Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, in speaking to their amendments the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and other noble Lords have outlined the importance of recognising that looked-after children may have unidentified or unmet communication needs, which could prevent children and young people understanding and engaging with the changes that the Bill proposes. For those with communication needs to fully benefit from the Bill’s changes, it is essential that any accompanying regulations and guidance stipulate that, as noble Lords outlined in last week’s Committee session, on entry to the care system the initial health assessment that local authorities are responsible for undertaking should include a mandatory screening for speech, language and communication needs.
The document Putting Children First, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, a few minutes ago and which dropped into our email inboxes about lunchtime today may well meet those concerns. It is a weighty document; not perhaps Chilcot-esque but there is quite a bit in there and it has not yet been possible to examine it in detail. I hope that that document, which I am sure is important, has some of the answers that have been asked for within this debate.
Amendment 32 would at least ensure that speech, language and communication needs are covered appropriately. To ensure that this is as effective as possible, it seems obvious and perhaps logical that people working with, supporting and caring for looked-after and previously looked-after children should receive training in awareness and communication needs, including knowing when to refer someone for speech and language therapy. It would surely be a matter of great concern if such referrals were not made due to the inability of the individual who comes into contact with them when they enter care. In the longer term, looked-after and previously looked-after children should have continuing access to speech and language therapy to help them address their communication needs as their lives progress.
I was surprised to learn that at present many children diagnosed as having speech, language and communication needs receive just one hour of direct intervention from a speech therapist each week and that at the age of seven, in all but the most extreme cases, that help often ends due to financial restrictions. Most then receive no further intervention until they enter secondary school three years later. That gap can surely have an extremely damaging effect on children with speech, language and communication needs. If that is so serious among the school population as a whole, how much more serious it is for children who are in care.
The fact that communication needs to be referenced so often in the various amendments we are considering today, not just in this group, highlights the importance of ensuring that such needs are identified when children and young people enter care and for those already in care to have any such needs identified when they are about to leave it. The importance of providing proper specialist support extends to the need for financial information and to understand relationships. So often, we have heard of young people leaving care being given their own accommodation without any proper planning or experience and with little ability to care for themselves. Debt soon follows, which can lead to accommodation being lost and benefits sanctions contributing to a terrible downward spiral. The difficulties of relationships ought to be another obvious area in which every step is taken to prepare young people as fully as possible for leaving care. Under some of the amendments we will deal with later, we will describe what can happen when people enter relationships without adequate preparation and support.
The amendments span both the corporate parenting principle and the local care offer. They strengthen the Bill and are worthy of our support.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 30, 32, 38 and 57. I wonder why the issue of personal advisers being trained in speech, language and communication awareness is in this group when we will be discussing their role under a later amendment; however, we are where we are. A number of issues need to be brought together and understood, perhaps after Committee.
I shall give your Lordships a flavour of what I mean. First, let us deal with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who rightly said that poor speech, language and communication limit not only children in care but young people generally. Eighty-eight per cent of unemployed men have speech, language and communication needs. They limit employment opportunities, affect their social and emotional well-being and contribute to literacy, behavioural and other social problems. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, “Let’s have mandatory screening”. What do we do in schools? Are we not screening there all the time? We are continually assessing and testing, so why do we need another form of mandatory screening? We need to ensure that that information gets passed to the relevant people.
I am sorry that my noble friend Lord McNally has been unable to stay. A year ago, I went to award the local youth offending team a dyslexia awareness certificate, which means that they can identify young offenders who have dyslexia problems. I was horrified to learn that no information is passed to that team on the academic, literacy or communication skills of those young offenders. Is that because of data protection issues? If we are to provide the necessary support for those young people in care, that information needs to be made available. If there is a body of information in schools, it needs to be passed on.
On personal advisers, your Lordships probably remember from Second Reading that I went through as many job adverts as I could find for personal advisers. I was concerned that there was no standard requirement; it was all over the place. Nowhere in any of those advertisements did I see any mention of speech, language and communication skills. The two are linked. If personal advisers are as important as they should be, part of their qualification or awareness must be in this area. How do we make that happen? Currently, there is no legal requirement on what personal advisers do, only suggestions. We need to spend time understanding that so that these people are the best who can be provided.
Finally, the key to this is making sure that the information is available in schools. By the way, this is not just an issue for children in care or care leavers, it is an issue for all children. I am glad that the Government, both in the coalition years and now, are addressing those issues in schools, through the pupil premium. I am a bit concerned—perhaps the Minister in replying could correct me on this—that we say that the pupil premium particularly should go to looked-after children. My experience in many schools is that it just goes into the common pot and the looked-after children, to use the vernacular, do not get a look-in. I want to be sure that perhaps Ofsted, when it is carrying out inspections of schools, makes sure that this pupil premium—where there are looked-after children—is particularly linked to the needs of the looked-after child.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, before I say a word on Amendment 32, it is extremely interesting how, as on the first day in Committee, fascinating bits of information from people’s background and knowledge of the whole of this area comes out, all of which is enormously valuable to those who are responsible for these Bills and this Bill in particular.
I support Amendment 32 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, because it states that the,
“guidance given by the Secretary of State must stipulate … the need to screen children … the need for those who work with … children … to receive training in awareness of speech, language and communication needs”,
and refers to,
“the need for appropriate support to be provided for those children and young people with speech, language and communication needs”.
Above all, I stress that there is a need to update regularly all those people who are in this position and working with these children in need. Although I agree that all children need attention and need us to be aware of how they are developing and of what particular skills that will be essential in their future lives they are lacking, nevertheless, it is those who are in this very important position who need to be updated and know exactly what is happening in this area. I am very much in support of everything that has been said on this group and I look forward to what the Minister will say.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I came to this Committee looking at the amendment thinking “No”. Young people themselves should be able to say “No”. Actually, listening to noble Lords, I now think it is absolutely right. These are the most vulnerable young people. For them to try and cut through the bureaucratic enjoyments of social services does not come easily. The onus should be on us to provide that support. This shows the value of a Committee, does it not? You listen to arguments and might change your mind.
The Earl of Listowel
I support Amendments 52, 53 and 74A. I was most grateful for the Minister’s encouraging reply on the previous group, which is relevant to this discussion, and for his sympathetic stance towards this. The current discussions about the pressures on local authorities, and the huge and diverse burdens they carry, might be one further reason why the onus should be put more firmly on them in primary legislation. Also, I am a little puzzled why one would wish to treat over-21 year-olds any differently to under-21 year-olds. My puzzlement is that if we are agreed that we should in this Bill make sure that over-21 year-olds receive the same entitlements that under-21 year-olds leaving care have had up till now, why should we not treat them in exactly the same way? I would appreciate some help with that question. If we can, and there is no legal impediment to do so, would we not want to give them exactly the same offer as that for under-21 year-olds?
On the personal adviser role, which was also discussed, I recognise absolutely the wisdom of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in talking about some flexibility in how that role is provided. One of the great successes in policy in this area in reason years has been the introduction by the coalition Government of Staying Put. More and more young people are now choosing to stay with their foster carers past the age of 18. We heard eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, about the importance of relationships and the continuity of them. Thanks to Staying Put and the Government’s work, more and more children are choosing to stay, from a position where in the past we were not able to encourage them to do that or make it possible. Enabling foster parents to become their young person’s personal adviser may be a very good and appropriate thing. This is someone they already have a relationship with.
My concern is that there also needs to be rigidity in certain ways. My concern about the whole issue of children found in social care is that we have allowed too much flexibility in the social work profession. Until very recently, it was not a requirement that social workers should have a degree to practise what they do. Indeed, later parts of the Bill address this very fact of the overflexibility and a lack of specification of what social workers should do. This personal adviser role is important as well. Reports from right-wing think tanks such as the Centre for Social Justice highlighted the failure to have a consistent personal adviser workforce. There needs to be both flexibility and rigidity in the system. I suggest that there can be assessments and processes to decide whether it is appropriate to devolve responsibility to a foster carer or some extended family, or whether to keep it with a personal adviser. However, we need some rigidity.
It is very much an Anglo-Saxon approach to have a flexible workforce and it has many advantages to it, while the continentals face great challenges because they have a rather rigid way of approaching their workforce. I would argue that for vulnerable children, there have been advantages in the continentals’ rigid approach. It is well documented that they have far higher requirements for social workers. In staff at children’s homes, they have pedagogues who normally have a degree-level qualification and have had very substantial training, which I would argue is very appropriate to working in residential care. I recognise the noble Baroness’s concerns but I share the concerns around the Committee that the personal adviser role needs to be more clearly spelt out and specified. I hope that the Minister can help us with that in his response.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I obviously support what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said, although I am not going to go through the long list of experiences that I have experienced as a director of social services, as an assistant director and a social worker, and even more so, working with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which dealt with predatory grooming adults and how they got in touch with children.
I am concerned about how we work through two parts of this. One is how we make absolutely sure that the vetting is solid and absolutely reliable for all the reasons the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said—and how we set performance standards—but also, at the same time, as having some flexibility in who the young person might see as the person who is going to be their personal adviser. I think this is more complex than it looks on the surface. I think we could set standards of training—we have all done that in our time; we could have a vetting system and place it on a register, although I would say 130 days to get a vetting back from the Met police at the moment seems to me a scandal, and is interfering with the recruitment of appropriate social workers right across the piece. But we have to look at how we have both of those things together, with the young person having some choice about who they want to be their mentor. There may be people in their lives, such as a teacher who stuck with them right through their school or a foster parent who struck right with them. Are they seen as different from personal advisers, who are a sort of profession apart? I have not yet conceptualised who those people are in relation to all the other people who are supporting the young person, and where the standard is set. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that whoever they are, they must be vetted. In my day, we had people called children’s homes visitors, and we learned the hard way what happened if you did not vet appropriately those visitors, when young people disappeared on to the street. I would underline that—it is quite a complex question.
Lord Storey
My Lords, this is an important probing amendment. I now understand why it is in this grouping and not in the other groupings, and I apologise to whoever is responsible for that. As the British Association of Social Workers rightly said, it will be important to clarify what qualifications and capabilities will be required for the new personal advisers. Throughout our Committee discussions, we have shown how important personal advisers are and will be, in terms of speech and language and literacy, financial matters, and in putting the pathways plan together. It also is important that these are the right people for that and currently, there is no prescribed professional or occupational qualification determining which person should carry out the personal adviser’s function for any individual care leaver. There are suggestions of what a PA should normally possess. They should,
“be working towards a professional qualification … good practice …for the young person to maintain the same PA from the age of 16”,
et cetera. Presumably, the current personal advisers are DBS-compliant. If they are not, why not? I would have thought that was something that happened straightaway. They are working in a very intimate situation with young and vulnerable children, so if that is not the case, we need to know that straightaway. If it is the case, we need to look at the other suggestions that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has made. We also need to ensure that the line management of personal advisers is not something that is just put on paper and does not happen but that somebody line-manages those personal advisers and sees them on a regular basis. There is another issue—that if we are not careful, sometimes young people who are emotionally vulnerable can make allegations against personal advisers, and that personal adviser is in a very difficult situation. If an allegation is made against a teacher, at least the teacher is in a setting where there are people around who can support and advise, whereas a personal adviser is acting entirely on their own. As well as any register and making sure that correct procedures have been gone through, there also has to be proper and effective line management of personal advisers.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, I rise to express not dissimilar concerns to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I firmly support the tenor of what is proposed, but at the same time I go back to Second Reading when the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, raised the question of foster carers. Some foster carers will rail against the professionalisation of advice. If we believe that there needs to be flexibility in the range of personal advisers, we need to beware of the Bill being so constraining that we lose that flexibility. They have to be securely and safely recruited and vetted, and we must ensure that there is ongoing support. The concern just expressed about the vulnerability of an individual personal adviser also needs to be heeded. I wanted to place on record a concern that this is something that must still be wrestled with. We have not got to the bottom of the right answer yet, either with what is in the Bill or in the guidance. This will be another example of where the guidance needs to be seen before Third Reading.
Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 78, which relates to Clause 4, which inserts, under the heading “Educational achievement of previously looked after children”, a new section into the Children Act 1989 in order to provide information and advice to previously looked-after young people and their parents.
In particular, my amendment affects subsection (3) of the new section, which provides local authorities with a power to do,
“anything else that they consider appropriate”,
to promote the educational achievement of these young people. This is potentially radical wording—whether that is intentional I am not sure—but, as I said at Second Reading, that ambition is very welcome. It is not quite on a par with the power to innovate described in Clauses 15 to 19 but I certainly think that it acts in that direction.
Without wanting to presage the debate that will take place around that part of the Bill, it is already clear that noble Lords will demand that any such powers to innovate will need to be very carefully designed to avoid negative and unintended consequences. It is that spirit which informs this amendment. I am concerned that the subsection does not include the necessary safeguards to avoid negative and unintended consequences for some young people.
Local authorities have a number of duties to several categories of vulnerable children—not simply looked-after children but, for example, children with special educational needs and disabilities. Even as we move towards an academy-led system, local authorities retain direct responsibility for placing children with special educational needs and disabilities who have educational health and care plans. I am sorry for the continued jargon. My worry is that as currently constituted, the subsection gives local authorities permission to provide extraordinary support to previously looked-after children, which is of course welcome on one level, but even if that is at the cost of pupils with SEND, for example, who are much more numerous and may have more challenging needs.
My amendment would add a simple caveat to make it clear that local authorities must take into account the impact of their actions on other children for whom they have a responsibility when considering how to raise attainment for previously looked-after children. I am perfectly willing to accept that it may be unnecessary if I can get the reassurances that I seek from Ministers that it is not intended or that other safeguards exist, perhaps in other legislation.
I turn quickly to Amendment 86, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I strongly support the sentiment on the delivery of high-quality PSHE in schools. That is what we do through our character programme in the Floreat schools that I set up. I am also involved in the “Developing Healthy Minds in Teenagers” programme, which is trying to do something similar in secondary schools. I very much support the spirit of the amendment but I am concerned that it might tip us into a statutory PSHE curriculum which, as the noble Baroness knows, I am not ready to support because, as Ofsted has said, PSHE teaching in too many schools is not yet good enough. We need to fix that problem before considering whether it should become a statutory subject.
Lord Storey
I shall speak to Amendment 86. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has been a worthy champion of PSHE ever since I joined the House of Lords. I thought that the battle was over when in reply to her question the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, said that yes, she thought that it was important that all schools taught PSHE. I raised my hand in the air thinking, “Great, we’ve got that”.
I was interested in the comment of the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. There is always this debate about whether we have to slim down the curriculum. It is said, “We don’t want to have statutory PSHE; we want schools—academies—to have freedoms”. Yes, I can subscribe to some of that but children are more important than them just having freedoms for curriculum development. There are really important things that need to be taught to all children and we have just heard a catalogue of them. It is hugely important that children have sex and relationship education and that they have financial education, and so on and so forth. I was fascinated by the noble Lord’s comments about the sort of work that he does in his schools. I pay tribute to that, but it should be for all schools.
I am not sure whether saying, “Let’s get the PSHE model right before we make it statutory” is the right approach. It should be the other way round. We should be saying that we will make it statutory for all schools—including free schools as well, incidentally, which I notice that the amendment does not mention—and then we make the resources, drive and determination to make that happen. That is probably one of the most important things that we can do for all children, but particularly for vulnerable and looked-after children.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, Amendments 77 to 79 and 86 concern educational support for formerly looked-after children. The trauma and experiences of children who have suffered from abuse and neglect can have a long-term impact on outcomes and life chances, even once they have left care through a permanence order. The Bill seeks to ensure that everything possible is done to help these children and young people overcome the difficulties that they have faced and to realise their ambitions.
Our intention is to place a duty on local authorities to extend the duties of virtual school heads to support looked-after children who have left care under an adoption, special guardianship or child arrangement order. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that we will consider his Amendment 77. We will be talking to government lawyers about whether the current drafting fully captures special guardianship or child arrangement orders. We think that it does for adopted children but if it does not and the current drafting of the Bill does not achieve that aim, we will consider a government amendment to Clause 4. I thank him for raising that issue.
While I understand the point made by my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy in his Amendment 78, I am not convinced that it is necessary to place a duty on local authorities to consider the impact of what they will do on other groups of children. Local authorities will need to ensure that they do not spend disproportionate time supporting one child or group of children at the expense of others. Virtual school heads must do this now as some looked-after children will require more intensive support than others. I reassure my noble friend that the new duties in the Bill are deliberately light-touch—just providing information and advice—to allow virtual school heads to effectively prioritise their workload.
The role of the virtual school head for formerly looked-after children will be different from their current role. They will not have to monitor each child’s progress as they do for children in care for instance, as the child’s parents and carers will do this. We are confident that with the other specific duties on local authorities to support looked-after children, previously looked-after children will not be disproportionately supported at the expense of others.
On Amendment 79, again I do not think it appropriate to specify in primary legislation that local authorities must ensure virtual school heads have the resources to do the job. Clearly, we will expect all local authorities to do this and we will, via Ofsted inspections, check the quality of the service provided by virtual school heads. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that a virtual school head will not be an add-on to other duties. Their sole focus will be vulnerable children. Many virtual school heads already respond to requests for advice and information from parents and schools in respect of children who have left care through, for example, adoption. Clause 4 seeks to ensure that all authorities offer this service. However, I have asked officials to ensure that resources for virtual school heads are covered in the statutory guidance we will issue to clarify their role.
Finally, Amendment 86 covers personal, social, health and economic education for formerly looked-after children. We agree that all young people should leave school prepared for life in modern Britain. The Minister and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that high-quality PSHE has a vital role to play in giving young people a better understanding of society and supporting them to make informed choices and to stay safe. The majority of schools and teachers already recognise the importance of good-quality PSHE education.
However, as I am afraid the noble Baroness has heard me say before, we believe it is not the availability but the quality of PSHE teaching that is the most pressing issue, as my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy highlighted. I say again: we will continue to keep the status of PSHE under review but in the short term we will prioritise working with experts to identify further action we can take to ensure that all pupils receive high-quality, age-appropriate PSHE and sex and relationships education. I am sure that the noble Baroness will continue to push us on this matter and that we will have many further discussions. I hope, on that basis, that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Schools: Religious Education
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Lord Storey (LD)
Will the Minister reflect on why, if the Government believe that non-religious beliefs have a full and important place in religious studies, they have moved to encourage schools and those who set syllabuses to ignore a legal judgment that sets out exactly that position?
Care Leavers: Life Chances
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Lord Nash
I apologise if the noble Baroness does not like the expression but the intention is to give these children someone who is in loco parentis and can fight their corner. It is about changing and spreading good practice, and making sure that the local authorities’ task in loco parentis does not burden them with a tick-box approach and extra duties.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will know how important personal advisers are for care leavers. How do we ensure that they are of the highest quality? Does he believe that there should be minimum qualifications and requirements? Is he hopeful that this might be agreed in the Bill?
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, children and young people do not choose to be in care, and we as a society have a moral responsibility to do whatever it takes to provide the support that a child or young person needs. There is much to welcome in this Bill. It is another step on that journey to ensuring that we are doing everything possible to support children in care.
I welcomed the comments from the Minister, Edward Timpson, at last week’s briefing when he spoke of his Government’s desire to listen and respond, and the subsequent letter on 14 June from him and the noble Lord, Lord Nash, clarifying the points raised at that briefing meeting. I am therefore a little disappointed that, given that the aim is to use this opportunity to get it right, we finish tomorrow and then, I am told, the first day of Committee will be on the Monday that we return. That might be all right for London-based Members, but for others it does not afford the time needed for briefings and talking, et cetera.
The Bill is not about political point-scoring or some deep political dogma but about recognition that we can and must do everything possible to ensure that support, care and attention is provided. Care is a vital part of child protection. Most young people in care say that they have a very good experiences of care. Let us start by recognising that the majority of children in care are happy, have a loving and caring childhood, and are fulfilled in all that they do.
I remember that there was a children’s home nearby the school where I was head teacher. Two girls from there, Teressa and Claire, came to my school. You could not imagine two nicer girls; they were looked after and cared for. Teressa went on a trip to Lourdes and brought back for me a plastic Virgin Mary with a screw-top halo and holy water inside—I still have it. If the Minister gets the Bill right, perhaps I will present him with the holy water via Teressa.
We must recognise the commitment that local authorities give and praise the thousands of foster parents who give so much in creating a loving environment in which children and young people can thrive and develop. The linchpin, of course, is social workers; hence, the Children and Social Work Bill. Social workers do an amazing job, day in and day out, and have to experience some of the most appalling situations in achieving some of their greatest successes. However, without their dedication and commitment, we would be in a much poorer state. When, very occasionally—and it is occasionally—something goes horribly wrong, there is an immediate outcry and the blame culture sweeps all before it. Yes, we need highly trained and qualified social workers, but we need to support them and not demonise them in their role, or even potentially criminalise them.
Part 2 of the Bill, dealing with social worker regulations, is about enhancing their status. That is fine, but I am not convinced that removing functions from one body and establishing them in another is the best way of achieving this. Governments of all political persuasion seem obsessed with creating new bodies for new policy direction. As the British Association of Social Workers said in its briefing, social work professionals need to be,
“recognised in the development of any new regulatory arrangement—in setting standards and ethics, in providing post-qualifying development frameworks and leading the way on the profession owning its own standards and commitment to highest quality”.
Personal advisers have been and will be an essential support for children and young people in care. I welcome the intention to extend the entitlement to personal advisers to all care leavers up to the age of 25. Even with the important role they fulfil, they are not required to have any specific training. A quick trawl through local authority job adverts for personal advisers highlights that as a problem. Hounslow Council says that no essential qualifications are needed. Medway Council requires a full NVQ level 3 in health and social care and experience working with children and young people. Barnet Council says that no qualifications are required but that there should be experience in pathway plans. Torbay asks for relevant professional social work qualifications and a professional commitment to obtaining an NVQ in childcare and a current certificate of registration from the General Social Care Council. Greenwich Council requires no qualifications but applicants must have knowledge of local and national legal procedures and their relevance to childcare. I could go on. So no national or informal standards are required for personal advisers. I ask the Minister to consider creating a standard for professional advisers given that they are a key part of social care support.
On training and support, I mentioned the incredible job that foster parents do. But once again the induction arrangements, training and continuous training support received are very variable. Given their unique role, should we not be clear about what it is and what should be available and provided for them? I was very much taken with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, about foster parents becoming personal advisers. We should explore that, but also, as we have heard, young people must have a say. I discovered a new phrase when reading the Minister’s letter on personal advisers. Officials are currently taking a series of “deep-dive visits”. That sounds very painful, but I hope they will take us a step further.
My noble friend Lady Tyler highlighted the need for the importance of mental health screening. The headline statistics are a cause for concern. Almost two-thirds of children in care have experienced abuse and neglect and looked-after children are four times more likely to experience a diagnosable mental health condition. Let us not dance around this one. The mental health resources for children in care must be provided when needed. The Minister will no doubt tell us from the civil servants’ brief that extra resources are provided—the extra resources that Government have and will put into mental health. But my experience is that child and adolescent mental health services have suffered brutally from local authority savings and as a consequence are not proactive. The Education Select Committee report says that the current paper-based method of assessing a child’s mental health during their time in care is insufficient. We are talking about the most vulnerable children who have experienced abuse and neglect. Paper-based? Come on; we can do better than that.
The Bill gives the opportunity to some local authorities to innovate and pilot new ways of working. I am always in favour of innovation, but to innovate we also need resources. I actually consider the most important innovation in the last 20 years was Sure Start centres, yet we have heard how 800 of them have been forced to close. Innovation gives the opportunity to move out of a straitjacket approach, but we have to be absolutely sure that there are no unintended consequences, particularly in eroding the rights of the child. We need, and I am sure that the Minister would want, to place clarity around this proposal, and a commitment from the Government that safeguards will be put in place to prevent further unacceptable variations in care for looked-after children.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee is unable to be at Second Reading. As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights she is concerned about Clauses 15 to 19, which potentially threaten children’s social care rights. The legal adviser to Article 39, a human rights charity that promotes and protects the rights of children living in state and privately-run institutions, and takes its name from that part of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has major concerns about the rights of the child. Perhaps in his reply the Minister could give assurances that these issues will be listened to and considered.
I am struck that since the publication of the Bill there has been universal support in favour of its laudable aims, but there are concerns about the delegation to Ministers. The Bill does not talk about funding; instead it talks about extra responsibilities. I seek reassurance from the Minister that arrangements such as the pupil premium will remain at their current levels and that the criteria are not changed in any way. There have also been suggestions to move pupil funding to the virtual school head for distribution rather than to schools themselves. Perhaps the Minister can provide some clarity on this matter.
Over the years we have all been shocked and sickened—that gut-wrenching feeling—when we have heard of cases of child abuse. We have seen how some sink to the lowest imaginable levels of depravity, but thank God we live in a society which can and will do all it can to protect children. I conclude by thanking the Government for bringing this Bill forward and, I hope, for being prepared to listen. The many important points that have been made by your Lordships are worthy of the Minister’s attention. We will do whatever it takes to make sure that our own children are safeguarded, that they have the best chances in life and that they are able to reach and develop their own potential. Never mind our own children, those chances should also be available for children in care.
Queen’s Speech
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak from these Benches at the end of this first day of debate on the gracious Speech. As my noble friends have said, including my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness yesterday, we regret that many of the measures included in the gracious Speech demonstrate a real lack of ambition and drive for this country.
With regard to my own area of education, the Liberal Democrats are clear that we should be investing in our young people and giving teachers the resources and support they need to deliver real improvements for pupils. We propose a new education charter that will have at its heart consensus to provide every pupil with a qualified teacher, to have a balanced national curriculum for all children to ensure that sport, music and the arts are not marginalised, to change the culture from excessive testing and inspections to more teaching and less testing, good-quality careers education, and a royal college of teaching to ensure that standards and support are maintained.
The Queen’s Speech talked about excellence in education, which is a sentiment that we could all subscribe to, but how can you have excellence when some of the fundamentals in our education service now face a real crisis? The supply of teachers in specialist subjects is near to breaking point—try getting a physics or chemistry teacher—and there are schools that have advertised for head teachers and nobody has applied. That is not excellence; it is downright poor planning of teacher supply.
The shortage of school places in parts of the UK is a national disgrace. How difficult is it to know the birth rate requirements and plan with local authorities to provide the places needed? We seem so obsessed with hitting our promised free school targets that we desperately try playing catch-up by adding on to existing schools and making them bigger and bigger. Is a school of 2,000 places the most conducive environment for pupils to be educated in? The admission procedures are fast becoming a nightmare for parents, who are increasingly not getting their first, second or even third choice of school, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, rightly said, we need an admissions procedure that is uniform and has been simplified.
The second crisis that we face is over school finance. The Government promised that there would be no cuts to school budgets, but a stand-still budget takes no account of the rising on-costs that have to be absorbed by the school budget. Employer on-costs in the past three years have risen by 69.4% and there has been no extra finance, so those costs have had to be absorbed into the school budget. The cost of brought-in services has gone up and up, and again the costs have had to be absorbed by the school budget. What we have seen in the health service, with hospital trusts piling up huge deficits, is likely to be a foretaste of what will happen in our schools. There is little wonder that head teachers in the Prime Minister’s constituency sought a meeting to highlight the financial difficulties that they were facing, with head teachers even talking about schools facing bankruptcy. Is now a good time to bring forward a so-called national fair funding regime in England? Yes, there will be winners, but there will also be losers and that can only compound school budget difficulties.
The party of parents and family values is increasingly ignoring the views of parents—whether it be on compulsory academisation, schools not having a governing body or the primary testing regime—and parents are increasingly voicing their opinions. A parent in the Isle of Wight even went to court on the principle of having a family holiday in school term time. Of course, it is important that children attend school, and days missed from school can affect a child’s education. But some parents have no choice over when they receive their holiday entitlement. Indeed, some factories close down for a holiday period during school time. Parents wanting to have that all-important family holiday together are faced with the agonising choice of holidaying together as a family or facing the approbation of the LA and a possible fine. Come on: let us use some common sense and, rather than penalise parents, give the responsibility back to head teachers and governors to agree in certain circumstances leave of absence from school. Would it not be a good idea if the Government tackled the outrageous practice carried out by the holiday industry in massively increasing costs during school holiday times to the detriment of families, hitting those in the lowest income groups the hardest?
The Education Act 1944 enshrined the need for every child to be given full-time schooling and for every school to be legally approved to provide that schooling. Now, 72 years later, Ofsted has found and reported on 100 unregistered schools, but the scandal of children being taught in unlicensed schools is only the tip of the iceberg. We have no central figures on how many children are missing from our schools and no central figures to show how many children are being educated at home. Let us show the same zeal that we have for pupil school attendance to keep an accurate and up-to-date record of those children who go missing from the school system. After all, births are recorded and pupils entering school are given a UPN—a unique pupil number—so why are we allowing pupils to go missing from the school system?
In all our education and social policies, the safety, well-being and protection of the child should be at the heart of all we do. In 2004, a report was published called Twenty-nine Child Homicides by Women’s Aid. It detailed 29 children who had been killed by abusive fathers. The killings happened between 1994 and 2004 and were committed by perpetrators of domestic abuse in circumstances relating to child contact. Its findings prompted a review of judicial practice and the inception of a new practice direction which prioritised the safety of children and non-abusive parents in child contact decisions in the family courts. If we now move the tape forward, the very same group has produced a further report which uncovers the details of a further 19 children in 12 families killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse in circumstances relating to child contact. In addition, two children were seriously harmed and three women were killed. All the perpetrators were men and fathers to the children they killed. A study of 203 child contact orders found that only one order prohibited any contact by the father who had been committing domestic violence, and only 3% of contact orders were for supervised visiting. We cannot continue to put the lives of innocent children at risk. In all cases of alleged domestic abuse, there must be robust and effective assessments by experts of the implications for the child and of the non-abusive parent’s safety and well-being. It is only by doing this that what are now unavoidable deaths will be prevented in the future.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, from these Benches we do wish that the content of the gracious Speech was more ambitious. For so many reasons which we are all well aware of, the next few months will be pivotal to the future of this country. We have heard lots of talk about the referendum. I am reminded that in my own city of Liverpool, it was Objective 1 European funding which turned around the fortunes of the city and city region, and of course being the European Capital of Culture changed perceptions of Liverpool once and for all. The Government can expect a long ride ahead during this legislative Session, but rest assured that we will always scrutinise in a constructive and challenging manner with neither fear nor favour.
Education: Academies
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. In it there was mention of people crowing at the Government’s climbdown. I am not going to adopt that approach, although I have to say that I can understand why many would. U-turns are becoming a regular feature of this Government’s attempts to initiate or see through legislation, and the number of times that we have witnessed the brakes being applied soon after bold statements of intent suggests that a little more than bad luck is at play here. Bad judgment is more likely, I think, and that is certainly the case with forced academisation. Before I leave the issue of crowing, I find it rather depressing to hear the Statement say that people are crowing about a victory in their “battle against raising standards”. Is that really what Ministers believe? Nobody is against raising standards. The Minister and the Secretary of State should realise that they and the whiz-kids at the No. 10 Policy Unit do not always know better than those who, day in and day out, are at the sharp end of things, delivering education for our children. Of course there are examples of where schools are underperforming, and they must be helped to improve, but that does not justify the conclusion that academisation is the only answer.
The opposition to the White Paper proposals encompassed a broad alliance, including head teachers—I hardly need to remind the Ministers here this evening that head teachers made their collective voice very clear to the Secretary of State when she spoke to their conference—and also parents, governors, teachers, local government leaders from all parties and Members of Parliament, more than a few from their own party. Although the Secretary of State has conceded on the ideologically driven idea of forcing good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes, she still apparently holds the ambition that all schools will become academies, though still without advancing a single convincing reason as to why this aim is sensible in the first place.
The Statement today is certainly welcome, but it none the less leaves questions, one of which is whether high-performing schools will be forced to become academies. At one point, the Statement says:
“We will therefore seek provisions to convert schools in the lowest-performing and unviable local authorities to academy status. This may involve in some circumstances conversion of good and outstanding schools when they have not chosen to do so themselves”.
Yet later it says:
“While we want every school to become an academy, we will not compel successful schools to join multi-academy trusts”.
I say to the Minister: which is it? The Government clearly cannot have it both ways.
There is also the issue of autonomy. Do the Government really believe that that is the outcome when a school becomes part of a multi-academy trust? They claim that academisation devolves power to the front line, but that is a myth. Schools and academy chains actually lose most of their autonomy because the chain controls their premises, their budget, their staffing and their curriculum. The ultimate irony is that chains have far more power over schools than local authorities currently do.
Last week, I asked the Minister in your Lordships’ House whether there was any evidence that academies automatically performed better than local authority maintained schools, particularly those that are already categorised as high performing. The Minister avoided answering the question, perhaps for the good reason that the honest answer was no. What he did do was to pray in aid what he thought was a supportive comment from the Sutton Trust. But what he did not tell the House was that the research by the Sutton Trust found that there is a very mixed picture in the performance of academy chains and no evidence at all that academisation in and of itself leads to school improvement.
The White Paper promotes academy chains as the preferred model, yet many chains are performing badly and significantly worse than many local authorities—a point recognised by the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw. There have been too many examples of financial mismanagement verging on corruption in academy chains and—perhaps it is a debate for another day—the Education Funding Agency is widely recognised as not being up to the job of supervising even the number of academies that we now have. So I again ask the Minister what evidence the Government have that only academisation leads to school improvement. Where is the choice and autonomy that the Government are so fond of emphasising despite advancing a one-size-fits-all approach? Is there sufficient capacity and accountability in the academy system to ensure that it is best practice, not poor practice, which is being spread?
These questions remain as the Government seek further powers to speed up the pace of academisation. Your Lordships might like to ask why this has been deemed necessary so soon after the Education and Adoption Act was in your Lordships’ House. We spent many days and hours going through the fine detail of that Bill; but were the White Paper proposals to be adopted, it would mean that we had effectively wasted our time on it. If the Government were so convinced that only forced academisation would do, why did they not amend the then Education and Adoption Bill appropriately? That would have been the honest approach instead of leading noble Lords and MPs down what is effectively a false path, knowing that the Bill was merely a stop-gap measure.
It is surely self-evident that we all want to see educational excellence everywhere, but at a time when schools are facing huge challenges from falling budgets and teacher shortages, top-down reorganisation of the school system will remove even more money, time and effort from where the focus should be. It is high time the Government recognised that further structural changes are at best a distraction and, at worst, could damage standards. Will the Minister now accept that, when it comes to change in education, the Government need to carry the professionals with them if such change is to be successfully delivered?
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is actually good to listen; it is good to hear what other people have to say rather than immediately jump to conclusions, and I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to people who have considerable experience in these matters and adjusted the likely content of the forthcoming Bill.
The Minister said in the Statement that the Government wanted to,
“deliver a great education to every single child”.
But don’t we all? I suppose that the difference is that some of us do not believe that the blind concentration on structures and types of school is really the answer. We think that, more importantly, it is about the quality of leadership of those schools. It is about the teachers—who are highly trained, highly respected and given proper continuing professional development. It is about a broad national curriculum which every pupil takes, and includes, as some of the Minister’s colleagues believe, PSHE and good careers advice. It is about parents being involved in the education of their child, not divorced from it; and it is about a curriculum which celebrates technical, vocational and creative education.
There is no evidence that turning a school into an academy will improve standards. In fact, academies tend to perform less well in Ofsted inspections than local authority schools do. I hope that we will see, once and for all, the end of the ideological obsession with pushing aside the role of local authorities in community schools. They need to be cherished, nurtured and given the resources to do the job.
I am very pleased with what the Minister said in the Statement about rural schools, which have been neglected for far too long and need special attention. But putting them into multi-academy trusts is not always the best solution. If they have to go into a multi-academy trust, the trust has to have a relationship with the community that the school is in, because the community is hugely important to the rural school.
I have two questions for the Minister. So far, he has resisted publishing tables to compare trusts’ overall performance. Will he now agree that that should happen? Secondly, he has refused to let Ofsted conduct full inspections of academy chains. Will he now agree that this should happen as well?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for his comments about supporting the raising of standards in schools. I have no doubt that he supports that aim.
Many people wanted to see more detail on our direction of travel for academies, so we provided it in the White Paper. However, as I have said, it is clear that the blanket power outlined in the White Paper created anxiety in the system. So we have listened—I am grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about that—to the concern of head teachers and teachers and removed those powers so that people can now take time to understand the benefits of becoming an academy or joining a multi-academy trust. I am confident that once people have had the opportunity to understand that, many more will come forward to convert, as schools are in record numbers at the moment. I hope that noble Lords across the House who have not had the opportunity of spending time with leaders of academies or multi-academy trusts or with the regional school commissions will take the time to do that over the next few months. I am happy to arrange visits or meetings. We will continue to listen and to have dialogue with the sector, parents, teachers, governors, unions and local authorities over the next few months.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to evidence, an issue we have discussed a great deal in this House. I said in answer to his question that schools that have chosen to convert to academies—that is, those that are high performing already—are obtaining better results. Despite their already high performance, they are improving their results and are more likely to be rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Secondary converters are performing 7 percentage points above the national average and results in primary-sponsored academies open for two years have improved on average by 10% since opening, more than double the rate of local authority maintained schools over the same period.
In answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in certain limited circumstances, high-performing schools may be obliged to become academies—that is, where they are in local authorities that are either performing poorly or are unviable. As I have said, we will be setting out more on that and consulting on what the viability test will be.
We make no apologies for the benefits of schools working in multi-academy trusts. There are particular benefits in relation to leadership development and CPD for teachers. People who work in multi-academy trusts talk often about the retention of staff benefits. They say that when they were running one school they tended to lose their rising stars because they could not offer them career development opportunities. They can now have rising stars programmes in place and retain their best staff. There are benefits such as the sharing of good practice and economies of scale, and many others. I invite noble Lords, when they meet with people from multi-academy trusts, to discuss this with them.
On accountability, as I have said before, academies are held to a higher standard of accountability than local authority maintained schools. They are obliged to publish annual third party-audited accounts, which local authority maintained schools are not; no one in a governance relationship with an academy can profit from that relationship, which can happen in a local authority maintained school; and they are also held to the standards of the Charity Commission and the Companies Act.
As to leadership, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, made a good point about the capacity and leadership. We have £600 million available to develop this programme. We have invested in a leadership programme with future leaders and executive educators, and we are in discussions with a number of business schools about their developing leadership courses for people who work in academies and multi-academy trusts. I hope to say more about that in due course.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his comments about rural schools. I agree entirely about the importance of their being intimately engaged with their local communities. In answer to his last two questions, we will be publishing MAT performance tables based on this summer’s results. We have had extensive conversations with Ofsted, and agreed an arrangement whereby Ofsted will carry out batch inspections of schools in multi-academy trusts and look at the school improvement services provided by the head office. However, we do not think it appropriate for Ofsted inspectors to inspect the finances, governance and management arrangements of these organisations. We have discussed with Ofsted the idea that in certain circumstances, there may be joint inspections: Ofsted inspecting school improvement and the performance of the schools, and the EFA—possibly working with consultants—inspecting the head office, management, governance and financial arrangements of the trusts. We have also had discussions with Ofsted because we know that it has inspected weak performing multi-academy trusts. We hope that it will soon be inspecting some strong performing multi-academy trusts so that we can see what a really good chain looks like.
Rural Schools
Lord Storey Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Storey (LD)
When you close a rural school, you literally tear the heart out of that community. The issue is not about structures; it must surely be about resources. If the Government are hell-bent on making rural schools part of multi-academy trusts, does the Minister agree that such a trust must have its other schools within that community, not outside it? In other words, the trust should be only in that county area. Secondly, we have seen governing bodies of trust schools being abolished. Can he assure us that every village school will keep its governing body?
Lord Nash
As I just mentioned, rural schools will get a lump sum for a sparsity factor in the national funding formulas, so we are cognisant of their particular circumstances. As I think the noble Lord knows, we very much favour local schools working together in local clusters. Indeed, in the last few years hundreds of multi-academy trusts operating in their local regional clusters have come together, so this is absolutely essential.
Schools: Parent Governors
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Lord Nash
Actually, it was made absolutely clear in the White Paper that we would create a new expectation that every academy would put in place meaningful arrangements for engagement with all parents. We do not want to be prescriptive about the precise nature of that engagement, but of course a parent council may well be a good way of doing that. So far as privatisation is concerned, it is interesting to note that anyone involved in an academy or in a governance relationship with an academy cannot profit from their arrangement in that, whereas of course that is possible in a local authority-maintained school.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that I wrote to him on 12 February following a multi-academy trust abolishing a governing body. In his reply, he said, as he has said here, that academies should make and have in place meaningful and effective arrangements for engaging and listening to the views of parents. How will that happen, and will that be statutory? We do not want parents to think that government policy, in terms of parental involvement in their child’s school, is that parents should be seen but not heard.
Schools: Food Nutrition Standards
Lord Storey Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to legislate to ensure that food and drink provided in all types of schools follow Food Standards Agency food and nutritional guidelines.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, last year the Government introduced new statutory school food standards as a result of the school food plan. They were based on food groups to make it easier for cooks to prepare healthy, tasty dishes without needing a computer program to determine the necessary level of nutrients and are easier for parents to understand. They severely restrict foods high in fat, salt and sugar and have resulted, for instance, in children eating more vegetables.
Lord Storey (LD)
No doubt the Minister will be pleased and delighted with the success of free school meals at key stage 1. Will the Government consider extending that to key stage 2, perhaps paid for by a sugar tax—which, incidentally, would help the 84% of young people in the north-west who suffer from dental decay and would save the National Health Service £30 million a year on teeth operations?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with the noble Lord’s comment about the success of universal infant free school meals, which is resulting in 1.3 million more children getting a healthy meal every day. We have funded that considerably, including for new kitchens. In secondary schools healthy food is generally available and we are doing all we can to make sure that, where it is not, it is made available.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Storey Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, we have now reached the point where this Bill must return to the other place. From these Benches we have to say that it is regrettable that it will take so little in terms of amendments with it. As has been outlined, it has many faults, and despite claims by both Ministers that it is all about rescuing children from underperforming schools, many noble Lords believe that there is rather more to it than that.
I should say that I do not doubt the bona fides of either Minister. The relish with which they have advanced their arguments during the Bill’s time in your Lordships’ House reflects their own backgrounds and motivation. I understand that the noble Baroness has a history in the free schools sector and that the noble Lord has a history in the academies sector, each with some success. If I may draw an analogy, to be handed this Bill is tantamount to a girl and boy being given the keys to the toy shop. It is clear that they are in their element, because it allows them to pursue their personal and particular priorities. But it has to be said that their priorities are not necessarily those of wider society, judging by the briefings we have had from a very wide range of organisations, all of whom I thank, and not to any significant extent those of the education professionals, all of whom also have as their raison d'être providing the best possible education for our children.
We have spent almost 24 hours in debate on this Bill—a full day. I wonder whether we might ask ourselves whether we might have put it to better use—some may say yes—and I am sure that we are now all ready to move on to other things. But before we do so, I want to thank the Bill team. We on these Benches have worked rather hard. On my behalf I pay tribute to my assistant, Molly Critchley, who did the heavy lifting when it came to negotiating over amendments. She did much more besides, and both I and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath are indebted to her for her tireless efforts. This is the first piece of legislation for which I have had Front-Bench responsibility and I have leaned much and often on the experienced shoulders of my colleague Lord Hunt, for which I am most grateful. Having leaned much, I like to think that I have now learned much—but I suppose time will tell.
I think I am correct in asserting that this is also the first Bill as a Front-Bencher for the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park. She has perhaps had a slightly tougher baptism than she might have hoped for, but through it all she has retained an upbeat manner and an ability to assure—or at least attempt to assure—those on these Benches that the Bill was much more benign than we believed.
The noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I have had—what shall I say?—our moments throughout those 24 hours. It seems that neither of us is ever going to convince the other of the veracity of our respective arguments, but at least we have given it our best shot. I have made a discovery about the noble Lord and, in spite of the fact that he has offered precious little in terms of concessions on the Bill, I am about to offer him one of my own. I think he and I have only two things in common. One is clearly membership of your Lordships’ House. The other, I have learned, is that we were born in the same year. I am not about to divulge the year, but we were born just five weeks apart—and that provides me with both good news and bad. The good news is that the Minister was born first. The bad news is that it does not show.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I take the opportunity once again to thank the Minister for being prepared to listen. There have been a number of changes—including changes of interpretation—to the Bill. I said to my colleagues at the beginning, “I am sure that Lord Nash will listen”, and he has done. This is a very small Bill, really. On the adoption side, I think real progress has been made.
On the school side, there are a few issues for me. The first is whether this is not just about the academisation programme and the slow strangulation of maintained schools and local education authorities. Maybe there is a much fairer way of achieving that. I recall the statement from the Chancellor that he wants all schools to become academies, and the same from the Prime Minister.
The second issue is that of parents. I have always believed that one of the hallmarks of a successful education system is that parents are at the heart of it. I think we said in Committee that if the school that your children go to is being closed, that is quite a traumatic occasion; you want to be involved in those discussions and to know the reasons and what is happening. To then be told that you are not even going to have a say on the new school or new academy sponsor is something that I am concerned about.
Another issue follows a couple of Questions that I tabled regarding the governing bodies of schools. Again, it seems bizarre that you can have academy trusts abolishing governing bodies. In maintained schools, of course, you have to have a governing body—quite rightly; parents are an important voice in a school—but in multi-academy trusts you can have one governing body for, say, 50-odd schools. In the Harris Academy chain there are now, I think, 52 schools. One governing body—which could be in another part of the country, for that matter—being the parental voice is really not good enough. It could be said—well-meaningly, I am sure—that parents’ associations are quite important. But many schools do not have parent associations; they tend to be, I have to say, in middle-class areas.
The area of schools commissioners is one that has vexed us for some time. Light needs to be shone on the work and there needs to be transparency, and I am delighted with the comments the Minister has made on that. It is a very important step forward.
Some of us have always believed that driving up standards in our schools is not about waving the proverbial big cane but about professionalism and trusting in the leadership of schools. One of my regrets from the coalition period was that we abolished the leadership academy. That was a great mistake. You need to make sure that the people you put as leaders of your school are of the highest calibre, quality and training. You have to have good leaders.
Secondly, it is all for nought if you do not have quality teachers. It is about ensuring that teachers are respected, highly trained and highly valued. It worries me that 40% of teachers leave in the first five years of their teaching. That is a very worrying trend. I hope that, now that the Bill is out of the way, we can do what the Minister is good at—listen and evolve policies or procedures that work for all our education services.