Schools: Academies

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

E-ACT was undoubtedly overambitious. It took on a lot of schools which were failing and in very challenging situations. Personally, I think that big business being involved in the academy programme is an excellent idea, and it was of course the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who introduced this. As I said, this programme, which we are extending, is working extremely well, and we have extremely rigorous oversight of academy chains. We welcome Ofsted’s batch inspection of schools in academy chains and the support that it gets from those chains. However, Ofsted has a lot to do and, given the very tight grip that we have on the central management of these chains, we do not think that it is necessary for it to go any further than that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that academy chains are always catching up with some of the smallest local authorities in terms of the number of schools for which they are responsible. Local authorities’ children’s services and school improvements are inspected. Why does the Minister think that academy chains should not be inspected as chains?

[Lord Nash]

I think I have just said that I believe that the department has a very tight grip on the central management of academy chains, which, as I said, are performing extremely well by and large. That is not the case with local authorities, among which there are many unfortunate failures. Nearly 400 local authority schools are in special measures and 30 have been in special measures for 18 months. As my noble friend knows, a number of local authorities have, according to Ofsted, been performing particularly poorly.

Schools: Careers Guidance

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I know that the noble Baroness and I share aspirations for what we expect for young people, but the answer to her question is a firm no. As noble Lords know, the fact that the country is short of money is not this party’s fault. However, I also think that the assumption that a face-to-face interview with a careers adviser is the gold standard is a very outmoded model. As noble Lords will see when we publish our guidance, I hope shortly, we have a very strong emphasis on employer engagement, which we believe is the secret to good careers advice. I give an example: Westminster Academy, which has built up partnerships with more than 200 employers, has 73% FSM and 75% A* to C, including English and maths. I can think of no better example or argument for employer engagement on the ground, giving pupils a direct line of sight to real-life workplaces rather than just career advisers.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will know that one of the hardest things in career education is building up those networks, contacts and opportunities for work experience. It is particularly difficult for children from disadvantaged backgrounds—one has only to look at interns in Parliament itself. How do we ensure that children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have those opportunities?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is quite right. We have to ensure that work experience and internships are not just available from daddy’s or mummy’s friends. The Social Mobility Foundation has done a great deal of work in this regard, and I know that it is developing a focus on providing work experience and internships for pupils from backgrounds who would not normally be able to access them. Even it struggles sometimes to engage with schools, but that is something that we are very focused on.

Schools: Arts Subjects

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. It is important that we give all our students that core cultural capital that Diane Abbott has acknowledged in the other place as being essential, particularly for underprivileged children, to enable them to get on in life and that we encourage more careers. We now have a number of university technical colleges focused on the creative industries.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that many young people develop their passion and talent for the arts by attending Saturday clubs, such as the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts 4:19 Part-Time Academy. Parents pay for this privilege. How can we ensure that children, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, can also access those Saturday club resources?

[Lord Nash]

I know of the contribution in this area of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which the noble Lord knows well and whose lead patron is Sir Paul McCartney. Indeed, we have approved it to open a primary free school, which will use the creative and performing arts to encourage a lasting enthusiasm for learning. Pupil premium funding is allocated to schools to decide how to improve the outcome for disadvantaged pupils. Ofsted now inspects against this and it will be very difficult for schools to get an outstanding rating if they are not making good progress for their pupil premium pupils. All schools have to publish online how they are spending their pupil premium money and its impact.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak to the group of amendments beginning with Amendment 4, which are tabled in my name. The amendments follow previous, very constructive discussions in Committee and on Report about the SEND tribunal and redress, with contributions from a number of noble Lords. I thank in particular the noble Lords, Lord Rix and Lord Low, my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins, Lady Hughes and Lady Howarth, for their contributions in those debates and subsequent discussions with me and my noble friend Lord Howe.

As noble Lords will have heard me say previously, one of our main aims in introducing the special educational needs clauses in the Bill has been to reduce the adversarial nature of the SEN system. We want children, young people and parents to have a better experience when engaging with the SEN system, particularly when children and young people are being assessed and, if people have complaints, when they are seeking redress.

We have taken action to ensure that people have a better experience of the system. Just recently, the Minister for Children and Families announced a £30 million programme to provide parents and young people with independent supporters to help them through the process of assessment and drawing up EHC plans. The new assessment process which will be brought in by the Bill will be more joined up and participative, with the education, health and social care services being more directly involved and with a more active role for parents, children and young people. Education and health will work together jointly to commission the services that children and young people with SEN will need.

With reference to complaints, we have maintained in the Bill the duty on local authorities to arrange disagreement resolution services so that parents and young people can resolve disagreement with local authorities about authorities’ duties under this part of the Bill, and with schools and further education colleges about their provision for individual children and young people with SEN.

We have introduced consideration of mediation and the opportunity to go to mediation before parents and young people can register appeals with the tribunal. We know that many parents currently find appealing to the tribunal stressful and off-putting, despite the tribunal’s efforts to hold the appeal hearing in an informal venue where the lay person feels comfortable presenting their own case.

Mediation offers parents and young people an excellent opportunity to discuss their concerns about assessments and education, health and care plans in a non-adversarial setting, assisted by a trained mediator. If they are able to reach agreement with the local authority, it means that they or their children will be provided with the support that they want more quickly than if they waited for a tribunal hearing to be arranged. There is no compulsion on the parties to agree, so if parents and young people are still concerned about what special educational provision is being offered, they can appeal to the tribunal.

However, the Bill as currently drafted means that health and care provision is excluded from the disagreement resolution, mediation and appeal processes. Noble Lords have rightly raised their concerns about this. Following the commitment that I gave on Report, we have worked with colleagues at the Department of Health and the Ministry of Justice to develop a package of proposals to address this issue. These amendments provide that package.

The amendments will widen the disagreement resolution and mediation arrangements to cover health and social care and will require the holding of a review of the complaints and redress arrangements for those with education, health and care needs, with the review including pilots to test the tribunal making recommendations about health and social care.

On disagreement resolution and mediation, all local authorities currently have to make disagreement resolution services available. We will widen these so that when an assessment or reassessment is being carried out, or an EHC plan being drawn up or reviewed, parents and young people will be able to ask for disagreement resolution on health and social care complaints as well as on education complaints. As with the current arrangements, engaging disagreement resolution services will be voluntary on both sides—the parent or young person and the local authority or CCG. Similarly we are proposing to widen mediation to cover health and social care. This will mean that after an EHC plan has been drawn up, parents and young people will be able to go to mediation about the health and social care elements even if they did not have a concern about the education element. If they wanted mediation on health or social care, the CCG and local authority, respectively, would have to take part.

On Report we had an extensive discussion about the merits of a review of redress in the system. I am pleased to have tabled Amendment 33 today, which will establish such a review. The Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor will hold the review to look at how well the redress arrangements under the Bill are working; and more widely at other complaint arrangements relevant to children and young people with education, health and social care difficulties. The review will take account of the Francis and Clwyd reviews of complaints in the health service. We will involve other organisations which have an interest, such as the tribunal, Healthwatch, the Local Government Ombudsman, the Health Service Ombudsman and Parent Carer Forums.

The Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor will report back to Parliament within three years of the implementation of the SEN provisions making recommendations as to the future of redress and complaint arrangements, including recommendations on the role of the tribunal. We believe that we would have to give sufficient time to build up the evidence on which to make recommendations. However, three years is a maximum and if the review felt it had the evidence in less than that time it could report to Parliament earlier. I estimate that we might have sufficient evidence by the summer of 2016, so I can say that the review would report no less than two years from the implementation of the Bill and no more than three years.

Part of the review will involve pilots testing the tribunal making recommendations on the health and social care aspects of plans where parents and young people have complaints about them and they are already appealing to the tribunal about the special educational element of the plan. This would mean that they could have their complaints about the plan considered as a whole rather than in isolation. The recommendations would not be binding on CCGs and local authorities as social care providers but we would expect them to consider seriously any recommendations the tribunal made. The pilots would begin in the spring of 2015 as the first appeals about EHC plans begin to be heard, be carried out in at least four local authority areas and would last for two years while it builds up evidence on which to base any recommendations about the future role of the tribunal.

I believe that, taken together, this is a strong package which addresses the need to provide parents and young people with a more joined-up way of dealing with complaints which go across education, health and social care. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Northover used the term “consensual”. That is a very appropriate word to use—it is almost the hallmark of the Bill. On every issue we have tried to come to a consensual agreement, understanding the needs of children and families. These amendments are very helpful. I said on Report that if we could not agree a single point of appeal as part of this Bill that would happen in the future without a shadow of doubt.

It seems to me that people who look at this objectively would think, “Wow—amazing. We have a plan for each child that’s joined up for education, health and social care. That’s very progressive legislation”. And then they would scratch their head and say “But if something goes wrong, or you want to make an appeal about something, why are there three separate appeals mechanisms and three different routes?” That is very confusing and intimidating to parents—there should be one point of appeal. That has been the line that many of us have taken all the way through the passage of this Bill.

I am absolutely sure that the Minister and his team have tried to accommodate that view. I have met with various Ministers and civil servants from other departments. I actually think the amendments probably make sense, because the culture of those departments is very different. There would be a danger that if we did not tread carefully, we would make a mess of the appeals process. So yes, we want a single point of appeal in the future. Yes, it makes sense to deal with disagreement in mediation. Yes, it makes sense to have pilot schemes that we can look at. That will be a really important step forward.

I do not intend to speak again today so I will end my comments by thanking the Minister and my noble friend Lady Northover for the incredible commitment and amount of time they have given during the passage of the Bill. They have been prepared to meet at any time, almost at the drop of a hat, any group on any subject. That has been amazing. I also thank the members of the Bill team, who have been absolutely stunning. I do not think I have come across a group of people who have been so prepared to help in a neutral, fair and supportive way—if you can have those three words linked together. I thank all concerned.

Schools: Emergency Life Support Skills

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right to draw attention to this very important point. Emergency life-saving skills are extremely important. In addition to the St John Ambulance provision, the Red Cross and the British Heart Foundation run excellent schemes. The BHF’s Heartstart scheme has to date trained more than 3.5 million people.

The answer to her curriculum question is that I do not believe we are intending to put this in, but I will investigate that and write to her about it. With regard to particular incidents in schools, we are looking at that in the context of defibrillators to see if there is anything more that we can do.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister may have heard of the Oliver King Foundation, named after a 12 year-old boy who died of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome. The foundation set up in his name is campaigning successfully to put defibrillators in every school and public place. Would the Minister consider how the Government might support this campaign, and would he be prepared to meet the foundation?

[Lord Nash]

I am aware of the Oliver King Foundation. Our current policy is that it is a matter for individual schools to decide whether to have defibrillators and to arrange individual training. However, as many noble Lords will know, we have tabled an amendment to the Children and Families Bill to create a new duty on the governing bodies of maintained schools to make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions and have regard to guidance in that respect.

We are looking at the issue of defibrillators. I am particularly interested in this myself and I would be delighted to meet the Oliver King Foundation with my noble friend to discuss the matter further.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, never again will a pupil with medical conditions be excluded from full or part-time education, school trips, physical education and extra-curricular activities because of their medical condition. I applaud the Government for the stance they have taken in this area, as do the voluntary and charitable sectors. This is light years from where we were before. This document, which is still for consultation—that will be an opportunity to feed in many of the issues—is one of the best things I have seen. It deals in detail with a whole host of issues. A few things are missing from that document, and I look forward to feeding them in during the consultation period.

The important thing for me, which is in the document, is that governing bodies will have the responsibility to ensure that the procedures are followed and that when a school is first notified that a pupil has a medical condition, action will follow. Governing bodies will also ensure that the policies cover the role of individual healthcare plans. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on this—and I will be interested in the Minister’s reply—as I cannot envisage a situation where a child or young person who has a medical condition would not have a healthcare plan. I cannot get my head around that, as it seems obvious. This is not bureaucratic or about more clerical work, but just plain common sense. I hope that the Minister will respond to that point.

I like the point made in this document that supporting a child is not just the responsibility of the school but a partnership between professionals and the parents themselves. I also like that GPs will have responsibility for notifying schools when a child has a medical condition. That is important, and it has often not happened in the past. I will end by thanking the Minister for taking this important issue forward, and I look forward to his response on the issue of healthcare plans.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I also put my name to this amendment, and I very much support everything that has been said so far on these issues. I congratulate the Government, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash, in particular, on having listened to what Peers and charities in the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance have said. They have done a great deal to work out a way forward. Again, I will not repeat the many things that have already been mentioned, which are now on the table to be worked out in detail, but the area that perhaps interests me more than any other is the role of governing bodies in ensuring that teachers in schools have the training and expertise that their staff require to cope with situations.

We all know that there is a shortage of qualified school nurses; we hope to hear from the Government how their number might be increased. It is not only that; an area that worries me concerns those with special needs that also involve mental health problems. Those students may well need guidance from an increased number of educational psychologists, among others.

We all want to hear from the Minister what plans the Government have to ensure that this partnership between so many organisations will be delivered to the benefit of children and families generally, so that they will feel—as they have not felt in the past—that they are being supported in the situations that they have to cope with and have always tried their best to cope with. However, they have felt very much that they did not get the help they deserved. I thank the Minister for what he has done so far and hope that he will be able to reassure us still further on some of the areas about which we have concern.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. She is a real expert in this area and it was important that she put this amendment down. I would like to stress one particular point—the role of the school in all of this. At one stage I came across a group of schools that had a very effective policy of dealing with this situation. Their method was to have a mentor for each pupil who entered the school, and the child who was mentoring got merit points for successfully introducing and making life smooth for the new student. I very much hope that we can do a little more to find out what group of schools that was—I regret to say that I have lost my details on it. It seems a very good example of best practice to sell right across the stage of all schools. As we know, it is not just a question of bullying in schools—there is bullying in all forms of life, including employment when you grow up as well.

I hope that the Minister will take all this very seriously. The role of school governors is important, and I should perhaps have mentioned earlier that I am president of the NGA. I think we have a meeting with school governors and the Minister shortly, and this is one of the items that it will be important to put on the agenda.

[Lord Storey]

I support my noble friend Lady Brinton on this excellent probing amendment, and will briefly take the opportunity to say that often the bully needs support as well. I have seen many occasions where that support has been given to the bully. Sometimes the bully, with the support of the parents, is referred and the problems are sorted. I say this with great caution but often, quite rightly, we put all our emphasis on the poor child or young person who is being bullied and we forget about the bully. Often with the bully, it is a cry or plea for help. As well as doing all the excellent things that my noble friend Lady Brinton is saying we should, we have to find and understand that need.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene on this at this late hour, but I am tempted to, as I thought that every school had to have a bullying strategy and that there was a code. It may sit dustily on a shelf in the headmaster’s study but it is supposed to be there. I thought schools had to have a practice and some sort of plan to involve children and young people in that strategy. ChildLine has certainly produced peer programmes down the years where young people have worked together to prevent bullying themselves, through their councils. Much as I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in her efforts, it is my understanding that this should already be in every school.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I was chair of education in Cambridgeshire in the late 1990s. One of the things that Cambridgeshire has always done well is sex and relationship education policy; indeed, many other authorities use its framework. I particularly want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, that explicit sex, in the terms that I think worry many people, is not taught at key stage 1. Actually, the key stage SRE policy is vital because it provides child protection. I am looking at the Cambridgeshire syllabus at the moment, and it says that children must understand that they have rights over their own bodies, understand what makes them feel comfortable and uncomfortable and learn how to speak about it. That is exactly what I want a five year-old to be able to understand, and all the graded teaching, right the way through the system, is age-related and appropriate.

One of my concerns is that not all schools provide excellent SRE because there is no consistency across the sector. I am afraid that that is one of the reasons why we need to be able to provide that framework so that there is consistency. This is not just about the whim of parents or schools; it is vital for the health and safety of our children as they grow up in a very different society.

I have heard comments about worries about a review kicking things into the long grass. In this instance there is division—but then there is always division, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight would accept; had there not been division in his party when in government, this would now be compulsory. Let us not get into that political debate. We need to keep this debate on the agenda and keep it going. In a perfect world, I would like to see not only a compulsory curriculum but one that provided the reassurance that all parents would understand that their children were being given safe and appropriate advice to protect them in future.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that this is not just about 12 and 13 year-olds; I have seen primary schoolchildren making sexual advances to younger children and girls. I have seen primary children sending and looking at the most sexually explicit messages that you could imagine.

We spend a lot of time arguing about which kings and queens we should be studying in history, yet we seem to just push this issue aside. It is important that we equip our young children with the skills to deal with the social and emotional problems that they are going to face in their lives. It is important that they know about relationships, loneliness and isolation, and that they know how to deal with being bullied, or indeed with being bullies themselves. Other things, such as how to manage their finances when they get older, internet safety and child abuse, are also hugely important. As a society, though, we pick up the problems but almost ignore how we can deal with them.

Sadly, passing an amendment like this, as good as it is, is not completely the solution. You can pass such an amendment but we must also get quality training for our teachers in PSHE and sex and relationship education, and leadership in schools that does not look at this as a little tick-box exercise and say, “Well, we’ve done that, we’ve carried out our duties and if Ofsted come along we can show them a bit of paperwork here”. I have seen that happen far too often. It is also about inspectors, when they go into schools, properly ensuring that PSHE is being taught. We as a society have to understand and appreciate that this is probably the most important thing that we can do to support young people in schools.

On the website of the PSHE Association, which is a very good site and well worth going to, a question that I constantly ask is highlighted: “Do academies and free schools have to teach PSHE?”. The answer on the website is no. Why are we not giving as much importance to ensuring that all our schools, whether they be academies, maintained schools or free schools, are teaching PSHE? The amendment just talks about maintained schools; it does not mention academies. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, when he was—no, I am not going to say that.

Labour introduced academies and I understand why they did so; they wanted, if you like, to give a sort of uniqueness to them by saying, “Okay, you can have more control over your curriculum”. However, that has suddenly now led to a huge growth in academies—some 53% of our secondary schools are academies—so half our schools will not be bound by any amendment that is carried. We—again, as a society—should say that a narrow national curriculum should say, as it does on the label, that it is national and it is a curriculum for all. I hope that we will give some thought to ensuring that this involves all schools—even, dare I say, independent schools as well.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

Perhaps the noble Lord has not noticed that subsection (7)(d) of the new clause proposed in the amendment says that the schools to which it would apply includes academies.

[Lord Storey]

I would need to know whether that overrode current legislation. I suspect that it does not, although someone is nodding and saying that it does.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I am delighted to clarify for the noble Lord that if it is set out in statute, it overrides the legal agreement that the department has as a contract with those schools.

[Lord Storey]

So what about free schools, then?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

Free schools are on the same basis.

[Lord Storey]

They are not though, are they? They are not mentioned.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I am sure that the Minister will confirm this, but legally free schools are academies.

[Lord Nash]

That is the position.

[Lord Storey]

When I first came to the House of Lords, I was terrified that I was going to have to give way. Now I have got into the habit of doing so.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly said at the beginning, we are in a good coalition. I have to pay tribute to the Minister—no, I do not have to; I want to—who has made great strides in this area and has come forward with some really worthwhile and sensible proposals. Not only has he given finance to the PSHE Association, he has also set up this advisory group. In this area, we must not have an advisory group that says, “We’ve done our job and that’s it”. I cannot now remember who it was who said that these issues are changing almost year by year, and problems that we do not foresee now could well be something that an advisory committee will have to look at in future. I hope that any advisory committee that is set up, when it has done its first piece of work, will continue to advise us on these important issues.

As someone who strongly believes, as I have said, that this is something that should be part of a national curriculum for all schools, I am in a difficult position as I also appreciate the situation that our Minister in the House of Lords faces, and will think very carefully before I vote.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, this has been an extremely thoughtful and well informed debate. I thank the noble Baronesses and the right reverend Prelate who tabled these amendments, as well as other noble Lords who have contributed and brought their valuable insights to bear on these important and very sensitive matters. I also thank all noble Lords who attended the round table on PSHE last week. We had an extremely helpful discussion, and I think that those who came to that meeting know how seriously we take these matters.

I will deal with each amendment in turn, beginning with Amendment 53 on sex and relationships. Before I explain my approach to this point, I must stress that like many noble Lords with an interest in this topic, including my noble friend Lady Walmsley, I see SRE as integral to the whole debate on PSHE, and I shall say quite a lot more about PSHE when we come to the amendment in the next group. SRE is part of PSHE, and both are part of an overall approach that schools take in helping children to build the resilience and the understanding that they need as they prepare for adult life, tailored to children’s needs and development.

Before I turn to the SRE amendments, noble Lords may find it helpful for me to reiterate the progress that we have made on PSHE, as SRE is so integral to this. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Walmsley for her kind words in relation to this progress, and I hope that it shows a positive and dynamic approach as opposed to a complacent attitude, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred. I hope that she knows better by now—that I am never complacent when it comes to the children and young people of this country.

As I explained in my letter to Peers last week, we are establishing a PSHE expert group to support better teaching. This is the same approach that we are taking to subjects in the national curriculum and I will say more about this shortly. I am also pleased to announce that we will be funding the PSHE Association for a further financial year and it has agreed to produce a set of case studies to illustrate excellent PSHE teaching.

Turning now to specific points on SRE, I emphasised in Grand Committee that for children and young people to develop a good understanding of sex and relationships high-quality teaching is paramount, which is an issue that has been highlighted in this debate today. In order to teach well, teachers must have ready access to reliable and well informed sources of advice and materials. This includes recognition of the effects of digital technology, such as the potential for exposure online to inappropriate materials, to which a number of noble Lords have referred.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to the pace at which technology now moves. It is moving so quickly that it is not practical for government to keep abreast by constantly revising statutory guidance to reflect the current state of the art and the latest communications breakthroughs. For instance, Snapchat, Tumblr, Whatsapp and Chatroulette are very recent sites or apps, and any guidance that we issued would be quickly overtaken by new trends and technology that will proliferate in the future. Any revisions to guidance would soon be outflanked by the next phase of innovation.

It is right that we are continually considering how to respond to these developments, and give teachers and parents the help, advice, safeguards and assurances that they need. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, talked passionately about the dangers of the internet when I first started to look at this matter. I spoke to many people—experts in IT and parents. The frightening thing was that the more that they knew about online and IT the more concerned they were. I am fully aware of the issues, but as my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Tyler have said, the question is about which approach will work best. I believe that specialist organisations are best placed to provide advice, materials and guidance in a dynamic way and regularly update it.

I am therefore delighted to draw noble Lords’ attention to a number of organisations that are doing this, and the action that my department is taking to support and promote that work, and to make sure that it is closely linked to schools.

I welcome the work of the PSHE Association, the Sex Education Forum and Brook on new supplementary guidance that is designed to complement the SRE guidance, and will address changes in technology and legislation since the turn of the century, in particular equipping teachers to help protect children and young people from inappropriate online content, and from online bullying, harassment and exploitation. We have always maintained that specialist professionals are in the best place to provide advice to schools, so I look forward to the publication of this guidance and will make sure that we draw schools’ attention to it by, for example, promoting it through the department’s termly e-mail to schools.

I will also highlight other examples of guidance from specialist organisations that I have made sure will be promoted to schools. Guidance on the best way for teachers to tackle the dangers associated with online pornography has been provided by the Sex Education Forum. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency has published a range of free educational resources—films, lesson plans, presentations, practitioner guidance, games and posters—to help teachers protect young people from the risk of sexual abuse and exploitation. The NSPCC has published guidance for parents, who have an essential role to play, on inappropriate texting. Parents can also phone the NSPCC ChildLine for advice.

We have identified action that we will take in the department to make sure that schools have the support and information that they need. As I have already mentioned we have set up a new expert subject group on PSHE and SRE. The group comprises lead professionals in the field of PSHE and SRE practice, and I am particularly pleased to say that it will be chaired by Joe Hayman, chief executive of the PSHE Association. It will clarify the key areas on which teachers most need further support, and identify the topics that can present the greatest challenge when discussing them with pupils, engaging their interest and enabling their understanding. The expert group will then liaise with relevant specialists and providers to commission or develop and produce new resources where necessary.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked if the review would be comprehensive. I have been given the letter—I cannot read it now—but I can assure her that we will make it as comprehensive as we can. As far as the timing is concerned, I do not personally intend to stay in this job after May next year whatever happens, so I can also assure her that I shall be seeking to announce its findings as quickly as possible so that we can take action in relation to them. There is no point in setting this up unless we listen to what these people say and ask them, frankly, to get on with it. My noble friends Lady Tyler and Lady Walmsley were particularly welcoming of this expert group and they are right. We should give it time to make a real difference to practice—and it will, along with other approaches that we are taking.

Noble Lords will be interested to know that my department is currently preparing revised statutory guidance on safeguarding children in education. This will clarify schools’ statutory responsibilities to use opportunities in the school curriculum, for example through PSHE, to teach children about safeguarding and personal safety, ensuring that there is a culture of safety and that children stay safe, including when they are online. The guidance will signpost schools to further sources of advice on specific safeguarding issues, such as advice issued by the Home Office as part of its This is Abuse campaign. This supports teachers working with 13 to 18 year-olds to understand how to avoid becoming victims and perpetrators of abusive relationships.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, raised a sensible concern about this guidance being fragmented. We will ensure, when we highlight the additional guidance, that it is linked to the existing statutory guidance, so I am confident that it will be coherent and not fragmented. In addition, the new expert group will have an important role to ensure that the signposting of all guidance on PSHE and SRE is coherent.

Finally, the Government continue to work closely with industry through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which brings together representatives from industry, manufacturers, charities, academia, social media, parent groups and government. I am pleased that we will be supporting Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 11 February, promoting more widely the safe and responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, and making the internet safe for children. The House will debate this and other extensive work that the Government are doing in relation to internet safety when we come shortly to debate the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.

On Amendment 53ZAAA, which concerns statutory SRE in primary schools, the current requirement applies only to key stages 3 and 4 in secondary schools. The amendment extends the current statutory requirement to teach SRE, which applies to key stages 3 and 4 in maintained secondary schools, by legislating for all compulsory SRE in primary schools and all academies. It would mean compulsory SRE for children as young as six. Many primary schools already choose to teach SRE according to children’s age and development, consulting their parents and using age-appropriate resources. In particular, good primary schools are committed to helping children develop an understanding of positive and appropriate relationships. The new science curriculum will also ensure that pupils are taught about puberty in primary school, which is an issue identified in the Ofsted report.

We believe that this is the best approach, with the right balance between legal requirement and professional judgment, taking account of the evidence about child development and maintaining the support of parents. The amendment would disturb this balance, and remove from teachers and governors any control over their school’s approach to SRE. It would also impose on academies a new requirement, when in fact the vast majority of academies already teach SRE as part of their responsibility to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, and a fully rounded education.

I agree entirely with my noble friend Lady Eaton that this is a very good example of legislation not necessarily being the solution to life’s ills. As my noble friend Lord Storey, who has vast experience of more than 20 years as a primary school head, said, this is a matter of practice and not something that we can solve through legislation.

The other part of this amendment would require schools, when teaching SRE, to include same-sex relationships, sexual violence, domestic violence and sexual consent across all key stages. By virtue of Amendment 53ZAAA, it would mean compulsory teaching of these issues for children as young as six. The statutory guidance already covers these very important topics, and all schools must have regard to the guidance when teaching SRE.

The existing guidance states that pupils should,

“develop positive values and a moral framework that will guide their decisions, judgements and behaviour; be aware of their sexuality and understand human sexuality … understand the consequences of their actions and behave responsibly”,

and,

“have the confidence and self-esteem to value themselves and others”.

It is also important to note that the guidance includes clear references to safeguarding duties and to safeguarding guidance for schools. Supported by expert guidance and resources from specialist organisations, as I have described, the statutory guidance continues to provide a strong framework and platform on which teachers can build, using the kind of specialist contemporary advice and resources to which I have referred.

To conclude, I once more extend my thanks to noble Lords for these amendments and to other noble Lords for contributing to the debate. I hope that they will agree that we have made progress in working with others in government and with specialist organisations—in particular, the PSHE Association, the Sex Education Forum and Brook, which will announce their guidance next month—including by promoting their resources in schools. While I believe noble Lords are seeking the same outcome—the best teaching and age-appropriate support for children—for the reasons I have explained, I do not believe it would be right to introduce statutory SRE at key stages 1 and 2.

I have said on a number of occasions recently in your Lordships’ House that it would be so much better if we could agree common ground in relation to what needs to be done to improve our school system. I have been extremely encouraged by recent statements by the shadow Secretary of State for Education, which indicate that a substantial amount of common ground is emerging. We should celebrate this common ground and the common ground we have in relation to our expectations of schools in relation to PSHE and SRE. Of course, the noble Baroness may wish to take the temperature of the House on these matters, but I think it would be better if we continued to work together outside the confines of the Bill to achieve our common end. That approach has stood us in good stead during the passage of the Bill, and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

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[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, it is good to be able to give a very warm welcome to one of the amendments put down by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I agree entirely with what she said in her introduction to this amendment. It is a very good amendment. I particularly like the fact that she is asking all schools to make this explicit to parents, school governors and pupils. We have not talked about the role of school governors enough as we have gone through this Bill. They now have such big responsibilities under previous legislation that to include them in the duty of the school to say what they are doing about the total development of children is very much to be welcomed, as is, of course, the duty to tell parents. We must continue to recognise the role of parents as the primary influences over children—they are primarily responsible for their children’s development.

I am very proud of the fact that it was this House which added the word “spiritual” to the national curriculum responsibilities. Before we had “moral”, “academic” and “physical”, but it was this House which added the word “spiritual” to that list. I am particularly delighted that the noble Baroness has included it in her amendment.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I echo the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. In the previous debate we, rightly, pointed to the dangers of the internet for young people and talked about the lack of resources that are available for PSHE. I want to use this opportunity to show that the internet can also be a great supporter of PSHE.

There is a new website called Makewaves, which is now live and available to 4,500 schools—more than 70,000 young people. The aim of the project is to get Open Badges, which is a project for young people to earn digital accolades by performing an act in their school or community. The innovative aspect of these e-badges is that an individual may share their achievements with prospective employers or educational institutions, demonstrating their skills, experience and competences. It is hoped that this active platform, which children, young people and students engage with, can develop opportunities for them to get e-badges in citizenship. Here, then, is an opportunity for the internet to support PSHE and engage young people at the same time.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I can understand why the noble Lord, Lord Low, tabled Amendment 33D, which would regulate the special education provision to be provided by local authorities. That sounds sensible and reassuring. However, the practicalities of regulating provision in such a way would, despite what has been said in the contributions from noble Lords, cause unnecessary restrictions on provision and prevent innovation and creativity that could bring about new and supportive services.

The duties on local authorities and other bodies to assess needs and secure provision are already set out elsewhere in the Bill. There are already some excellent examples of local offers—for example the pathfinders in North Yorkshire that worked with parents and young people to produce an interactive map and colour-coded diagram, including a version for children and young people, showing precisely what the local offer would be.

Funding allocated to councils by the Government for education, including SEN provision, can vary greatly, even for similar or neighbouring local authorities. That is one reason why provision may vary between areas. We know that the new national funding formula will not be introduced until after the next election. SEN provision also varies from one local authority to another because of the nature of the population. There are higher levels of need in some areas, which require the local authority to provide more specialist services than in others areas that may have no such requirements or quite different needs.

Defining in law a minimum level of provision may actually mean that resources in some authorities are diverted from other areas of special need simply to meet a legal requirement. Health needs also differ between local areas. That is reflected in the local joint strategic needs assessment, which is based on the needs of the local population. Surely the key purpose of the local SEN offer should remain as a source of information to parents and young people, developed by local authorities working with them to reflect their choices and preferences.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that parents have fought for years to get resources and what some might call justice for children with special educational needs. That is why the Bill is so important: it is a progressive piece of legislation that we can all be proud of. It will mean that, for the first time, local authorities have to spell out clearly and precisely what is available in their area and how that can be accessed. As we know, people with special educational needs will, for the first time, have a plan that joins up health, education and social care.

The giveaway is in the title: “local offer”. It is not a national offer but a local one. I suppose the Government could have said, “Nationally, we have decided that this is what you will do”, but I am quite sure that there would have been screams from local authorities that this was national government again dictating exactly what should happen. The local offer is important.

I was grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Low, in Committee but I still have grave concerns about creating a minimum requirement. We have seen what happened in care for the elderly: if you have a minimum requirement, councils under financial pressures jettison what they do not need to provide. If you have a minimum offer in terms of special educational needs, you will find that those authorities that my noble friend Lady Eaton so eloquently described, the ones that are progressive and look at new ideas, will say, “Well, if there are some savings to be made, we do not need to do that”. So I am not in favour of a minimum offer.

I am in favour of what the Government have reflected on and come back to at Report with Amendment 33C. Let us never underestimate the power of local people. If the local offer is not meeting the local requirement, you can bet that local people will say that they want something extra. Cases will make that happen. That is why the government amendment is so important. Let us celebrate where we are at so far, because it is important for children with special educational needs.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments and, in particular, will comment on Amendments 30, 31, and 33D.

The amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Jones, which deal with the “expects to be” versus “which is” dilemma, just make sense, as I do not think that anyone here would not want parents to know what is being offered rather than what might be offered. The Government’s concern appears to be that something innovative might happen during the year that could be added to the offer, but the Minister might reflect that, if the offer was a living document so that it could be updated as an innovation came through, was proven to work, accepted as best practice and added to the local provision, in a digital age it would not be difficult to update the offer. The notion of “which is” gives far more certainty to users of the service than the words “expect to be”. In that respect, I very much support those amendments.

I just want to comment on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low. I see both sides of this argument. We want local authorities to be free to innovate, to reach for the stars and to be the best they can, and we do not want the local offer in every local authority area to look exactly the same regardless of where you are in the country. Neither do we want to give permission to local authorities to go for a basic minimum standard. I accept the concerns laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, but we are still left with a problem.

The code of practice talks a lot about the quantity that should be in the local offer. There is a whole list of things that the code of practice guarantees will be there. What is missing from the whole debate is something that guarantees quality. Amendment 33D attempts to do that, and I want the Minister to respond to it. None of us wants poor quality, and I do not think that we would be in politics and would certainly not be legislators if we did not know that we have to ensure quality. It does not happen by itself or through a free-for-all, and it will not happen if we just leave it to local authorities to do their best. We want more than that. Minimum standards are not in the amendment. I do not want to fetter those local authorities who will provide very well; I want to protect those people who live in areas where the local authority does not do very well. I am concerned about how we protect people against poor provision falling below those minimum standards.

Normally, government takes one of three actions. It leaves it to the market—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned just now that if people do not like it, they will complain and changes will be made. I do not think that that will happen with the local offer. The only way that the market usually works is if people are free to go elsewhere. Then the poor provision that they did not want withers on the vine, vanishes, closes down and gets off the playing field. That is not what we want here. We do not want a local offer to be squeezed out of the market so that people have to go over the local authority borders. I cannot see how the market works as a regulator of standards for the local offer.

Secondly, we inspect. That is another way to guarantee quality. I would be grateful if the Minister would give us an update on where the department is with Ofsted inspecting the local offer. In Committee, he undertook to write to me, and I must admit that I am not sure whether that letter has been sent; I have not seen it. I would accept it if the Government have decided to inspect the local offer to make sure that people are protected against poor provision.

If they do not want to do that, the next action is regulation. Amendment 33D, as tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, would put in regulation to protect people against poor standards. It really does not matter whether it is inspection or regulation—but I do not want it to be the market, which I think is where the Government are headed with this, because that will not work. We have to get the balance right between protecting people in areas where a local authority does not deliver the goods and leaving local authorities that are good, free to excel.

This is not just about safeguarding against low-quality provision: the Government should, equally, be incentivising innovation and high standards. If you only dampen down by inspecting, you will not get the high standards and innovation to which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, referred. We have had so many decades of experience in the delivery of public services, and there are good ways of incentivising innovation, rewarding high standards and making sure that those high standards are spread to include everyone else. That is my ideal— to do both. I think that we will see the good quality provision in the local offer to which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, referred, and that we will find ways of making sure that other local authorities know about it. Equally, for balance, we need something to set a basic standard below which local authorities’ local offer should not fall so that as regulators and legislators we can say that everybody, no matter where they live, is protected from a poor standard of provision. In that respect, I very much support the amendments that we are considering in this group.

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[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

I support everything that my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham has said. This is an enormous opportunity and it would be disastrous if the Government did not seize it. It has long been an outrage that there is a large number of young people with special educational needs in places of detention. Nobody disputes the evidence that there is a huge number of such young people, and this is an opportunity to remedy the neglect that these children have had. I entirely agree that the present wording is such that local authorities may very well make no changes whatever, and the Ministry of Justice has no power to compel governors of such places to do what urgently needs to be done. I do not think that there can be any dispute about that, and I implore the Minister to come back with wording which is a great deal tighter and which will make the change that we all know has needed to be made for a long time.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, we all know that 70% of these young offenders have special educational needs. We also know that 10% or 20% of them have statements. We know, too, that a huge number of them—I do not know the exact figure but 70% or 80%—will go on to reoffend. Therefore, it is really important that this group of young people gets the best possible special educational needs support. When this Bill first came out, I found it unbelievable that EHC plans would not be going with these young people into their institutions.

One of the hallmarks of the Bill has been the Minister’s desire to discuss, consult and listen to what people say, and I pay tribute to him for doing that. During the discussions on this matter, it has become clear to all of us that the number of young people in these institutions is declining, as is the time that they spend in them—thank goodness. The practicalities of getting their EHC plans to go with them becomes very difficult, particularly if you are talking about different local authorities, and therefore what the Minister is proposing seems sensible.

I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for his remarkable knowledge in this area. I agree with him, and I hope that when the Minister replies he will be able to refer to the concern that a lot of us share about the words “best endeavours”. Sadly, the justice system is not an educational system, and “best endeavours” is too wide a hope—for example, “I use my best endeavours to get up early in the morning but I don’t”. I hope that noble Lords can see the point that I am making. The use of this phrase is a recipe for not doing the sorts of things that we in this House want to see provided for these young people. Maybe the word to use is “responsibility” or “duty”—I do not know—but I hope that the Minister will indicate that he will look at this again and come back with exact wording to make sure that the special needs provision that we all want to see is provided.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I shall be brief, as I usually am, but I want to say two things. One is that when I read these amendments my heart leapt. I thought that if only the home local authority could be made responsible for every young person in secure provision on this basis with a proper plan for seeing them through—as I remember, and as I am sure my noble friend Lord Laming will remember, was the case in children’s departments, where someone was responsible for a young person, with a plan, wherever they were—that would be absolutely wonderful. Of course, at that time there was much more focus on education in the institutions, as childcare establishments, than there is in some of the more penal establishments that exist today.

So I was utterly delighted and was going to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, whose tenacity of purpose has taken this through, until I realised, as he did, the key flaw in this piece of legislation. That flaw is that those who wish to take the plans through are not the people with the capacity to provide the resource in order for it to happen in the place it needs to happen. As I am always interested in implementation, I thought about how this would work. There has to be a further step somewhere, either in some sort of regulation or a change in the legislation, that ensures that these plans are formulated into the institution—because, remember, these are individual plans. In the institution they have to be put together into programmes for groups of young people; it is not as easy as simply saying that you can carry each plan through as it stands without extra provision being brought in, with all the problems with that in terms of financing.

I hope that the Minister will look at this, take heart that many of us have been very impressed with the way he listens, and take it forward. Many of us are very concerned about young people in detention who have been failed by everybody by the time they get to detention, particularly those with special educational needs who should not be in this form of provision at all. Surely they can get the right education through this legislation, but they certainly will not with this flaw.

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[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I, too, add my support for the amendment and my gratitude to those who have fought so hard to bring it forward. For reasons that have already been expressed in terms of the parity between the three elements of education, health and social care, there is a continuing danger, time and again, in our legislation and in our thinking, that social care becomes an orphaned right—to take an analogy from another area.

I want to push Minister a bit further on the argument that has been put forward that if we pass an amendment such as this, other areas will thereby be deprioritised. I simply fail to understand, despite having read a good deal about it, how that can possibly be so. It seems to me that equality in this area is crucial, and therefore that we ought to pursue an amendment such as this.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, if you are going to agree an education, health and care plan, it is clearly important that all elements have to be provided. That is agreed. I understand that there are complex difficulties here. I have spoken to the Local Government Association, which recognises those difficulties. I know that the Minister himself is—perhaps “wrestling” is too strong a word—looking in detail at how we can get what we all want. I hope that your Lordships will be patient on the issue, because I am sure that with good will on all sides we will eventually get there.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, my name is also attached to the amendment and I respectfully suggest to your Lordships that this is one of two outstanding, key issues on which the effective implementation of the Government’s welcome approach to integration of education, health and social care depends.

Clause 42 states that where a local authority maintains an ECH plan it must secure the special educational provision. Where the plan specifies healthcare provision, the responsible commissioning body must provide the healthcare. The amendment would simply place a parallel duty on local authorities to provide the social care that is outlined in the plan. This is a key issue for parents as well as, obviously, for many noble Lords in this House. As the legislation is currently drafted, the ECH plans would offer no more legal entitlements to support from social care services than current statements do at the moment. Let us remember that social care provision can be detailed in those statements in a separate section from educational provision. However, the aim of these reforms and the Bill is to provide a simpler system for disabled children and young people, and those with special educational needs and their families, that integrates the different forms of provision into one piece of legislation. One assessment and one plan is what the Government are trying to achieve for those families. There is an opportunity in the Bill to bring everything together. One of the main aims of the Bill is to provide clarity, transparency and integration, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, so eloquently identified.

In Committee and at the various meetings that we have had on this matter, while the Minister has been trying to listen, I do not think that so far the Government have provided any coherent reason for excluding the local authority from the duty to provide the social care specified in the plan. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, reminded us, the first argument put by the Government was that other legislation—the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act together with the Children Act—already provide for that duty. A second argument deployed at later meetings was that placing such a duty in this Bill would give disabled children an unacceptable priority in law above other children in need.

The debate has been rather clouded by well meaning but exceedingly technical legal opinions on both sides. However, the clearest and most helpful opinion has come in the further opinion, dated 13 May 2013, from the lawyers commissioned by the sector. This asked the crucial question in relation to these different arguments as to whether placing local authorities under a duty to deliver the social care set out in the plans would represent a significant change to local authorities’ legal duties under that existing legislation. The crucial question is whether it would represent a significant change. The answer in the opinion is emphatically no. If noble Lords will bear with me, it is worth putting this opinion on the record.

The crucial question asked is whether placing local authorities under a duty to deliver the social care provision set out in the EHC plans would represent a significant change to local authorities’ legal duties in other legislation. Paragraph 13 of the opinion states:

“No. If there were to be a specific duty to provide the social care provision set out in an EHC Plan, this would simply mean that the Local Authority would be discharging its CSDPA 1970 duty (either wholly or in part) by providing the provision set out in the Plan. Indeed, for children who qualify for an EHC Plan the inclusion of social care provision within the Plan is a helpful way of determining that the Local Authority considers that this provision is necessary to meet their needs—in other words that the test for the 1970 Act duty to arise is met”.

The opinion goes on to say:

“This is very similar to the approach that the Government has adopted in relation to the duty to arrange health care provision … the Government accepts that in arranging the provision specified in the plan a CCG”—

a clinical commissioning group—

“will be discharging its existing duty pursuant to section 3 of the NHS Act 2006”.

This was a question that we asked in Committee: why the difference between social care and healthcare? Paragraph 14 states:

“Any concern that this would involve treating disabled children more favourably than other groups of children ‘in need’ is misplaced. Firstly, disabled children have already benefited”—

for more than 40 years—

“from the specific duty … in the CSDPA 1970 to provide them with support, a benefit which other children ‘in need’ do not enjoy … Secondly, it is a well established tenet of discrimination law that reasonable positive measures intended to correct significant disadvantage experienced by a particular group are unlikely to be discriminatory. Indeed Equality Act 2010 … provides that compliance with the public sector equality duty … ‘may involve treating some persons more favourably than others’”.

Therefore, in this view, the inclusion of social care under the duty to provide the services specified in an EHC plan would not make a significant difference to existing entitlements in social care and, indeed, is simply consistent with local authorities’ current duties.

However, there would be a number of significant advantages to putting this duty into this Bill as well. A main advantage is that it would clarify for parents the responsibilities of the three agencies together regarding what must provided—in other words, everything in the plan—and that would be a very big benefit for parents. Secondly, it would consolidate the integrated approach that runs right through this Bill until we get to social care. Thirdly, it would give children under 18 the same demonstrable, enforceable rights that adults already have under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, and thus there would be a seamless and equal status for disabled children from birth to 25. Those are the simplest legal arguments in favour of the amendment.

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[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I, too, added my name to this amendment. My noble friends Lord Rix and Lord Low have eloquently set out the logical intention behind the request to create a single point of appeal across education, health and care. If we are to create a truly joined-up system that really works for children, young people and their parents, this seems to be an absolute necessity. I speak as a parent who has worked hard to get the right support across all three systems and cultures for my son. The Government propose a single point of assessment, but the same old separate routes for redress and complaint, which will continue to bewilder and confront parents. We should aspire to more.

To focus on health needs for a moment, there are significant concerns among those in the sector that the health service is far from prepared to deal with appeals for the new plans when they are introduced from September this year. We should be mindful of the culture in which complaints and appeals happen in the NHS, and it is not quite clear where parents who are concerned about the health component of the plan would start. Ann Clwyd’s excellent recent report concluded that the NHS complaints system was confusing, lacked accountability and was subject to often long and frustrating delays. The system has been particularly unsatisfactory in the face of complaints from families of people with a learning disability.

Prior to a debate that I secured last year on the premature deaths of people with a learning disability, I met with a number of families who had lost loved ones to neglect and discrimination within the health service. Their experience of going through the NHS complaints process was that, in addition to being overbureaucratic and time-consuming, it was very defensive. They explained that it took years in many very serious cases to receive any sort of answer. A single appeal process for a single education, health and care plan might help us move closer to the joined-up system we are looking for, and ultimately help parents get what is needed for their sons and daughters.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I, too, moved an amendment in Committee on a single point of appeal. It beggars belief that you would have progressive legislation that creates for the first time a joined-up approach to education, health and social care but not a joined-up approach to an appeals mechanism. Everybody I have spoken to agrees with that.

Of course, the problem is the current systems that we have, so the notion is that we establish a Bill that creates single education, health and social care plans but then the appeals mechanism is threefold. We expect in this child and family-friendly approach for parents then to navigate their way through these different systems. Currently, the health appeals mechanism is not very transparent and on patient or family satisfaction ratings is very low indeed. Local authorities, as we know, vary.

What do we need to do? First, the code of conduct very much highlights the need for mediation—but it talks about mediation in terms only of education, not on the health and social care side. I hope the Minister might respond by telling us how we bring the mediation together for all three strands of the plan. In my view, mediation could considerably reduce the number of people wishing to appeal.

Then you come to the appeals mechanism itself. Whatever happens here today, I am utterly convinced that, in the years that follow, there will be one tribunal for these plans. The difficulty is the bureaucratic systems, as eloquently extolled by the noble Lord, Lord Low. Currently, the bureaucracy is not fit for purpose. My great fear is that we push the bureaucracies to agree one tribunal, they go kicking and screaming, and the whole thing does not work. We have to negotiate and make sure that everybody is on board to make this happen. Having talked to Ministers in health and education—though having been slightly disillusioned by officials—I am sure that we can achieve that eventually. We need to give my noble friend Lord Nash more time to continue those negotiations. Again, as has been said, I am sure that on the education side we all agree.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I support Amendment 40A moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and colleagues. We supported him on this in Committee and it would still be our first preference as it would add health and social care provisions to the list of matters in respect of which children, young people and families could appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.

This was first moved in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, as he just reminded us. I recall that he subsequently said, as he has just done so, that he was unsure as to the feasibility of this approach in terms of the technicalities. For that reason, because we may not be able to evaluate those technicalities at this point, we have tabled Amendment 40B, which I will refer to in a moment. I do not know if the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mean that he would support that amendment but it has the intention of giving the Government time to resolve whatever the issues are.

As other noble Lords have said, the issue is simple: the Government want to establish an integrated system for meeting better the needs of disabled children and those with special educational needs. That integration would be at the point of assessment and planning education, health and social care. However, as the Bill stands, that integration is blown apart at the point of appeal. As we have heard, parents and young people would potentially have to go through three different routes of appeal simultaneously for the three different elements of their plan. Like the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Rix, I sense that behind this is the considerable resistance from the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government to any change.

Having previously been a Minister for some time, I feel quite strongly that agencies should bend for the benefit of families. Families should not be imposed with the burden of mobilising three bureaucratic systems that just happen to exist. It is the job of all of us, particularly the Government, to make those agencies bend, albeit by negotiation and discussion, to make the system work for the people that we are here for.

In a letter to noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said that the tribunal is only for special educational needs, and that, as we have heard:

“There are established routes of complaint about social care through the local authority complaints procedures”,

and, for health, to the health complaints procedure and the health ombudsman. That is not adequate, even if local authority and health appeals systems were simple—and they really are not, even for a Member of Parliament. I see the Minister for Children at the Bar and I am sure he will have tried to mobilise those complaints procedures on behalf of his constituents. It takes for ever, it is labyrinthine, it is completely not transparent and it is very bureaucratic. The idea of parents doing that on three fronts at once is simply unimaginable. There should be a single point of appeal and we support Amendment 40A.

However, should that not prevail tonight and the Government not accept it, we have tabled Amendment 40B which would require the Government actively to seek a way to secure a single point of appeal and to report back to Parliament within a year. That would keep the possibility alive. It would require the Government to do what they have not done and maybe have not had time to do so far: namely, to find a way to make this work for parents and families, to take on the resistance of those agencies and, if necessary, to change the law to establish a single point of appeal.

I am afraid that I do not share the optimism of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that without anything done this evening there will at some point in future be a single point of appeal. I was constantly surprised and depressed by the inability sometimes to change some of our big public organisations. Without the drive and initiative from this and the other place, I do not think that will happen. I hope the Minister will take that on board.

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[Lord Addington]

My Lords, the three amendments in my name—Amendments 45A, 46A and 46B—all have at heart addressing the idea of training for teachers in the skills required to deal with special educational needs. This is primarily inspired by my work with the British Dyslexia Association; I draw the House’s attention to my interests in this area. I am trying here to clarify how the Government propose using the code, and the ongoing need to train teachers in how to deal with the issue.

The first amendment is about the whole school: what basket of skills is required to deal with these people? Identification is an important part of this. Unless you know what you are looking for, hidden disabilities—dyslexia, dyspraxia—are quite easy to miss. I do not really have to draw on much evidence to say that it has happened throughout the history of organised education. We have got it wrong, and inappropriate training often leads to very negative results for those concerned.

I appreciate that the Minister—my noble friend Lord Nash—has given me some assurances, particularly for the amendment that deals with SENCOs, but actually there I suggest that the person in charge of the overall position get a bit more specific knowledge. The Minister has moved quite a long way already on this, and I thank him, but a little more specific knowledge about the actual nuts and bolts of the subject would be helpful.

The really beneficial provision here is on something that I think will come back, if we do not get it through today: initial teacher training. Some 10% of the population of any school, and indeed of the population as a whole, is dyslexic according to the British definition; you can stick in 3% for dyscalculic and dyspraxic, and you can stick in ADHD and one or two other problems. Those are the hidden problems. If you know what you are looking for, you have the opportunity to call in help and support, and not to make the classic mistake of saying, “Work harder”, which leads to a very negative educational experience. Such an experience invariably leads to the child either being disruptive in the classroom, or doing that wonderful disappearing act into the middle of it and making damn sure that they do not pay any attention to the class and that the class pays no attention to them.

If the Minister can assure us how the Government will work towards the goal of making sure that the entire establishment, and the individuals themselves, are better prepared to provide the help and support that will lead to better outcomes, I will be very much reassured. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey]

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Addington. I used the expression “a dog with a bone” in Committee. He has stuck with this issue and made real progress on it. I also congratulate the Government, because we have now seen real movement: there have to be properly qualified special educational needs co-ordinators in schools. That is real progress, and the Government are to be congratulated on taking that important step.

My noble friend rightly points out two areas. One is the need to ensure that all teachers, particularly those in primary education, have training—perhaps a unit of training—in special educational needs. Every report has shown that the two crucial elements are early identification of a problem and providing the resources to deal with it. I hope that we might see movement on that. Maybe we can move towards a road map for how we ensure that all teachers going into our schools have an understanding of—maybe a qualification in—of special educational needs. I have forgotten the second issue, so I will sit down.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Addington, in his pursuance of the subject. He obviously is an expert and is quite right to pursue the area, one of growing need—and not just need, but growing complexity as we begin to understand the various subsections of need that there are in SEN.

SEN co-ordinators are a good new grouping, but there is an important role for school governors. I would like to see a member of the governing body take on a genuine responsibility in the area. That would be a practical way to deal with it, not least when we have a range of education provision with rather different requirements.

I hope that we will see rather more happening in the area, but we should not forget the importance of ensuring the early intervention that has already been mentioned, and on which there was an interesting question today during Questions. It indicated that the earlier you can get to grips with this, the better. There must also be areas of retraining for teachers—not just initial training, because it will take a long time for that to infiltrate right across the spectrum. With retraining, teachers can be made much more up to date in the current needs of this vital area.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

I ask myself which of the two alternatives available to us—statutory guidance or something in primary legislation—will most strongly give the message about where this House wants to have the legislation. It has to be in the Bill; that is my non-expert interpretation. It would be unwise not to take the advice of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who is paramount in her expertise in this area. If I have to come down on one side or the other, I will go for that of the noble and learned Baroness, not the Minister. In the run-up to the Bill, the spin that the Government gave was that they were moving away from taking into account a child’s ethnic, cultural and linguistic background. That is where people in the wider world think they are. To get the pendulum back to the middle, we clearly need something in the Bill, and so far I have heard nothing that argues against that. To give that message and to get this new legislation to have a fair and good start is better served by putting it in the Bill. I support Amendment 2.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak with no real expertise on this matter, although, as it happens, my father was an adopted child. It is interesting that there has been a 20% increase in the number of looked-after children since 2009. I suspect that there is a perception that if you do not ethnically match, children will be hanging around waiting for a loving, caring family. I am not sure that that is the case. We all want the same thing, do we not? We all want to make sure that children are adopted by the right families, in all sorts of ways. I rarely disagree with my noble friend Lady Eaton, but if there is statutory guidance—and there will be—it is hugely important that the religious, heritage, cultural and ethnic issues are clearly spelt out. Presumably it is called “statutory” because it is backed by the full weight of the law. When the Minister replies, I hope that he will spell out how important that statutory guidance is.

I suspect that, for all sorts of reasons, we are at a bit of an impasse because of views shared by other people who are not in this Chamber. I understand that. Clearly, however, there has been real movement by the Government to have statutory guidance. I do not think that I would ever dare to disagree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. However, I think that social workers do take note, and will have to take note, of that statutory guidance, given that it is enshrined in law. They will know clearly what the thinking is. When the statutory guidance is put together, organisations such as the NSPCC will play a prominent part in making sure that it is fit for purpose and delivers what we all want.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I learnt one lesson at the Home Office where I legislated for some years. When you make a list, the longer it is the more that considerations which are not on the list are excluded. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius: if you have a list of what must be done, the inference is that the rest does not have to be done. Therefore, if you are going to have a list, let it be complete.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I have Amendments 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D and 6A in this group. They have already been trailed. When I first became aware of a proposal for the Secretary of State to issue directions about local authority adoption functions, I shared the alarm which was expressed, because I am pretty unreconstructed when it comes to local authority powers. On the other hand, having heard some of the issues which seem to lie behind problems with recruiting adopters, during the debates that took place during the work of the Select Committee, at one point I wondered whether adoption services should be nationalised. My pendulum has swung back to the middle.

I am reassured from what the Minister has said that the clause is not about failure or the underperformance by individual local authorities; it comes about because of concerns about the system, and systemic underlying problems. The amendments in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles—also members of the Select Committee—and my noble friend Lord Storey, flow from that. They are aimed at building on and improving what we are presented with in the Bill. It has been voiced again today. What has very much exercised noble Lords is ensuring that Parliament is not sidelined. I realise that a direction under paragraph (c) would be very different from directions under paragraphs (a) and (b) of new subsection (3), and I will come back to that in a moment.

Our amendments would turn directions relating to all local authorities into an order requiring the agreement of both Houses through the affirmative procedure. That would mean the Minister explaining the position, and both Houses debating it with an order not to be made before March 2015. The parliamentary timetable suggests to me that it is very unlikely an order would be made two months before a general election. So I was glad to see the Government Amendment 6 and even more pleased when the Minister told me that he wanted to add his name to our amendments but was too late for the print of the Marshalled List.

The Select Committee said that local authorities should have the time,

“to develop viable and achievable alternative proposals.”

We see that they are already doing so. We heard in the Committee of successful structures in the “tri-borough arrangement” as it is called in London—the three boroughs—and with three local authorities in the north-west. I understand that there are now probably five groupings involving 12 local authorities, which return their data together and are coming together in new structures.

The noble Baroness talks about the levers for change, whether what we may have will be enough, and whether it needs a heavy hand. I do not think that this is proposing a heavy hand. But if an order is proposed by the Secretary of State, as I see it—and I hope that the Minister can confirm this—it would not be a lid, perhaps here a portcullis, coming down. It would be a point in a sequence development of work, a transitional point which could be, and I hope if necessary would be, tailored as to which of the functions in new subsection (2) was brought into play. It would not be necessary to make an order dealing with all the functions in new subsection (2). So it is not the nuclear option, which I at first understood it potentially to be, or as it has been described.

A direction under new subsection (3)(b)—I confess that I had not initially appreciated how this might differ from an order under a statutory instrument—would allow for a lot more continuing work, after as well as before a direction with the local authorities concerned, which is a much more flexible way of working. It has been described to me as a quality improvement measure, with the possibility of collaborative development of the detail of the direction before it is given. Thinking about how that has worked on other subject areas within child protection and children services work, I can see that would work well. That leaves me unable to support Amendment 4.

The Government have already given commitment to giving notice to a local authority before using the powers in new subsections (3)(a) and (3)(b). So there would be an opportunity for that way of—I am sorry, I hate the word—iterative working, a development and refinement process. The steps which have already been taken since this debate started earlier in the year, or at the end of last year, when the Government made their announcement, have been constructive and productive, with the adoption form grant, the adoption register, the adoption leadership board and the equalisation of fees between local authorities and voluntary agencies. I mention voluntary agencies because it will be essential to work with the voluntary sector. Capacity and culture issues are both important. They are not going to change overnight. But the clause, as it would be amended by our amendments, allows more than adequately for this.

I hope that the directions in new paragraphs (b) and (c) will never be used, because it will not be necessary. I hope, too, that the Minister can confirm that over-enthusiasm, as the noble and learned Baroness has called it, would not mean that the paragraph (b) direction would be applied to all local authorities. That seems to me to be something that would be very open to challenge, given the rest of the structure of the clause.

I see why the Government feel that they need to have reserved powers, operated as I described, and that means that I cannot support Amendment 6. I hope that the House will feel that Amendments 4A to 4D and 6A are the way forward. I am comfortable with the logic of this, and I am usually over-logical about things. It is not heavy handed. It might almost be delicate—I will not go quite as far as to claim that—but it is a way forward.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I cannot keep using the expression that I am a new person to your Lordships’ House, but I am still on a big learning curve, and I like to put into simple terms some of the language that is used.

When I saw this clause, I remembered that something like 84% of adoptions last year were carried out by local authorities and that, as we have heard, the majority of them do a fantastic job. That is recognised by the voluntary sector and, equally, the local authorities realise how important the voluntary sector is. When the Bill first came to your Lordships’ House, the voluntary sector, quite rightly, said, “Look, we could not cope if you took it all away from local authorities. We would not be able to do that”.

At the time, it seemed right that the Government pointed to the fact that some local authorities had an appalling track record. As I have said, it is a very small number, but some had an appalling track record. Indeed, the Local Government Association would be the first to recognise that. So it seemed absolutely crucial that the Secretary of State should have the power, if local authorities were underperforming and were not prepared to work together and co-operate, to take that responsibility away from them. I see the logic and the importance of that because, at the end of the day, we are talking about the children. However, I did not see the logic of having the power to take the responsibility away from every local authority—that seemed plain daft to me—given the expertise and commitment that local authorities have and the amount of work that they do. I was therefore delighted when the Minister tabled an amendment which ensured that nothing could happen before March 2015. But that still means, unless I have misunderstood it, that the Secretary of State could say in March 2015—although, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, it would be two months off a general election—“We are going to do this, and that is what we are doing”. That would not be in the best interests of adoption and children.

If in the mean time the Government work with local authorities and the voluntary sector and different structures come together with different ways of operating—and if it is decided that tri or quad groups working together is the structure that we want—that is great. Whatever structure is arrived at, the Secretary of State should come to Parliament and both Houses should be able to say yes to it. I was not used to the phrase “affirmative procedure” in the amendment. If the Minister feels able to support Amendments 4A to 4C, as his comments suggest, that would be a result with which we could all be happy.

I do not share the concern that the Secretary of State might use Amendment 4B to take away the responsibility from boroughs and metropolitan bodies. That would not happen in the timescale because, as we have heard, 84% of authorities carry out adoption. However, if some local authorities are letting down children or the adoption service, in extreme cases the Secretary of State would have that power. If these clauses and amendments are accepted, it will mean that local authorities have come to the table and discussed these matters even more rapidly with the voluntary sector. I welcome the work that the Minister has done in bringing those people together.

Education: Contribution to Economic Growth

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for initiating this important debate at such an opportune moment. Two days ago the OECD’s PISA education rankings were published, showing that the UK is flatlining in maths, science and writing.

If we want a 21st-century workforce, we have to ensure that our young people are equipped with the necessary skills, drive, motivation and ambition to succeed. Unlike previous generations, there are fewer employment opportunities for those who do not have the necessary talent and aspiration. With free movement of labour across the EU, unless we train young Britons properly, such opportunities will undoubtedly be filled by young European counterparts.

At the turn of the century we were building massive infrastructure projects in Liverpool, including a cruise liner terminal, the Arena and Convention Centre and the Liverpool ONE retail and leisure development. We could have dealt with Liverpool’s unemployment problems at a stroke but, sadly, at a local level we did not have the required skills and competencies. Locally created jobs were therefore filled from outside.

Getting schooling right in order to provide for the needs of business and industry is essential. So why are we flatlining, given that our educational spending—we are ranked eighth—is one of the highest in the world? Why are other countries able to forge ahead? Countries that understand this dilemma are preparing their young people for the future. If we are not careful, as we know, nations such as China, Singapore, South Korea, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada will win the global race and leave us languishing behind. However, we cannot and should not make carbon copies of their education systems. Frankly, I do not want our young people doing the 11-hour day of a South Korean pupil, nor do I want the rote learning approach of China. I will always remember visiting a Chinese primary school in Xi’an and watching the children chanting and collectively performing in a robotic way.

However, we can learn broad lessons from these high-performing countries. All of them, without exception, have some key shared elements: qualified teachers who are both highly trained and highly valued, and school leadership that, again, is highly trained and experienced and of only the highest calibre. There is constant high quality continuous training for professionals in schools, plus excellent parental involvement. Staff have only the highest expectations of the pupils, regardless of background and IQ. Interestingly, in Shanghai not only are school leaders and teachers well supported but only the best teachers get promoted. All of them have personal development plans that include mentoring and observation throughout their careers.

I want our children to be numerate and literate and to be given first-class science teaching, but I also want them to continue to be immersed in the other opportunities that a broad-based curriculum offers. The reason that we have some of the most creative pupils in the world is that the visual and performing arts that are available in our schools are second to none. This, in turn, has led to a world-beating creative industry in the UK. Yes, we need to develop language in schools, and I applaud the Government for introducing modern foreign languages in primary school.

Sports need to be part of our school offer, with children given opportunities to experience different sporting activities, while the traditional subjects—history, geography and so on—are part of developing the well rounded, articulate, thoughtful citizens who should be the hallmark of our education system. Of course, special educational needs provision needs to be second to none, with early identification and intervention.

It is possible to turn schools and schooling around but still keep those gems of our educational entitlement that have kept our uniquely British system so special. The changes in London over the past five years, where passes in GCSE results have gone from 40% to over 60%, show that change is possible. In my own city, Liverpool was the worst performing of the core cities, and now it is the best.

Another important issue, which shows that we must ensure that no children are left behind and is often not talked about, is that of our summer-born children. It can affect our rankings, our school performance and, of course, the summer-born children themselves. Research and evidence has shown that summer-born children have a 25% lower attainment at key stage 1; 20% of summer-born children are less likely to go to university; and, staggeringly, 50% of summer-born children are likely to be diagnosed as having special educational needs. In a week in which we have been looking at international comparisons, it is interesting that the 19 OECD countries with different starting dates show that later formal education helps to reduce birth-date effects.

I cannot resist reminding the House about Finland, which is always held up as a shining example by people from all parties. Yes, Finland is great, and it has well trained teachers and head teachers, but children start school at the age of seven, there are no tests until they are 16, there are no league tables, and teachers—wait for it—are required to train for five years and have a master’s degree.

Finally, there is another element that we should strive for, which is perhaps the hardest of all: political consensus on our educational goals. I was mindful of my noble friend Lord Nash’s comments in the Chamber on Tuesday when he was reading the Statement on the PISA results. He said that we should stop throwing stones at each other. My goodness, I thought, he was right. Let us get that political consensus, and give our schools the chance to breathe and flourish. I promise your Lordships that we will then shoot up in those important world rankings and build on the unique ethos that is special to the British schools system.