Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education (England) Regulations 2019

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome these guidelines and thank the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, for introducing the Motion. I am very pleased to see that this topic of education will at last be a requirement for schools from September 2020. Indeed, some schools will pilot the programmes and there is encouragement for some to start them during 2019.

Some schools are ready to go with this but others may need more time. Quite rightly, the Government have sought to stress the issue of consultation. We know that sexual relationship education has been considered important by children, parents, school governors and many organisations for a long time. I pay tribute to those who have worked with such diligence to get us to this point. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, deserves full credit for his determination to ensure that schools engage with the important topic of the rights of children to receive information and develop good attitudes towards sexuality and relationships. He recognised that resilience, confidence and self-esteem are important components of performing well at school and having a fulfilling life.

I congratulate the PSHE Association on its constructive and thorough approach to developing and creating materials for schools. I congratulate those organisations which have been helpful with consultation and have developed training materials for schools. I congratulate, too, those who have had the courage and perception to insist that consideration of the needs of all pupils is important. LGBT pupils have rights, too; disabled children have rights. Attention to such groups is important, not just for them but for their parents and fellow pupils.

Many individuals have helped describe and respond to the climate in which children are living today, as did the Minister just recently. That climate is different from the one in which we grew up. For example, we have social and other media, which may portray unhealthy and dangerous attitudes towards relationships and sexuality. Children and young people need resilience and skills to resist such approaches.

I have a few questions for the Minister and a few matters on which I seek reassurance. Will the decision that academies and free schools will not be required to teach sex education, but simply be encouraged to do so, be reviewed? This will affect a great number of children and leave them disadvantaged in relation to protection from harm and gaining important knowledge.

I was surprised that so few children and young people were involved in the consultation. I hope that any assessment of the effectiveness of programmes will involve them. They are the best judges of what they need. It is most encouraging that children are consulted much more on issues and decisions which affect them, such as in relation to the NHS long-term plan, where there was a children’s panel—and very useful it was, too. Many voluntary and statutory organisations have children’s panels which prove so valuable. I hope that Ofsted inspections will incorporate the views of children among their other considerations.

It is also important that school governors and parents are involved in monitoring these issues. There is a case for local communities to be involved, as envisaged in the guidelines. I note that £6 million has been set aside in the 2019-20 financial year to develop a programme of support for schools. Funding beyond that will be a matter for the forthcoming spending review. What type of support is envisaged? How will funding be decided for individual schools? Will the Minister and the DfE fight for funding to develop and maintain such programmes, monitor their outcomes and share good practice?

Some of us have concerns about discussing certain issues with children and young people and worry about “corruption”. These guidelines make it clear that teaching materials should be age appropriate. I taught, a long time ago now, sex and relationships education in an inner-city, multi-faith secondary school. We were scrupulous about consulting parents and children and had very few difficulties. No child was ever withdrawn from any part of the programme. I remember working with a nun, Sister Mary, on a sex education course. She said, in public:

“I and my Church may not approve of some of the things related to sexual activity. This does not mean that we should refuse to discuss them. Refusal to discuss denies knowledge to children, and the denial of knowledge is against good educational practice”.


I have never forgotten what she said.

We must never forget in the midst of all this that the welfare of the child is paramount, as spelled out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the UK is a signatory and which celebrates its 30th birthday in November this year. The convention is inspirational in envisaging a world where children flourish and where their physical, emotional and social needs are met. With this legislation today, we move a step towards that, and I very much welcome it.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, this is a landmark moment for children and young people in our country and I very much welcome it. I congratulate the Government and the Minister on everything he has said. If there were ever a reason to ensure that our young people had proper relationship and sex education in our school system, it came home to me this morning when I went into my office, where a letter was waiting for me with a card in it. It was a vile piece of information, trying to compare the teaching of relationships and sex education to giving up smoking. It had such comments as:

“Being gay is essentially lonely because the truth is that most gay partnerships are unstable and have a strong tendency to be promiscuous”.


There was more, but I do not wish to read the rest out, because it is so horrible. That sort of warped view about relationships in 21st-century Britain shows how strong is the need for an education system that addresses the issues in the way the Minister explained.

During the coalition Government, Edward Timpson took over the role of Children’s Minister and was looking to develop the PSHE curriculum and the sex education curriculum, as it was then called. My noble friend Lord Paddick and I were asked to meet him—he wanted to talk about that curriculum. I remember saying to him, “This is very good, but the important thing is that we have almost a dual education system here. We have maintained schools, an increasing number of academies and free schools, which of course have a much more relaxed approach to what they teach. Will this be taught in all schools?” He said, “Yes, it will”. Hallelujah, I thought. I asked whether such things as contraception and gay relationship would be taught. He said, “Yes, of course, it will”. And in church schools? He said, “Yes, of course, it will”. That was the breakthrough moment that I and many in this House were waiting for and I think that, alongside the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Nash, Edward Timpson MP, as he then was, deserves a deal of credit in this as well.

When I first started teaching, sometime in the 1970s, we had an eight-week period in which we followed the BBC’s “Merry-Go-Round” sex education programme—eight weeks of watching the television and doing the workbooks. Not one single parent complained, those eight year-old pupils never giggled or sniggered and it actually developed their relationships with each other. That programme continued and was updated over the first 10 years of my teaching. I always thought it was a great pity that we almost became Victorian in our approach to such issues as sex education; we went through those difficult times in the 1980s and 1990s, with some rather nasty thoughts about relationship education.

As well as the praise I have given, there are a few things we need to ensure. I think the Minister said this, but I just want to go through them again. It is vital that teachers get quality training. I am pleased that it will be a rollout; some schools and some staff may be ready, but it is important that we get this quality training for teachers right. It is important that the resources and materials are of the highest calibre. It is also important that when school inspections are occasionally held, Ofsted actually looks at the quality of relationship and sex education.

I have three questions for the Minister. First, the Government used the powers in the Children and Social Work Act to make PSHE compulsory in all schools, including academies, for financial education only. Why not for citizenship and financial education? Let us raise that now while we have the opportunity. Secondly, this matter is also about continuing professional development for teachers. Thirdly, as the Minister knows—he has been very active on this issue—there is a still a large number of unregistered religious schools where the teaching about relationships is horrendous, disgraceful and wrong. So far, only two unregistered schools have had action taken against them. We need to get this right. We need to put in place the legal requirements to close these establishments straightaway because the damage they do to young people and young minds is not to be tolerated.

Schools: Modern Languages

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point, and I will certainly take that recommendation back to my department and the Home Office. The noble Baroness mentioned the Mandarin programme, which we began in September 2016. It started with 23 schools; we are now up to 64.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, has the Minister seen the survey carried out by the British Council last year, which found that a third of our state schools were not teaching whole classes of modern languages, particularly in year nine? The majority of these schools were academies. Is it not true that academies do not have to follow the national curriculum? Will he consider ensuring that academies and free schools have to teach modern languages as well?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord makes a valid point. He is correct in saying that academies are not obliged to follow the national curriculum, but we insist on a broad and balanced curriculum. The Ofsted changes to their framework will put much more emphasis on the EBacc, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, which includes modern foreign languages.

Schools: Staffing

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said “91%”; it is 91% of schools that have had their per-pupil funding cut across England. To have staff taking cuts in their salaries; to close schools on a Friday; to have so-called cost cutters going into schools and suggesting that school lunch portions are reduced in size; that is no way to run an education service. Does the Minister deny that there has been a reduction in funding in 91% of our schools? Since 2015, my home city of Liverpool has lost £48 million to our schools.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I said in answer to the Question, funding is going up. It does not help the debate to follow scurrilous articles about food portions. That school was throwing away a large quantity of food. No parent wants to see that happen. It is a huge environmental waste. It was highlighted simply as an area of inefficiency. As a Schools Minister, no one wants more funding into the system than me, but I want that system to be well run so that the money goes to the front line. Noble Lords will have seen the story in the press the other day about the Tolworth Girls’ School, where the head teacher claimed that she was so badly funded that she had to clean the lavatories herself. What she did not tell you was that she took an 8% pay rise, taking her to between £125,000 and £130,000, and increased the cleaning budget by nearly 90%.

Special Educational Needs

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, when these reforms came in, we initiated local area inspections. The noble Lord may be aware that we carried out a number of these in combination with Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. They are shining a light on both good and bad practice in the sector and, where a poor inspection result comes up, they are asked to provide a written plan for correction. That is how we are gradually improving the system.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister may be aware that we are also seeing a rise in legal services offering a no-win no-fee system for parents wishing to appeal. That is likely to add further pressure to already hard-pressed local authority budgets. Actually, when all the costs of one case are taken into account, it can cost up to £80,000. Given that it costs only about £3,500 to train a specialist teacher, does the Minister agree that we should try to prevent this no-win no-fee system from taking off?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I certainly support the noble Lord’s suggestion and will take that back to the department. I see no benefit in ambulance chasers benefiting from these cases. It is also worth pointing out that we support the charity Independent Parental Special Education Advice, which provides advice to parents going through the tribunal process. There is no absolute need to use lawyers, which is why IPSEA is an important path for parents to consider.

Knife Crime: First Aid in Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises a very important point on exclusion. It is always a last resort to use a permanent exclusion for a pupil. Just to give some context, the percentage of permanent exclusions last year was actually less than it was 10 years ago. In 2006-07, it was 0.12% and last year it was 0.10%, so we need to keep that in perspective. We are pretty confident that there is no causal link between permanent exclusions and knife crime. However, we are alert to the need to provide better specialist provision for children who are permanently excluded. That is why we announced a number of initiatives in October, including an extra £100 million in capital for special provision for schools.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is sad that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, had to ask this Question, but the bigger question is why young people are being stabbed. After a decade of austerity, we have seen youth services decimated in our towns and cities and positive activities for young people are almost gone. What will Her Majesty’s Government do about knife crime, not in terms of the narrow criminal issues but in terms of creating healthy community activities?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right that the causes of knife crime are complicated. We must be honest about not fully understanding them. I accept that austerity is one reason offered, but I am not certainly convinced. We have done a number of things to support young people in terms of ensuring that they have a good education. One priority of the Secretary of State is what he calls the five foundations of character—sport, creativity, performing, volunteering membership and the world of work. I commend to noble Lords a particular initiative that I am always keen to promote called OnSide Youth Zones. Nine of these are now open and six more are planned, mostly in London. They provide an avenue for young people between what are considered the danger hours after leaving school at around 4 pm until 6 pm.

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.