Grammar Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for securing this debate and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, on her maiden speech.

The noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, will be pleased to know that I can join his elite and exclusive club, because I failed my 11-plus. In those days, the results were published in the local newspaper. My mother had the embarrassment of walking down the road to be confronted by various neighbours, who said, “We’re terribly sorry that your Michael didn’t make it to the grammar school”. I hope that the Government do not propose to bring back publishing the results of those who pass or fail.

I started my teaching career in a town called Prescot, which was part of Lancashire County Council, division 16. It was a small town, whose main, declining industries were BICC and Pilkington glass. The school I taught in was a small, one-form entry church primary school in the middle of a council estate. After two years, the school I was in asked if I would take year 6, which in those days was called top juniors. They were 40 wonderful children, with wonderful, caring parents. The secondary provision was a boys’ grammar school and a girls’ grammar school, and several secondary moderns. After Christmas the joy of learning was put on hold as we prepared constantly for that 11-plus exam. They practised on past test papers, had verbal reasoning and numeracy tests, and day in, day out, we laboured at this style of learning in the hope that we might squeeze some extra children through to the grammar school.

But what did it mean in practice? It meant that the pressure placed on those children, both emotionally and psychologically, was enormous. It meant that for many months the joy of learning stopped, and that many summer-born children were already at a disadvantage. “Please, sir, why is it called the 11-plus when I’m only 10?”, asked one innocent child. It meant that once the results came out, there were many “hurt” children—and yes, a few joyful children. It divided school families and communities, and 20% of the children were creamed off each year to go to the grammar schools. Of course, it was grossly unfair, because first, there were more places at the boys’ grammar school than at the girls’ grammar school, so girls failed even if they got a higher score than the boys. Overall, it depended on the number of places available, so children one year could fail with a higher score than children who passed the previous year.

Of course, the grammar schools creamed off not just the children but the teaching staff and resources, and as we heard before, the secondary moderns were perceived by parents as the inferior schools, and the pupils as inferior students. This was not social mobility but social and educational apartheid. Do we really want to go back to those days?

Until Theresa May’s speech to the Conservative faithful, academic selection in our school system—pass an exam and see what type of school we send you to—was seen as the past. Grammar schools, as Margaret Thatcher observed, were widely unpopular when they were abolished, which is why she agreed to close so many of them when she became Prime Minister. She did not turn the clock back; she looked at ways of improving standards.

Grammar schools enjoyed a hallowed status in certain parts of the Conservative Party and were seen as engines of social mobility that transformed the chances for a generation of bright children from poor backgrounds. How untrue that was then, as it is now. Even if grammar schools boosted social mobility for the lucky few, they left the majority behind. In areas that still use the 11-plus, the evidence proves that. It favours affluent children and obstructs the poorest. The wealthiest parents will of course pay for the best available education, whether that means moving house to a better catchment area, paying private school fees or paying for tuition to prepare their children for an 11-plus option that is not available to all.

At every educational level, the reintroduction of grammar schools is wrong. As I said, they divide communities and families, and they cause real pain and anxiety for children and families. They do not deliver on social mobility; they do not deliver on improving educational standards and life chances; they do not deliver on choice; and they certainly do not help the neighbouring schools in the community.

As we have already heard, Kent is a county that has retained the grammar school system. Perhaps if we want empirical evidence of whether grammar school education improves the education of all children, we can look at Kent. There, the gap in attainment between children on free school meals and those not on free school meals at key stage 4 is 34%. If you go to inner London, where there are no grammar schools, the gap is 14%. As our Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michel Wilshaw, said, if Mrs May’s priority is social mobility, she should be replicating the best comprehensives in London.

The Government claim that creating more grammar schools will help increase social mobility. That is plainly wrong. It will have the opposite effect, narrowing opportunity and limiting life chances for the majority of pupils in England. Evidence shows that grammar schools have a disproportionately lower number of pupils on free meals than secondary schools. Only 2.6% of pupils at grammar schools are eligible for free school meals compared with 14.9% across all schools. So it is clear that grammar schools do not increase social mobility in the areas in which they currently operate.

If we really want to tackle social mobility in education, grammar schools are not the answer. By the age of 11, a child from a disadvantaged background lags nearly 10 months behind their peers in making progress in education. It is then too late to tackle many of the education and development problems that disadvantaged children face. The answer, as we have heard, is to start with early years on language development, reading and oracy, numerical concepts and socialisation with peers, and giving real support to parents in those disadvantaged areas—support that was available in the Sure Start centres. If we do that, we can ensure that the gap that keeps widening and widening as those children go through their education experience is stopped.

As I have said before, for summer-born children the 11-plus is very unfair. We know that summer-born children—of which I was one—on average perform poorly in most tests compared with those in their year groups born earlier in the school year. This is most noticeable in primary school children. The learning gap is still statistically significant right up until school leaving age, as summer-born children are 5% less likely to get A to C grades in GCSEs. I ask the Minister whether there are any plans to rectify this unfairness.

The Prime Minister said that she intends to promote a grammar school-style education for all. I wonder how the sponsors of academies and free schools feel about that. If, say, in the catchment area of Pimlico Academy there were suddenly to land a grammar school which, by its nature, creamed off the academically top 20%, how would the Pimlico trustees or our own Minister feel about that, and what effect would it have on the school? We know how the Chief Inspector of Schools feels about it. Writing in the Times, Sir Michael Wilshaw said:

“If someone had opened up a grammar school next to Mossbourne Academy”—

the school he was head of—

“I would have been absolutely furious as it would have taken away those youngsters who set the tone of the school. Youngsters learn from other youngsters and see their ambition; it percolates throughout the school”.

Can the Minister tell us what plans can be put in place to protect the balanced intake and curriculum of secondary schools if a grammar school is established in the same area?

The Prime Minister’s pledge on grammar schools is but a distraction—perhaps a distraction to appease some of her more fervent Members who hark back to their grammar school days. Come on, we can do better than this. Do we really want an education system in the 21st century that divides our children by an exam that they pass or fail? Do we really want to create a segregated academic elite in our communities? As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, noted, the abolition of the 50% cap in our faith schools will mean that even more of our children will be separated and segregated by their religion. I want an open education system that does not segregate any pupil because of their ability or their faith—a system in which no child is left behind.

Grammar Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

First, I pay tribute to the great work that the noble Lord has done over many years with the Big Issue and in helping the homeless and many other people. I am very much aware of the points the noble Lord makes, having taken the Children and Families Bill, the Childcare Bill and now the Children and Social Work Bill through your Lordships’ House. We want our education system to deliver for everyone. We have been very much focused on more disadvantaged pupils, with our pupil premium and our sponsored academies programme. We are now seeing 350,000 more children in sponsored academies that are rated good or outstanding—schools which previously were generally performing very badly. Sponsored academies do particularly well for pupils on free school meals and at narrowing the gap. However, there is more to do, which is why we have launched our consultation.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister frequently—and movingly—talks about his own in involvement in education and the establishment of the Pimlico Academy. How would he feel if a grammar school was to park its tank on his community? Would that not be socially divisive and would it not have a major impact on the schooling of all children in the Pimlico area?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord raises an extremely good question. We are surrounded in Pimlico by a lot of schools that, in one way or the other, partly because they are independent, are selective. But through our reforms, we are determined to see the selective sector—all selective schools, including existing ones—engage much more widely with the system, focusing particularly on lower-income households, so that we can help drive a school system that works for everyone.

Teachers: Academies and Free Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they intend to ensure that all teachers at academies and free schools are fully qualified.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have put their name down to speak in this debate.

There was a record number of 456,000 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in 2015, but retaining working-age teachers is becoming harder. The proportion of teachers leaving for reasons other than retirement is increasing. The number of teachers entering initial teacher training has been below the Government’s annual target for the past four years. In certain subjects, such as maths and physics, there has been a real problem of recruitment. The number of pupils is projected to grow by 13% between 2015 and 2024, adding another 900,000 pupils to the school system, so 50,000 new teachers will be required on top of those trainee teachers replacing leaving or retiring teachers. As I said, secondary schools face particular challenges in retaining teachers in sciences, languages and geography. However, Governments have always got it wrong on rising and falling birth rates—they have never been able to manage it properly.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect is not just recruitment and retention—it is how teachers feel about their jobs. The National Foundation for Educational Research has just published a report entitled Engaging Teachers: NFER Analysis of Teacher Retention. Every time we reorganise a school, bring in a new curriculum, change the exam system or alter the testing regime, it has an effect on teacher morale; it has an effect on their confidence and, actually, their well-being. It goes without saying that teachers who have had their morale knocked out of them will feel undervalued and not give of their best or be the excellent teachers that they should be. What can we do about it? Every time there is a minor change in your Lordships’ House many Peers are incensed. Imagine how we would feel if we had constant change here, and imagine how teachers feel.

In its February 2016 report, Training New Teachers, the National Audit Office called on the Department for Education to show that arrangements for training teachers,

“are more cost-effective than alternative expenditure, for instance on improving retention”.

It is not very cost-effective to spend considerable sums on training someone to be a teacher if they resign a few years later, when there will be the additional cost of training a new teacher to replace them.

I was recollecting—which is perhaps dangerous for me—that when I first started teaching I was responsible for what were called “top juniors”, the group of young pupils who would be entered for the 11-plus. In those days, there were grammar schools, secondary moderns and technical colleges, and then comprehensives were established. Then schools and colleges were allowed to develop specialisms, whether in languages, sciences or PE. My wife’s school became a specialist PE college, and luckily for her she was a PE teacher. Then there were academies: city academies and then academies—standalone or in multi-academy chains. As we know, 70% of our non-selective or independent schools are academies. You can give schools different names or different structures but what really matters is not the type of school but the quality of the school leadership and—most important of all—the quality and professional expertise of the teachers.

I have often said in this House that if a pupil in a primary school has a poor or mediocre teacher one year, they will not be able to repeat that year. If the pupil is learning a subject in secondary school and has a poor or mediocre teacher, he or she will probably be in danger of failing that subject.

In recent years, every time the PISA tables were announced, perhaps our most radical Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove—perhaps I do him a disservice—constantly lauded the Finnish education system for its approach to education and learning. Great! In Finland, they recognise the importance of teachers. Teachers are valued and respected and, importantly, are not allowed to teach unless they have a master’s degree. By the way, in Finland there are no tests and testing regimes until pupils reach the age of 16. In this country, whether you are a pupil in an academy, a maintained school, a church school or a grammar school, the quality of the teacher really matters.

As I said, academies were first set up by the last Labour Government as an education strategy to improve educational standards, particularly in disadvantaged communities and areas of poor education, and drive up standards by replacing failing schools in struggling LAs. Originally, they were called city academies. Academies are not obliged to follow the national curriculum and are not accountable to their local community but directly to the Minister’s department via eight regional commissioners. They are not obliged to include parents or teachers as governors, can set their own salary scales and terms and conditions for staff and can employ unqualified teachers.

Pay and conditions are about not just the amount that teachers get paid but include sick pay, the structure of school holidays, starting salaries, salary structure, pay progression, chief executive salaries, probationary arrangements, teacher qualifications, rules about people taking redundancy pay and disciplinary and grievance procedures. If we do not have a nationally agreed scheme which applies to every type of school, we will end up with a free-for-all in education and—some with a particular political bent might like this—a free market economy. We have already seen that some academies are paying differential rates of pay so they can attract teachers in shortage subjects. However, if you pay more salary to one type of teacher, other teachers will get less. Just as the coalition Government fought against regional pay, so we should fight against a divisive system in pay.

Academies’ freedom to control staff pay has resulted in many senior staff receiving bloated six-figure salaries. Indeed, chief executives of academies are on a financial wheel of fortune for their remuneration, with a salary of £300,000-plus having been paid. Perhaps those Conservative Back-Benchers in the other place who want the salaries of the BBC’s top earners to be published should insist that the salaries of the top earners in academies are published as well.

Free schools and academies have been able to employ teachers without academic or professional qualifications since 2012. Since June 2015, the number of unqualified teachers working in academies has risen by 20%. In 2012, 2,320 academies that opened had funding arrangements requiring them to employ only teachers with qualified teacher status, similar to maintained schools. However, in September 2015, Schools Week reported that 34 academies had been granted permission to amend their agreements so that they could take unqualified staff. Will the Minister please ensure that all new academies have funding arrangements requiring them to employ fully qualified staff, and that any chances are taken only in exceptional circumstances?

There are a variety of different routes into the teaching profession, ranging from postgraduate certificates based at universities to School Direct, which, as the name suggests, focuses on training at the chalkface, to Teach First. Making sure that you are properly trained and qualified before you step into the classroom and have responsibility for the minds of children and young people must be an essential requirement. Teaching is not something that you just drift into without fully understanding what you are doing. Like any other profession, teaching requires a bank of knowledge and skills that cannot just be picked up as you go along. If you teach young children, you need to understand child development. Every teacher needs to be able to identify different special educational needs, and to understand child behaviour management and safeguarding —the list goes on.

If I go into a hospital, I want the doctors who treat me to have completed their training before they turn their attention to me. If one of them says, “I have a great bedside manner but haven’t yet finished the section on anatomy”, that will not fill me with great confidence. To be thrown in at the deep end is a route to frustration and uncertainty. Students deserve the best we can offer. We definitely want those with natural aptitude to go into teaching, but that aptitude needs to be refined and developed through proper training. I suspect that if it was a legal requirement for academies, or indeed any school, to have to identify in their school prospectus those teachers who had not been fully trained, there would be a sharp reduction in the number of unqualified teachers.

In my remaining time I will quickly mention two other things. We also need—perhaps the Minister could address this—first-class professional development for all teachers. Once you qualify or start teaching, we need to ensure that that professional development is not left to an academy chain or individuals. We need to look at a proper system of professional development for all our teachers. What happened to the idea of a royal college for teachers?

I end with a quote I picked up the other day, from a teacher, Mike Britland, who said:

“Every time the government opens its mouth about education, every teacher cringes”.

Let government open its mouth with care and consideration and in the interests of all teachers and children.

Grammar Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My job, of course, is to support the Prime Minister. I am fully aware that most grammar schools do an excellent job. However, this is a long-running argument and there are strong views on both sides. I assure the House that we will not do anything without detailed consideration and consultation.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is interesting to note that the Chief Inspector of Schools has said that the reintroduction of grammar schools would be disastrous and a retrograde step. Let us consider some facts. As the Minister knows, Kent retains the grammar school system. In Kent, the gap in attainment between free school meals pupils and non-free school meals pupils at key stage 4 is 34%. In inner London, where there are no grammar schools, the gap is only 14%. By those figures, grammar schools are socially divisive. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord referred to Sir Michael Wilshaw’s comments. I am a great fan of Sir Michael Wilshaw and he has done an excellent job as chief inspector. He is right to pinpoint the great transformation in London schools, started under a Labour Government through their London Challenge and academies programme, which we have sought to continue. In fact there is no clear evidence to support his views but, as I have said, we are keeping an open mind. We are aware of the strength of grammar schools and would like more free school meals pupils going to them.

Schools: Drama

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

What the noble Earl says about acting as a career could equally be said about many other careers, sadly, and that is why we have invested so much in school reform over the past five years. Specifically, we have provided means-tested support to ensure that talented 18 to 23 year-olds from all backgrounds receive the training they need to succeed in acting careers, and we have funded the Royal Shakespeare Company to provide all state schools with a free copy of its toolkit for teachers and to support young people performing Shakespeare in theatres.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we all know how important the creative industries are to the economy of this country so it seems strange that we are allowing there to be a decline in the creative arts subjects in our schools. The Minister can quote little odd examples but the facts show that for all the creative arts subjects, there has been a decline in the number of hours taught and the number of teachers teaching those subjects. Does he think the new Secretary of State for Education might look again at the cataclysmic effects that the EBacc will have on creative subjects?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord about the importance of the creative industries in this country. That is one of the reasons why we have reformed computing and D&T GCSEs and A-levels to make them more relevant and ensure that our pupils have the necessary skills to succeed in these great industries. However, I remind him of the situation we inherited in 2010, where only one in five pupils in state schools was studying a basic academic curriculum that would be regarded as absolutely common fare in any independent school and in most successful jurisdictions. That is why we introduced the EBacc, because that curriculum is so important, particularly to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not get that cultural education at home. We have doubled the number of pupils taking EBacc and we intend to double it again, and more. We hope that by stimulating the intellectual juices of our pupils to study better academic and creative subjects, they will in time want to engage in the arts more widely.

Academies: Sponsors

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements are in place to ensure that sponsors of academies are not able to show unfair preference in the tendering process to companies owned by the sponsor.

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

My Lords, there are clear rules for academies which ensure that procurement is even-handed. They must follow the principles of regularity, propriety and value for money and have a competitive tendering policy. Connected parties may supply to their trust only under an at-cost policy and, unlike local authority maintained schools, they cannot make a profit from it. Trusts are transparent by publishing members’ and trustees’ relevant business interests and must publish details of purchases from related parties in their accounts, which independent auditors check every year.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am very grateful for the Minister’s reply. He will be aware of a number of high-profile cases where a businessperson has sponsored a number of multi-academy trusts and those trusts have procured substantial contracts from companies that the businessperson also owns. As the Minister rightly said, we want to see transparency with proper procurement arrangements and proper auditing. Given that the Minister has said those things, they are clearly perhaps not working.

[Lord Nash]

We need to get this in context. Related-party transactions are permitted and often related parties will provide services much cheaper than anybody else. In 2013-14 we identified only 13 cases in which either goods were not supplied at cost or it could not be verified that they were supplied at cost. They totalled under £500,000, which compares with the total academies revenue budget of £50 billion.

Schools: Funding

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The Secretary of State’s overriding consideration is to ensure that the reform is right and has the benefits of proper consultation. The change is too important to rush and, personally, I think her decision shows a great strength of mind. She has considered the matter carefully and decided that we do not want to put schools through the uncertainty, when they come back in September, of not knowing what their budget is to be for 2017-18. That conclusion shows great sensitivity for the issues facing our schools and teachers. As for the point about whether there will be any political bias in our considerations, I can assure the noble Lord that there will not be.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for making the Statement. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rightly perceived, it is made against a background of cuts in funding in schools. He mentioned 5% but there are suggestions that with teacher cost caps, teacher pensions, national insurance and other on-costs such as wages, it will be nearer to 12% than 5%. On these Benches, while we welcome a fair funding regime, we agree with the Minister that you have to move carefully and cautiously. I was delighted to hear him talk about consultation, which is really important, but in any national scheme there will be winners and losers. We have serious concerns about the plan to cut the pupil funding by up to 1.5%. I have a direct question for the Minister: can he guarantee that the pupil premium funding will also be protected in real terms?

[Lord Nash]

I can answer that question. We have committed to protect pupil premium funding through to 2020.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for tabling this amendment. I join in supporting, as have all noble Lords, what he proposes: a national action plan for the welfare of unaccompanied children. I have to reflect for one moment that the current changes, with the separation of the UK from the European Union, must limit to some extent the important international activity that can reach out to countries such as Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, and support them to promote stability. The EU is less able to do that without us and we are less able to do it without the EU, so more of these children may come to this country in future because of the decision that was recently taken. I regret that.

I was grateful to the Minister for what he said in his letter on the Committee stage, which I received this morning. In it, he talked about Section 10 of the Children Act 2004. At that time, we very much regretted that that Act did not include a duty on the Immigration Service to promote outcomes for vulnerable children. It does for various other services, as the letter lays out, but I hope we can look at including in the Bill a duty on the Immigration Service to work with local authorities to promote outcomes for these children. Perhaps they should train social workers, for instance, to understand immigration issues and ensure that children get the right advice early on. In the past, there was a champion for children within the Immigration Service. In anticipation of our meeting tomorrow, can the Minister tell us who that champion is currently and what he is doing to promote children’s welfare? I support this amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s response to it.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I have taught three unaccompanied children at my school—obviously this was before the conflict in Syria—and we were making it up as we went along. There was no clear plan of what to do or what support there was. The three boys, as they were, were literally processed in Liverpool and arrived at our school. There was then a time lag while we and the foster parents to whom they eventually went tried to find someone to help with the language and with any other issues that they had. That is why the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is so important. I could not dissent from a single word of it and, had this provision been available when those three boys came to my school, it would have helped tremendously.

Since then, of course, the unaccompanied children coming to this country have been traumatised by conflict and war. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, is absolutely right that what they need above anything else is stability in their lives. I agree with my noble friend Lady Pinnock: if the Government are not happy with the wording of the amendment, can they for goodness’ sake please come forward with amendments that will deal with this matter? There is the issue of when these young people reach the age of 18. We have grappled with that in a number of debates on various occasions. I found it heartbreaking when one of the unaccompanied children was nearing his 18th birthday and was going to be returned—to Mongolia, as it happened. Given that we as a country have now agreed to accept an additional 20,000 children, I hope that a national plan is in place for them.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support the amendment because I argued for it during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill. When the Minister turned it down then, he did agree to a whole range of other benefits such as kinship carers’ allowance and so on. Frankly, I think he reached the point where he could give no more. The illogicality of saying that benefits could be paid for two sibling children but not for two children who have been adopted separately must have been for the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who is an intelligent man, something to do with the politics of it all. I say that because it was clear at the time that this exception would make sense.

We trying to increase the rate of adoption. We know that the children who are now being placed for adoption are not easy. There are very few if any white middle-class babies being placed for adoption. Most of these children have special needs or they are older and therefore it is much more difficult to find a placement.

I recognise that the Minister here may not have the power to agree to the amendment, but he can go back and talk to his colleagues. We have discussed silos in government at length and how people need to talk across government departments. This is an area in which we could make a real difference to a group of people who wish to look after children and, more importantly, it would offer a better standard of living to the children being adopted. It would be easy and I am sure that it would not be vastly expensive, although I have not yet done the maths.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, there are moments in Committee when we can listen to people with a lifetime of experience in law and the military, but we ignore at our peril someone with experience of adoption who speaks from the heart and makes such an emotional plea. Certainly our side thinks that this is an important issue.

It is not just an emotional issue, of course; it is also fulfils that awful phrase we use constantly—it would be value for money. This obviously makes sense. I had not appreciated how many low-income families adopt children. We should support them and thereby, we hope, increase the number of children who are adopted.

The last time I heard such an emotional plea was when my noble friend Lady Benjamin made a similar presentation and, I believe, stalked the Minister on a few occasions outside his office. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady King, could do the same, but I hope the Minister will take note of this issue.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I will not offer flattery, as the Minister probably knows, but I take him back to the post-legislative scrutiny report of the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation. It is a shame that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is not in her place, but some of us met a lot of adoptive parents, some of whom were on quite low incomes. They made two points to us very strongly. One was the issue we have already discussed, about the levels of support for adoptive parents, but the second came from people who had been foster parents. They pointed out brutally—but in an amiable sort of way—that the financial disincentive in moving from being a foster parent to an adoptive parent was very high. This seemed to me and other members of that Select Committee pretty bizarre, given that the Government were at that point going hell for leather to promote adoption as the gold standard for permanence.

There is something not quite right here about what we might call the intragovernmental strategy—this applies not just in the Minister’s department—on how we align the financial incentives with the policy objectives. Therefore, the Minister should start to raise some of those issues not just within his own department but across Whitehall.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, in the unavoidable absence of my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, I shall move Amendment 99A, which is tabled in her name, on her behalf. The amendment has been drafted because there are concerns about the impact of the removal a child on the parents. Clearly the interests of the child must come first, but the removal of a child, whatever the challenges facing the parents and whatever the circumstances, is a momentous event, so it is right to consider what support should be given to the parents. It also makes sense because the parents may well go on to become parents again, and indeed sometimes again and again. Surely to give those children any chance at all, it makes sense to see whether an intervention being made post a child being taken into care might help any future children.

I know that, in the light of her experience, my noble friend feels that this is an important issue, and I hope that the Minister may be able to be sympathetic to looking at whether we can find a way of encouraging local authorities to do the right thing in this regard. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, this is an important amendment that is worthy of serious consideration. There must be something worryingly and seriously wrong when mothers constantly have their babies removed from them. We have seen social services almost having to get care orders in place as the child is born, and it can happen three, four, five or six times. Obviously in all circumstances the interests of the child must be put first, but there also must be a realisation that something must be done to support the mother. Are there mental health or emotional issues at play? This constant removal of children safeguards those children, but it does not safeguard the mother. We need to try where possible to look at why this is happening.

This is an issue of which I do not have any experience and, indeed, I have not considered it. The amendment asks in a sensible and supportive way for us to look at therapeutic support and so on. There is also the cost aspect. If a child is taken away from its natural family and we as a society have not considered effective treatments that could reasonably be made available to keep the parent and child together, then surely as a society we are failing.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I simply want to mention the organisation Pause, which has found a way of intervening with these families. I know that the Government hope to set up a unit looking at what works and that there are programmes that work in this field. I do not think this is a legislative issue. I think it is again an issue of spreading good practice through all local authorities. Sometimes the voluntary sector develops the best ways forward, and I hope the Government will do all they can to promulgate these programmes. I have removed children at birth from their mothers. It is a traumatic and appalling process to have to be involved in when working in social services. The follow up has always been poor for the mothers. We now have an opportunity to do something about it. We know how to do it.

Teachers’ Strike

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I note that the noble Lord met with some of the 9.4% of teachers who have called this strike. I am personally saddened by the strike. We would like to promote teaching as a profession, but there is no doubt that the reputation of teachers is harmed by this strike—or at least the reputation of the 90.6% who did not vote for the strike is affected by the 9.4% who did.

On funding, we have protected the schools budget and the pupil premium. We have substantial resources available through the Education Funding Agency financial toolkits and benchmarking information. A great deal of advice is on offer to help schools with the challenges facing a lot of people resulting from higher pension costs, national insurance et cetera. Multi-academy trusts are particularly well placed to do this and many of them are very effective in this regard. Outwood Grange, one of our most highly performing multi-academy trusts, has a system called curriculum-led financial planning, which uses sophisticated, bottom-up modelling to make sure that resources are focused on the front line. They make this available free to other MATs and schools and it is proving particularly effective in improving resources for teachers.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is a sad day for education when teachers feel that they need to strike. It must not be ignored that those hit hardest by this strike will be the pupils and students, who miss out on part of their education, and low-income parents, who do not have the disposable income to pay for childcare on a whim. The Minister has said that these strikes are unnecessary, as the schools budget is the highest that it has ever been. However, by doing this he is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the dire financial situation that many schools now face.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, stated in a Written Answer to me on 9 May that the on-costs of teachers’ salaries have risen by 25.4%. On 25 May, he proceeded to reiterate the Government’s promise from the spending review that they would protect the core schools budget in real terms during this Parliament. Why is it then that the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts that school spending per pupil is going to fall by 8% in real terms by 2020? Does the Minister deny that figure? Whether he agrees with the figure or not, the Government need to recognise that, with on-costs and other factors, schools are facing real cuts to spending. Will the Minister therefore explain how he intends to keep the promise made in the spending review?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely recognise the figure. As I have said, many schools and organisations are facing this kind of increasing on-cost—everybody is. We live in a climate of scarce resources. However, as I have attempted to explain, there are many resources available to schools to improve their budgeting. Schools are facing pressures on their budgets that, for many of them, are far greater than they have ever faced. Most school leaders have been brought up in a climate of ever-increasing income and they have never really had to go back to a bottom-up modelling of their schools. When they do that, they find significant savings and it results in money actually being spent where they want it—rather than what is often happening in a lot of schools where sometimes the budgets have grown like Topsy. We are finding much more effective financial modelling in schools now and this is resulting in a much greater focus of resources into the classroom.