed, partially closed or failed to open.

I have followed this debate closely, believing strongly in the maintenance of an education system that is free at the point of delivery and in which schools are accountable to the communities whose children and young people they educate. I welcome successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs, including the noble Lords, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew, being prepared to give not only their time and expertise but their money to their beliefs in the education system. I welcome that; there is nothing wrong with that and we should not denigrate it. I am sure I am not alone in going to a Carnegie library—mine was in Liverpool—which is one of 600-odd such libraries, similarly built through philanthropic endeavour. They are still operating, and are now listed buildings.

Business sponsorship, a more modern form of philanthropy, was of course at the heart of the development of city technology colleges, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in the Education Reform Act some 30 years ago. The first wave of CTCs had 20% of their capital costs provided by a sponsor. Over time, the CTC model has morphed into academy schools, with free schools—an umbrella term that includes 442 free schools, 50 university technical colleges and 27 studio schools—being an important subset of academy schools.

I was puzzled—I still am—about why this debate is about free schools rather than academies. The Government’s initial, romantic vision of a free school was of a school set up by a group of parents or teachers to provide education particularly suited to the needs of children in a particular community. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, is right when he says that we should not let them become part of the establishment. If they were successful—and many were—their success was in challenging the status quo and being different. I remember going to TreeHouse School in Finchley, which started as a free school. It was set up by parents who were angry that schools did not provide for the needs of autistic children. They challenged the system; they are the sand in the oyster and they wanted to make a change. That is right and proper, but sadly I do not think that is happening any more.

Like most romantic visions, the reality is very different and the majority of free schools are now constituent parts of multi-academy trusts. According to research by the Education Policy Institute in November 2017, nearly one-fifth of free schools had joined very large multi-academy trusts. In May 2018, a report by the NFER and the Sutton Trust, which I think has been mentioned, found that three-quarters of free schools set up in the past two years were part of a multi-academy trust, with parents involved in setting up only 4% of recently established free schools.

Free schools—and academies, of which there are a much larger number—have had a significant impact on the education system in England, but that impact is very much like the infamous curate’s egg: while it is good in parts, many parts have not been good at all. How has the education system benefited from free schools? One group who have definitely benefited are those chief executive officers of academies and academy chains who earn three-figure salaries, significantly more than even our Prime Minister, and in some cases even more than vice-chancellors of universities. The Minister is trying to ensure that the salary increases of school leaders are kept down to 1.5%, but given their freedoms, are they allowed to do that?

My concerns—not about the free school movement but about free schools—were voiced at the beginning of this debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. My principal concern is the democratic deficit in the academy sector, which, again, is not in the philosophy of why free schools were set up. Academies can choose to be totally detached from the local authority in which they are situated, with little or no accountability to the community they serve. If a free school is part of one of the large national or system leader multi-academy trusts, with schools in many local authority areas, the head of the trust will inevitably be many miles from some of the schools and inaccessible to parents should they wish to raise a concern.

The Education Select Committee was told by the leader of a major trust that the schools in the MAT were more involved with other schools in the trust than with those in their area. Academies are not obliged to have governing bodies—although many still do—and many academy head teachers have much less freedom and autonomy; decisions are taken by the chief executive at the centre. One of the key freedoms that academies and multi-academy trusts have is to choose which subjects of the national curriculum to teach. I was interested when the noble Lord, Lord Harris, talked about social skills being taught. The sad thing is that if you have those freedoms, you can choose not to do PSHE. Will he join me in urging the Government that those social skills should be taught at school?

The announcement was made that first aid and CPR would be taught in schools. When the Minister replies, will he say whether that will apply to all schools, including free schools and academies? The noble Lord, Lord Harris, also asked the Minister about the financial difficulties of small schools. He is right that there are problems with small schools. Look at how rural schools struggle, when they may be the only beacon in a community. Will the Minister agree that small schools in deprived communities, which are the heart and lifeblood of that community, should be financially supported as well?

We have heard that the jury is still out on whether free schools are any more successful educationally than other schools in the community they serve. What we do know is that free schools have a smaller percentage of students eligible for free meals than local community schools, and that in areas with above-average deprivation, free school pupils are more affluent than the neighbourhood average. This is because many free schools have very expensive uniforms, and this has the effect of weeding out applications from poorer parents. One well-known school in west London has a uniform supplier that charges a minimum of £47 for a blazer with braid and a badge you cannot buy and sew on to a cheaper blazer. It is twice the cost of one at John Lewis and has to be dry-cleaned. A pullover costs £22.50—three times the cost of one from John Lewis—and so it goes on. This is not fair on people who struggle financially. It seems that some free schools have close regard to the unaffordability of school uniform. Having wealthier parents is unlikely to make a school slip down the performance league tables.

Free schools always take pupils from other local schools, making those schools less viable. In rural areas, for example, the secondary schools closest to new free schools lose half a form of entry at year 7. Free schools do not have a good record in meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. Free schools are better than the average—or is that worse?—at excluding pupils. That is one league table where academies dominate the premier league. Free schools are seeing fewer and fewer parents getting involved. It seems to me that there is no such thing as a “free” school. They cost the taxpayer more than community schools, they cost parents more than community schools and they are a burden, not an asset, to other local schools.

What about the future? I do not agree with the Labour Party that free schools should be abolished. Free schools should have the same freedoms and responsibilities as all other schools.

Young People

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating this debate. I have very many happy memories of her time as Secretary of State for Local Government, when we had a vibrant youth service throughout the UK.

What are the challenges? They include jobs and unemployment, poverty and homelessness, a lack of affordable homes, physical health, education disparity, growing up too quickly and bullying. I suppose that those challenges have always been there but today we have some 21st-century challenges, which many of your Lordships have mentioned: the pressure of materialism, negative stereotyping, the pressures of 24-hour social networking, issues related to body image, eating disabilities or emotional difficulties with food, obesity and knife crime.

What we have heard is a sad catalogue of young people challenged in many ways. Jobs and unemployment continue to be an issue. Poverty and homelessness go hand in hand, and the number of young people living on our streets should be a matter of shame. Sadder still is that a significant minority of our young people tick several boxes on the list. Someone who is unemployed is also likely to be living in poverty. This same group of young people is unlikely to be in good health. Some of them will end up in the criminal justice system, often for petty crimes.

Of course, these issues have always been with us to a greater or lesser extent, certainly for as long as any of us can remember, but some things have improved. There are now more educational opportunities for young people, with most young people staying on until 18 and half of them moving into higher education—the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, is not here, but I should say that maintained schools are now outperforming academies. Job opportunities for young people are available, although many of the new jobs that this Government have created are zero-hours contracts which do not help them plan for their future.

Only yesterday, we heard the Prime Minister in Downing Street restate her determination to improve things in Britain. We first heard it on 13 July 2016, when she spoke so passionately about “burning injustice”. Unfortunately, this Government have done little to reduce such burning injustices in the past two years, largely because much of their energy has been spent on trying to get us out of Europe, with the rest spent on trying to sort out internal disagreements in the Conservative Party.

I want to focus on a range of 21st-century pressures which the Government have failed to take action on or been slow to react to—they are pressures that nobody in this Chamber will have experienced as a young person. The noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Bottomley, and a number of other noble Lords mentioned the internet. While the internet is not the root of all evil and has many good and valuable features, the failure of Governments, including ours, to establish any proper regulatory control over content and over how social media are used is totally unacceptable. Such lack of regulation—I do not pretend that regulation is easy—means that young people are exposed to many unwelcome influences.

Many of the profits of the big internet providers come, directly and indirectly, from pornography. It is legal somewhere in the world for almost any sexual activity to take place between two or more adults. All such activities, and some that border on the illegal, can easily be found on the internet by entering two words in Google or other search engine and clicking once on the top entry. There is immediate free access to more than 10 million hardcore videos. Thank goodness the British Board of Film Classification is now taking action following an initiative from the Government, but we must not be complacent; we must be really strict about what we do.

A major concern of young men and young women is body image, where a standard of perfection is made to seem the norm. Websites used by young people are populated by what we might called the “Love Island” generation, with perfect bodies. Even on the Mail Online, the front page is always half full of beautiful people, with women who all seem to be size 8 and men who must spend all their time in the gym.

Social media are a recent phenomenon, but the majority of young people now use them daily on their mobile phone, iPad and computer. While they are a great communications tool if used wisely, misuse is also significant in a number of ways.

Age verification has been the subject of frequent discussions between government and internet providers. In 2015, the Independent carried a story about the age limit for Facebook being raised to 16. Nearly four years later, it remains at 13 but seems very easy to circumvent, with figures showing that nearly four out of five young people under 13 have social media accounts. I remember at my school children as young as seven and eight having Facebook accounts. It is now clear that we cannot put the internet genie back in the bottle, so we must make sure that children and young people are resilient enough to cope as best they can with these 24/7 pressures—perhaps Mr Clegg could help us on that score.

I was going to talk about gambling, but the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington and the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of St Albans gave us a tour de force on that subject. There is something perverse about seven and eight year-olds going to the souvenir shop of their football club and coming away with a football shirt with an advert on the back for internet betting. It cannot be right that over half our Premier League football clubs are sponsored by betting companies.

Most of these problems have led to a huge increase in mental health problems. I will not repeat the figures given at the beginning by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong. I will give only the two alarming and terrifying figures that frighten me most: of those 11 to 16 year-olds with mental health issues, 25.5% have self-harmed or attempted suicide at some point. Currently, 65% of children and young people with mental health problems do not have access to mental health provision. What are the Government doing about it? Let me give you something good. I came across a young girl who suffered from severe depression, which was picked up at her school by CAMHS. She had to wait a while for CAMHS to be involved, but it referred her immediately to her doctor, who gave her medication, sent her to a counsellor and gave her an app to use. That was fantastic and almost immediate. This sort of reaction should be available to every young person with a mental health problem, which sadly is not the case.

The Government have set up seven trail-blazers. Great. These trail-blazers will do the work and report, but what are we doing with other schools in the meantime? I am concerned that our mental health initiatives are more health-based than school-based. I want to see not just a mental health awareness champion but quick access to mental health experts in every school. CAMHS—child and adolescent mental health services—was good but was reduced to a shadow of its former self by local government cuts. As I said in an Oral Question, we have a fantastic psychological service in the local authorities, which could be the solution to many of these issues. We should look at what is happening in Wales, where in most schools there is access to counsellors. The solution is not about just putting some money in and setting up trail-blazers but about seeing that young people do not slip through the net.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, raised two issues. I agree with him entirely about school exclusions. It is rather interesting that at one end there are huge numbers of school exclusions—something like 45 schools have excluded 20% of their pupils—and at the other end a huge and increasing number of young people are in home education. Schools are off-rolling their pupils to private companies, which they pay so that those children are not in school. That cannot be what our education service is about.

Finally, how successful are we in engaging young people to decide their own future? It is alarming that the number of young people who vote in local or national elections is pitifully low. If we could encourage them to register to vote, Governments of all political persuasions would take notice and do something about their issues and concerns.

Schools: Funding

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a patron of Careers Connect. I know some people think that if a debate does not have dozens of speakers, it is not quite as important, but I think it is better when we have smaller numbers because we have longer to speak and can appreciate the arguments being made. I should like particularly to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for whom I have huge respect from my days as leader of Liverpool City Council. She came to the rescue of our education service and that debt has always been in my mind.

This debate is being held against the background of the BBC programme “School”. The series follows the pupils, teachers, parents and leaders of different secondary schools in a multi-academy trust. It shows a head teacher, Mr Pope, struggling to improve standards at his school, a rural comprehensive in Gloucester which has been put into special measures, while at the same time trying to find £1 million of cuts from his annual budget. Teaching, leadership and support staff are being decimated. Class sizes are increasing. Morale is falling as pupils and teachers struggle to shake off the label “inadequate”. Last week, in episode three, after a poor Ofsted report, Mr Pope is seen handing in his resignation. He said:

“I started my headship with a vision of what I wanted to achieve and I came to realise that increasingly, I was making compromises … the more you have to compromise, the more you sit there thinking: this isn’t what I wanted to do. This isn’t what I thought my headship would be about”.


What wise words those are.

My noble friend Lord Addington, who is in his place behind me, has been purring because of the number of speakers who have mentioned special educational needs. He is less angry and more content than I have seen him for a long time. For example, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester talked about special educational needs. I began to purr when the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, “Let’s cut testing”. Hallelujah to that. I think that my party said in its manifesto that we should do away with key stage 2 testing and with league tables that play one school off against another.

I am sure that when the Minister, for whom I have huge am respect because I know he always does his best—whenever there is a problem, he is the first to say, “Come and talk to me and let’s try to sort it out”—gives his reply, he will baffle us with facts and figures about how much is being spent: this or that amount of money and this pot of money. I am sure that, unlike the Minister of State for School Standards, when it comes to blinding us with figures, he will make sure that his statistics are correct. I do not want to talk about the statistics, although I, too, have had all the briefings. I thank the House of Lords Library and many other people who have written in. Sometimes you can be almost blinded by the statistics and they become meaningless. When I thought about how to approach this debate, I wanted to ask what it feels like for an individual school. We have talked about the BBC series, but that is slightly different.

One of my former teachers, Mr Carl Roscoe, is now the head of a successful one-form-entry primary school in Lancashire. I emailed him and said, “I am speaking in a debate. Can you tell me what it is like to face budgetary constraints”—I will not use the word “cuts”—“in your primary school?” He emailed back earlier today, and what he has to say is probably my speech:

“We are now eating in to any money we have held back in case the boiler packs in or there is any roof damage. The site supervisor patches up any problems—as we haven’t got the funds to pay the appropriate people. If teachers are absent I cover … as we can’t afford the supply teacher rates. Our Two Year Old Nursery currently has a number of portable heaters as it would cost too much to repair or replace the old heating system.


“The Children’s Centre has closed so a lot of families are struggling before children attend school so we are seeing more four year olds attend school in nappies. The teacher and the teaching assistant are spending time changing nappies rather than”,


improving their learning. He goes on:

“We are seeing more children struggling with anxiety—so we have used funds to pay for mental health training—I am now the Mental Health Champion. Teachers are spending more time providing pastoral care. The school appears to be the main community hub for everything—including social care support/advice. Teaching Assistant time is being cut so children are missing out on valuable interventions that the class teacher hasn’t got the time to provide on a one to one or small group basis.


“Children who need SEND support are waiting longer to be diagnosed so the school has to find ways to manage the behaviour issues without too much disruption to the learning that should be taking place. There are no places in local behaviour support schools to accommodate these children—even on a temporary basis. Teachers then feel unsupported and are growing more anxious in a job that should be highly valued.


“I still enjoy my job and feel very privileged to be in the job, but I know of other Head Teachers who are feeling the strain and as a result, they are contemplating taking early retirement or walking away from their career”.


That is a bit like Mr Pope.

The Minister, speaking at the School and Academies Show in Birmingham, likened himself to “a pig hunting for truffles” when it comes to finding waste in schools. But the reality is that schools do not have the luxury of trying to find waste; it is about trying to make massive budget savings. It does not take a bottle of champagne or whatever it might be to find these savings because, rather depressingly, they are happening right at this moment. How are those savings being made? We have talked about special educational needs. One of the ways that savings are being made is by trying to ensure that you do not have children with special educational needs in your school because—guess what?—they cost money.

Increasingly, qualified teachers who used to lead nurseries are being taken out as the head puts in NVQ level 3 staff members, excellent though they are. We see schools going through restructuring and, in that way, structuring out their expensive, experienced teachers. Schools are using teaching assistants to teach lessons. Secondary schools are scrapping subjects that are not part of the EBacc because they are expensive. As we have heard, those include music and drama. Perhaps it is easy to make those savings, but they are going on throughout our education system.

By chance, I met a group of people from an organisation called The Key. I believe its representatives have met the Minister. The Key provides information for schools on anything they are concerned about. It has produced a very good study of education in rural schools entitled The Challenges of Leading a Rural School: A State of Education Series Report. It surveyed the head teachers of some of the 5,000 rural schools across England, which comprise 20% of our schools. However, there is a dearth of information published on the unique challenges they face. The research shows that the top problem for the heads of rural schools is not being in a small community, lack of pupils or problems in staffing; rather, half of them said that the problem is not having enough money. Again, some of the comments are quite alarming. One head, Tim, reported:

“This year I need to save £64k from a £285k budget”.


Another, Richard, said:

“My top 3 challenges are finance, finance and finance. We’ll get an additional £200k in the national funding formula but it just means our projected deficit is less than it would have been”.


Liz said:

“People bang on about academies being a business, but our hands are tied—you don’t see the police out there fundraising for their own salaries”.


Simon said:

“We have already cut the number of TAs to the bone”.


Mark said:

“Things like music and drama are expensive to run … We have had to make some tough cuts to the arts”.


All that is happening in rural schools in this country.

For an increasing number of children and their families, the reality before they even start school is that, in their communities, Sure Start centres—a valuable resource for young children and parents—have closed. Local libraries that provide books and toys—an essential part of a young child’s life—have closed. We know the importance of children’s centres. For older children, sports centres, swimming pools and youth centres have also closed. All those things have gone.

Noble Lords may be wondering what that has to do with school funding. Early years settings, primary schools and secondary schools are often picking up the pieces from our social policies. We heard the Prime Minister tell us that austerity is over. If it is, let us celebrate by ensuring that Tim and his colleagues from those rural schools are not saying, “The problem is finance, finance, finance”, but, “We can educate, educate, educate”, to coin a phrase.