School Meals for Children

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Cooking and nutrition are firmly within the national curriculum: in design and technology they are compulsory between key stages 1 and 3, they aim to teach children how to cook and the principles of healthy eating and nutrition. It is also picked up in the science curriculum; indeed, through the Oak National Academy, we funded a module on cooking and nutrition that will equip children leaving school to be able to cook at least six predominantly savoury recipes that will support a healthy diet.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, is not the problem that the tendering process for school meals is based on cost and not quality? Of course, there is another side to school meals, and that is the famous packed lunch. The experience of teachers and head teachers of packed lunches is that they are mainly filled with bags of crisps, chocolate biscuits, fruit drinks et cetera—not necessarily fruit drinks but canned drinks. Has the Minister any idea how we can ensure that packed lunches as well become a healthy nutritional meal?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord touches on issues relating to how parents bring up their children, which is obviously delicate territory for the Government to pronounce too firmly on. Our messaging around the risks of obesity and on healthy lifestyles more broadly is obviously picked up by parents. Our family hubs also look at things such as nutrition. On the first part of his remarks, I should say that the department centrally offers a service called Get Help Buying for Schools that supports schools to negotiate high-quality and affordable catering arrangements.

Free Childcare Scheme

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It is slightly curious to say that delivery is falling short when the new entitlements start in April of this year. The noble Baroness knows that we have made a significant investment in capital to support local authorities. We have made a number of innovations in relation to the workforce and the uptake of the scheme has been very encouraging. Most importantly—I think the Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed this—we have announced very generous funding rates, particularly for younger children.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I think we are surprised at the confidence of the Minister, given that we have seen a 50% increase in the number of nurseries that have closed in just the last year, that 40% of nurseries say they are undecided as to whether they will deliver the new funded offer for two year-olds, and that 20% say that they will but that places will be limited. Why is the Minister so confident about this scheme? We hope she is right, but can she give us more reassurance as to why she thinks it will definitely happen?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The first thing I would say is that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord are right that this is a very ambitious expansion of childcare. However, the really significant increase in capacity will be in September 2025, so we have some time to put in place what is needed to deliver on that. The noble Lord talked about the number of nurseries that have closed. I know he is also aware that the childcare workforce has gone up year on year, over 2022-23, and is up by 40,000 places—I mean that the number of places has increased in the past five years by 40,000, while there has been a 1% annual decline in nought to five year-olds.

Skill Shortages in Business and Industry

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the skill shortages affecting business and industry.

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

My Lords, one-third of UK vacancies are due to skills shortages. Sectors with large shortages include construction, information technology and communications. This Government have committed to developing a world-leading skills system that delivers the skills that employers need through T-levels, apprenticeships, skills bootcamps and higher technical qualifications. Where there are key shortages, we have introduced programmes such as the construction and digital bootcamps to increase the supply of people with the right skills.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that helpful Answer. Since this Oral Question was tabled, I have been shocked by the number of employers who have written to me. The Heat and Building Business Council says the UK has faced significant challenges in attracting engineers, despite substantial salary increases of up to 35%, which of course contribute to rising costs for the clean heat sector that are ultimately passed on to the consumer. How do we encourage young talent to consider engineering and green technologies as a secure path for the future?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sure the noble Lord will agree that many young people are attracted to working in areas that will address climate change, environmental issues and sustainability, but they might not always make the association with those engineering roles as opposed to some others. We are working with business through our Green Jobs Delivery Group, and with the Green Apprenticeships and Technical Education Advisory Panel, making sure that our standards map on to those occupations and that that is backed by great careers advice for young people.

Schools: Special Educational Needs

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Again, I stress that not every special educational need requires a diagnosis. Children should get support regardless. If we look at the age at which children get an education, health and care plan as a proxy for diagnosis, we see that around a quarter receive an EHCP under the age of five, with almost half getting one between the ages of five and 10. That has been very stable over the last 10 years. The remaining quarter are above 11. I understand that these can be stressful, difficult times, but there has been relative stability over many years at the age of diagnosis, although there is greater identification of specific issues—in particular, autism.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I note what the Minister said in reply to my noble friend about new provision being made; that is to be welcomed. Ofsted inspections have found a shortage of school places and special school provision locally—that is the key word: locally—for children and young people with complex needs. As a consequence, they are placed out of their locality, away from their families, friends and peer groups. What are the Government planning to do to ensure that there is sufficient specialist provision in local areas?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I can only refer again to what I just mentioned: the £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to deliver additional new specialist places, which will of course be closer to where children are. I absolutely share the noble Lord’s concerns about children having to travel out of area.

Schools: Persistent Absenteeism

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot accept entirely my noble friend’s assertion, because persistent absence, which the noble Baroness’s Question points to, has more than doubled since the start of the pandemic and the curriculum has not significantly changed.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, when the Minister kindly replied to my Written Question tabled on 11 January, she said that there were

“335 state-funded alternative provision schools”.

But in terms of unregistered alternative schools or settings, she said that because they are unregistered, they

“do not meet the criteria to register as a school”.

So local authorities are sending children to these unregistered provision settings, yet we do not know whether a record is taken of their attendance or whether they are safeguarded. This is not a satisfactory state, is it? Can the Minister look into this to make sure that these children are safeguarded, properly educated and recorded for attendance?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I share many of the noble Lord’s concerns and am more than happy to follow up on his points.

Childcare

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness is aware of a number of the measures that we have announced. She raises the issue of too few providers, but she will be aware that last year the number of places rose by 1% and staff numbers rose by 4% to 347,300. We are launching a new recruitment campaign to boost interest in early years careers, and we have already made some changes that will boost capacity, including changing the staff to child ratio from 1:4 to 1:5, which we introduced in September, and changing the requirements on nursery practitioners at level 3, who no longer need to have a maths qualification to fulfil the role.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, according to Ofsted, the number of early years places fell by almost 18,000 in the 12 months to August 2023. The DfE’s own figures show that there are now over 11,000 fewer childminders operating than five years ago. Meanwhile, the BBC estimates that the demand for places is likely to rise by more than 100,000 additional children before the full 30-hour expansion is in place in September 2025. How will the Minister ensure that there are enough providers and spaces for this funding expansion to have any positive effect?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I addressed some of the noble Lord’s points in my earlier Answer, but he is of course right that the number of childminders declined by 10% last year. However, he will be aware that childminders typically have much smaller numbers of children—hence my remarks about the additional number of places, which rose last year. The Government’s additional actions are to increase the hourly rates paid to local authorities, which are increasing significantly, to £11.22 on average for children under two, but also with increases for other age groups.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hear the concerns of the noble Baroness about space and staff, although I would point out that we believe the growth in demand for places will be at its greatest towards the introduction in September 2025. So there is quite a lot of time for us to be working with the sector and building capacity. I absolutely reassure the noble Baroness that colleagues in the department and my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families work very closely with those in the sector and listen carefully to their demands.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Does the Minister accept the comments made by the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, which represents 14,000 nurseries, childminders and preschools, that it would be “financial suicide” for providers to offer places without knowing the funding level they will receive? He said:

“You cannot run a nursery if you know what your costs are but you have no idea what your revenue is likely to be”.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I addressed this in answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. In November last year, we gave all local authorities their funding rates. It is for them then to communicate with local providers on what the specific rates and the range of rates will be in their area.

Coram’s Charter for Children

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would slightly reframe the noble Lord’s first assertion. There has been a redirection of resources to increasingly complex cases in child protection and a displacement of resources from some of the earlier help services. The House is aware of the Government’s commitment to rolling out family hubs and providing really comprehensive, targeted support to families who need it the most. I share the noble Lord’s deep concerns about attendance. All Ministers across the department have this as a primary focus.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Coram Charter for Children makes for disturbing reading. Some 4.2 million children in this country are in poverty—4.2 million children in a wealthy country. This figure is rising. The Minister will agree that this has devastating consequences for children’s health, security and opportunities. Can the Minister tell the House what action the Government plan to take to stop the cuts in children’s services?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We understand that local authorities are under significant financial pressure. That is why we have committed to major reform in relation to children’s social care, focusing increasingly on earlier intervention. Over the last three spending reviews, local government has seen real increases in its core spending power, with a major cash injection of £5.1 billion last year, of which £3.1 billion was provided through a central government grant.

Home and Online Schooling

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not disagree that the aftermath of Covid has impacted not just home education but perhaps more particularly the wider issues that we have debated in your Lordships’ House related to attendance at school. The noble Lord is aware that we are expanding mental health support teams across schools and recruiting additional educational psychologists to support children.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that literally hundreds of thousands of children are missing from our schools—potentially an educationally lost generation. The charity School-Home Support has found that, particularly in poor communities, where children do not want to go to school they pretend to home educate and it is not happening. Is the answer not for the Government to bring a simple Bill which would make it lawful for parents to have to register if they are home educating?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think we have to be slightly careful about the use of the numbers. The noble Lord talked about “literally hundreds of thousands of children” missing their education. That is conflating a number of different things, and I do not want to give the impression that there are hundreds of thousands of children missing all their education. There were 86,200 children identified as being home educated in the spring of this year, 24,700 children were classified as children missing education on the census day, and 94,900 missed education for a period at some point in the academic year. On bringing legislation, I think the noble Lord will have seen that a Private Member’s Bill has been introduced in the other place, and he may have heard my right honourable friend the Secretary of State speak warmly about it.

Early Years Education

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It has already been extended to the nursery sector. We are way ahead. But this is an important point because it sets children off in the way we hope they will continue: with a love of nature but also a sense of agency within it.

I turn to concerns that noble Lords raised about the impact of Covid on children’s development. The 2022-23 early years foundation stage profile results, published by the department today, show that there has been an increase in the proportion of five year-olds achieving a good level of development compared to last year. In 2022-23, 67.2% of children had a good level of development, and 65.6% were at the expected level across all 17 early learning goals—that is up 2% on last year. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, rightly raised concerns about recovery post Covid.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for raising important issues about children and screen time. If the noble Baroness has time, I would be happy to meet her and talk about the additional security that we think the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance provides to children in education settings, although she is clearly not convinced it is achieving that. I do not think there is any difference in our aims and aspirations for the safety of children, so it would be helpful if the noble Baroness would agree to explore that in more detail. I absolutely agree with her about the importance of the privacy of children’s data.

I turn to the expansion in provision. We are determined to support as many families as possible with access to high-quality and affordable childcare. A number of noble Lords remarked on a focus on encouraging people—principally women—back into the workplace, which is an important goal for all the reasons that the House will be aware of. However, it is in no way a compromise on the quality and richness and developmental value that the noble Baroness opposite set out so clearly in her remarks.

By 2027-28, we expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion each year on free childcare. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, cited the current costs of childcare, which make the case eloquently for the changes that we are bringing in, because we understand that they are a tremendous pressure on those who have very young children and wish to go out to work. This huge expansion means that millions of children will benefit from the extraordinary efforts of the sector to give children the safest and highest-quality early education and childcare. As a first stage in growing and supporting the early years workforce to deliver these entitlements, the Government consulted on a number of further flexibilities to the early years foundation stage this year, which will be implemented from January 2024, so that providers can use their existing workforce better while protecting quality and safety.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked why the Government did not consult on the planned expansion. The Spring Budget announcement responded to the concerns aired and raised by parents about the cost of childcare. Since then, the noble Baroness will be aware that we have consulted on key factors of the rollout, including funding and other changes.

The quality of our early years and childcare sector is a testament to the ongoing dedication and hard work of those in the profession. Since the pandemic, the Government have committed up to £180 million of support to promote quality and best practice and provide staff with opportunities for career progression, as we heard from a number of speakers this evening. This includes a package of training, qualifications and guidance for the workforce. We have expanded the early years professional development programme to enable up to 10,000 more level 3 qualified early years practitioners to access the latest teaching in communication and language, early mathematics and personal, social and emotional development. We are also funding the national professional qualification in early years leadership, which is designed to support early years leaders to develop expertise in leading high-quality education and care, as well as effective staff and organisational management.

In addition, we are proud to say that over two-thirds of primary schools have benefited from our investment in the Nuffield early language intervention, improving the speech and language skills of over 160,000 children in reception classes so far. More than 500,000 primary school children have been screened to identify those with language development difficulties, which we know can be such a blocker for their future education.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked whether the department had made an estimate of the dead weight in our expansion. There will be a full evaluation of the rollout, which will also look at that issue.

To return to the workforce issues, which were raised again by the noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Twycross, and other noble Lords, to support providers to recruit the staff they need to deliver the expansion in childcare entitlements announced at the Spring Budget, we are developing a range of new workforce initiatives, including the launch of a national recruitment campaign, planned for the beginning of 2024, to boost interest in the sector and support the recruitment of talented staff. We are removing barriers to entering the workforce by ensuring that qualifications are suitable and easy to understand. This includes launching a competition to find providers of early years skills boot camps, which will include a pathway to an accelerated level 3 early years apprenticeship. We are also developing new degree apprenticeship routes so that everyone, from junior staff to senior leaders, can easily move into a career in the sector.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Goudie, challenged on whether the change in the staff-to-child ratio would make it harder to retain staff. As the House knows, we are providing flexibility to providers to move from a 4:1 to a 5:1 ratio, in line with that which exists in Scotland. However, ultimately, it is the managers of settings who know what support their children need, and they will know their staff best. The Government trust their judgment as to what ratios they believe are right for them in their settings. Supporting the workforce is obviously a priority, which is why we provided £204 million of additional funding to local authorities, so that providers can recruit and retain the staff that they need.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, raised a very troubling case, if I understood rightly, of a child on the autism spectrum who was suspended from nursery school, which slightly defies one’s imagination. We do recognise that quality early years education means meeting the needs of all children, which of course critically includes those with special educational needs and disabilities. The House knows very well the importance of those needs being identified as early as possible, as emphasised in the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan, which we published in March this year.

We are funding the training of up to 7,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators, and there is also SEND-focused content in the package of support and guidance for the workforce which I outlined earlier. We are also reviewing the operation of SEND inclusion funds within the current early years funding system to ensure that funding arrangements are both appropriate and really well-targeted to improve outcomes for preschool children with special educational needs.

To finish, I want to touch on an important point that was raised in the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, today; that quality early years education is provided not only in nurseries, childminder settings and schools but also, of course, at home. We know that a stable and stimulating home learning environment is also crucial to children’s development. That is why we secured £28.7 million between now and 2025 for local authorities to support specifically the speech and language of young children who were worst affected by the pandemic, namely today’s three and four year-olds. That programme is being delivered through family hubs and the Start for Life programme. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised the importance of parenting and children having a routine, which clearly family hubs are part of delivering.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, mentioned the return of Sure Start. As I think she will be aware, we believe that our family hubs really build on the learnings from Sure Start and from children’s centres and are a single place where a family can access all the support they need, including support for mothers with mental health issues, which noble Lords also raised.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, invited me to meet the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and the Early Years Alliance. She may be aware that the department meets both groups very regularly and I know that the Minister for Children and Families has also met them. I would be delighted to as well, if the noble Baroness would find it useful. She also asked whether we hold data on children whose families are in receipt of universal credit. That is held by the Department for Work and Pensions, but I am happy to write if that data is available. I close by thanking your Lordships—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, I raised the issue of a new target for the 60,000 vulnerable babies and asked what the Government are planning to do on that. Will she write to me about it, as it is an NHS matter?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be delighted to write about that and all the other issues that I have not had time to cover this evening.

I close by thanking your Lordships for their thoughtful contributions to the debate today and to underline our shared gratitude to early years professionals who are doing such a fantastic job to deliver high-quality education to our youngest children.

Jobs Market: Graduates

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness has anticipated well that I do not agree that those skills are not valued in our education system. Obviously, those skills are evolving and developing more into digital skills; that is an area in which we are focused both in schools and in skills bootcamps, T-levels and beyond.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that we have a shortage of teachers—some might call it a crisis of teacher vacancies—in our schools. We also have a crisis of shortages in specialist subjects, such as physics and the creative subjects, as we have heard. Fewer and fewer young people are going into teaching or studying education at university. To try to avert this crisis, is there a case for saying that we will refund your tuition fees if you become a teacher?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government are not considering that at the moment, and I remind the House that teacher numbers are at an all-time high, at over 468,000.

Schools: Special Educational Needs

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously, we take those reports extremely seriously, and that is the value of having an independent inspectorate. I cannot comment on the specific Hertfordshire case, but we work with the local authority or the trust in question to ensure that those issues are addressed.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will be aware that, every year, the number of children and young people with education, health and care plans who are permanently excluded from school is increasing significantly. How do we ensure that those children get their education, health and care plans implemented?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not sure that there is a direct link between implementation and exclusion; there are cases where a plan has been implemented. Of course, the last thing we want for any child—particularly children with education, health and care plans—is for them to be excluded from school. To return to my earlier answer, the Government are trying to think this through from the earliest stages for early years practitioners, equipping every teacher to teach children with special educational needs well and making sure they get the specialist provision they require. That is why our investment in this sector has expanded so dramatically.

Core School Budget Allocations

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not accept that the Government delayed action either in relation to RAAC or in this case. In relation to RAAC, when we had new information that came to us as a department, we took the only responsible decision that any Minister could take, which was to take urgent action to ensure that no one was at risk. That was exactly what we did, and we are working closely with schools to resolve the challenges they face as a result. The reason for the error was a mistake in the coding of pupil numbers. Normally, it takes about six weeks to go through that process. We obviously needed to do a thorough quality assurance to make sure that the revised numbers were correct. We did that in four weeks and then there was no delay in announcing it.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will know through her visits to schools that school budgets are stretched to breaking point. Head teachers are telling me, and no doubt telling the Minister, that day in and day out they are struggling to make ends meet. The average primary school will receive £12,000 less than the average secondary school and £57,000 less than was expected. Schools will have planned their budgets for 2024-25; that is the critical point. Does the Minister think that commitments made back in July to the House should be honoured and the original national funding formula rates should stand?

Cultural Education Plan

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Well, unfortunately, my recognition of the noble Baroness’s figures has not changed since yesterday. My understanding is that, since 2014-15, the number of qualified music teachers has risen from around 89% to an average of about 95% in the last couple of years. Similarly, for art and design, 96.5% of lessons are taught by teachers with post-A-level qualifications. However, since yesterday I can share with the House that there will be a new survey on extracurricular music uptake, which will be published later this year, which shows much higher levels of participation in June 2023 in relation to singing and instrument lessons, access to live music performances and participation by children in live music performances. So the Government are not talking about it—the Government are delivering.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

We welcome this cultural education plan, and we have every confidence in the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. Of course, cultural education is not just about learning—it has to be about seeing, doing and having the opportunity to visit art galleries and museums, listening to concerts, going to theatres and seeing heritage. But, of course, children and young people from poor families really struggle to make that happen. How do we go about that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question, because the focus of the cultural education plan is to tackle those disparities in opportunity and to promote more access for children in areas of significant deprivation, making sure that children have good cultural experiences in school but also outside school.

Schools: RAAC

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, the noble Baroness has focused on exactly where the Government are focusing, namely face-to-face education. I take this opportunity to thank all the head teachers and school leaders who have worked tirelessly to make sure that children can, wherever possible, be in face-to-face education. As the noble Baroness knows, this morning we announced an updated list of schools: the number of confirmed cases of RAAC had risen from 147, reflecting the data as of 30 August, and what we published today, which reflects the data from 14 September, shows 174 schools. I am pleased to say that with the exception of one school, all children are either in full face-to-face education—in 148 settings—while 23 are in hybrid education, one is fully remote and one is a very new case which we are triaging at the moment.

In terms of lost learning, there is access to the Government’s national tutoring programme, and we will of course talk to schools and responsible bodies. There are disruptions to the school year; it is not exceptional, sadly, that children miss a few days’ learning but, happily for most of these children, it has been just a few days. If there are extended periods, we will look at that with the responsible bodies concerned.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister may recall that one of the first acts of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education was to cancel Building Schools for the Future. I well remember the impact it had on the city where I live. Also, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness is right, to our regret. I have not been heckled before—it is quite impressive. Under the then Chancellor, there was a plan to build 200 new schools, but the funding for only 50 was provided. Parents are worried; how do we bring transparency to this issue and how do we reassure them?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Just to be clear on the Building Schools for the Future programme, there are schools today where we have found RAAC that would have been in that programme and were among those cancelled. There are also schools that got funding through it where we found RAAC, so it is not fair to say that Building Schools for the Future would have solved this problem. We are dealing with a number of cases that had funding through that programme which did not remove the RAAC and where we are now dealing with that.

The noble Lord is right that the department argued, as every department does, for as large as possible a settlement from the Treasury. We are very proud of our school rebuilding programme, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amount of capital that has been spent over the last 10 years both on condition funding and on building new school places. During this Administration, there has obviously been a bulge in pupil numbers which has led to around £2 billion a year, on average, being spent on building new places for pupils by either extending existing schools or building new ones. In the last spending review, the budget for condition funding—maintaining our schools—was increased by 28%.

Teacher Shortages

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In mentioning the number of people leaving the profession, the noble Baroness omitted to mention the number entering the profession last year. There were 48,000 entrants, including 16,700 returning to the profession. I remind the House that the vacancy rate for teachers is 2.8%, which remains extremely low. However, I recognise that there are shortages in certain subjects and in certain parts of the country, which is why we are targeting our bursaries on them. I remind the noble Baroness that we should be proud in this country that the work of our teachers has resulted in us rising up the international rankings in primary reading, from 8th in 2016 to 4th in 2021—the highest in the western world.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the number of teacher vacancies has doubled in two years. The number of students wanting to go into teaching has declined by 79%. We then have the issue of specialist subjects; for example, there are 400 schools where there is no qualified physics teacher. Increasingly, we see our children being taught by supply teachers, which is not the best way to teach young people. How have we managed to get into such a situation? Did we not see this coming, and should we not have put together a plan to avert this crisis?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

First, I do not accept that it is a crisis. Secondly, if the noble Lord looks at the long-term numbers on this, in subjects such as mathematics, which is raised frequently in the House, in 2014-15 we had 75.8% specialist teachers. That is now 78.6%. There are subjects like physics where it has gone down slightly, but this has been a long-term issue, and I thank our teachers and leaders for the work they do to make our schools as good as they are.

Schools: Admissions

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 17th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I looked at those numbers just before this Question, because I anticipated that the noble Baroness might raise them. I am happy to pick this up with her afterwards, but the data that I looked at suggest very little difference in the profile of deprivation between faith and non-faith schools.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former head teacher of a Church of England school. As the Minister knows, a third of all our schools in England are faith schools. She will also know that in 2010 we introduced the 50% rule whereby 50% of new academies had to have open places. Has her department reviewed the success of that scheme in terms of community cohesion, understanding of different cultures and faiths, and whether we should now extend it to all faith schools?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware that we have looked in detail at any of those proposals in the way that the noble Lord describes, but I am aware that all schools—potentially faith schools in particular—take their role in community cohesion very seriously.

Teacher Vacancies

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 13th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

First, I do not recognise the numbers that the noble Baroness cites. In 2022-23 there were 47,954 entrants to the profession and 43,997 left the profession. I am definitely not a maths teacher, but that does not look to me like more people left than started. On a payment for every early-career teacher, the Government believe that it is a much better use of taxpayers’ money to target that funding to teachers in those areas and for those subjects where it is hardest to recruit. I would be interested to know how the noble Baroness would feel if she were a physics teacher being offered up to £3,000 a year for five years tax-free as opposed to £2,400 for two years, which I think is the noble Baroness’s commitment.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, 40,000 teachers left the teaching profession last year—the highest since we started recording the number. There are 2,300 empty posts and 3,300 posts are filled by supply teachers. We have heard that 23% of specialist maths teachers and 42% of physics teachers are required. How do parents feel about this situation when their children are, in some cases, being taught not by a specialist teacher but by a supply teacher—a person not qualified in that subject area? Is this not a crisis, and should we not be doing something about it?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I talk to a lot of schools and trusts, and I absolutely accept that there are particular areas and subjects where recruitment feels really hard at the moment. But I do not accept that this is the highest figure of leavers ever—I have the numbers in front of me. The trend over the past 10 years is pretty stable. It is only fair to look at the facts and to use the facts. I think that most parents feel that teachers go above and beyond to give their children a great education. The work that we have done to improve the curriculum over the past 10 years is a really important part of that.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 10th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment. I apologise for not being present at Second Reading. I echo the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, that it is really important that everybody is able to take up these opportunities. The Minister should think carefully about those people who live in rural areas. Last year, I went to Northumberland where I met a group of students who have to travel scores of miles to get to the local college. There is no financial support for their travel, but one way round that would be distance learning. By not providing that opportunity, the Government are denying the opportunities they want to achieve in this very welcome and important Bill.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I will speak to Amendments 3 and 6, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. These amendments would require that per-credit limits and credit-differentiated activity may not be prescribed solely according to whether the learning is in person or distanced.

Fee limits are not different for distance learning currently, and there is nothing in this Bill that would change this. I hope that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on one of his questions. I can assure your Lordships that the Government have no intention of differentiating fee limits between distance and in-person learning under the LLE. The per-credit fee limits will be the same for full-time, part-time, face-to-face and distance learning.

Distance learning courses will remain in scope for tuition fee loan support under the LLE. As your Lordships have pointed out, these courses will also continue to be out of scope of maintenance support, which is in line with the current system. However, the Government are committed to encouraging flexibility, and I was grateful to the Committee for acknowledging the important expansion in the use of maintenance loans for living costs and targeted grants. This will make maintenance support available for all designated courses and modules under the LLE, including those currently funded by advanced learner loans and those studied part time. It will also include—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox—targeted support grants such as the disabled students’ allowance and the childcare grant.

Your Lordships expressed real concern that the absence of maintenance loans might impact on demand for distance learning. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the impact assessment. I will need to check, but my understanding is that distance learning was not specifically covered in the Bill’s impact assessment. Rather, as the noble Lord knows, the impact assessment was very positive overall, particularly when referring to learners who might be debt averse.

The ratio of distance learners to campus learners has been constant, at around 10%, despite the rapid growth in campus learners over that period, so I do not think there is compelling evidence that the absence of maintenance loans is impacting on demand for distance learning, relative to campus learning.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, stressed that distance learning was the key to unlocking lifelong learning. I only partly agree with her: I think the key is choice. We need to offer learners choice, whether that be campus learning for those who would benefit from and prefer that approach, and distance learning for those for whom campus learning is not their ideal situation.

On the maintenance loan and distance learners, the Government will roll over the existing exemption that enables distance learners with a disability to qualify for maintenance loans and disabled students’ allowance. The disabled students’ allowance will be extended to all designated courses and modules. The Government intend to review attendance validation more widely, and we will consider any necessary policy changes following the outcome of that review. We believe this amendment to be unnecessary, and therefore the Government will not support it.

Schools: “Ghost Children”

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that education is essential, for the reasons that he gave. Whether and by whom a child’s door might be knocked on will depend on whether they have a social worker, but best practice in these cases is clear and we see many schools and trusts doing it: knocking on the doors of children who are not in school and trying to do so as early as possible, before it becomes a persistent issue.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that a number of children’s charities are high- lighting that children and young people—often from disadvantaged backgrounds and less academically able—are saying that they do not want to go to school, and their parents are saying, “We’ll home educate you”. These children then claim to be home-educated but home education is not taking place, and because home educators do not have to register, we have no knowledge of whether a proper education is taking place, the quality of any education being provided or whether those children are being safeguarded. Is it not time that the Government brought in a quick Bill on home education?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Lord may agree, I am not sure that a home education Bill would be quick. More importantly, we support the rights of parents to educate their children at home and know that many parents are very committed and do a fantastic job. Equally, we cannot overlook the rising numbers of children being home educated. We remain committed to introducing statutory local authority registers of children not in school, but in the meantime we are working closely with local authorities on a voluntary basis to collect that data. I recently met the chair of the ADCS to discuss this exact point.

Performing Arts: GCSE and A-level Qualifications

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness cited a number of statistics, but I would say in response that, since 2016, uptake of the speech and drama vocational technical qualification has more than doubled, as has uptake of the music VTQ. My understanding is that the performing arts GCSE no longer exists, but the broader point the noble Baroness makes is being addressed through our cultural education plan and the national plan for music education, which aims to reach just the children the noble Baroness refers to.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will be aware of the importance of the creative industries to our national economy. She will also be aware that the EBacc does not include creative subjects. She will also be aware that schools are under great financial pressure, so to save money why would they have creative subjects if pupils do not have to enter exams as part of the EBacc? Is it not time to realise the damage that the EBacc is doing to the creative subjects in our education system? Might the Minister not consider being more relaxed about how schools face GCSEs and A-levels and not be hidebound by an EBacc?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not accept either that the EBacc is damaging entries and activity in relation to creative subjects or that it is wise to judge the value of the EBacc only in relation to creative subjects. It is clear from all research and evidence that our children in need a broad grounding, which the EBacc offers.

Apprenticeship Levy

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not completely accept the suggestion that the noble Lord makes; 41% of all apprenticeship starts were in SMEs in 2020-21, up from 38% in 2019-20. We have a lot of initiatives. For example, we have lifted the cap on the number of apprentices a small business can take on. In the area of the creative industries, which I alluded to, we are expecting 1,500 apprenticeship starts through the flexible apprenticeship scheme.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister’s department for always giving fulsome Written Answers. From Written Questions we can see that the number of young people not in education or training is largely static, although this year it is estimated to be 1,857,000. The worrying trend, however, is that the number of 19 year-olds is going down year on year and is at 22.4%. The Minister talked about skills, and the other worrying trend is that the number of those people doing intermediate apprenticeships is at its lowest level ever at 22.4%, while higher apprenticeships and advanced apprenticeships are at their highest level. This goes against the whole basis of why the apprenticeship scheme was set up by the coalition Government.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The apprenticeship scheme has two important objectives. One, as the noble Lord touched on, is to give young people a choice of opportunities as they enter their career—training, work experience and so forth. The other is to give our employers the skills they need in their workforce. The scheme is currently balancing those two things.

Special Educational Needs: Employment Support

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The first guidance we will deliver will be on early language support, autism and mental health and well-being. Those practice guides will be available by the end of 2025. I do not have the date for the transitions guidance but I will be happy to write to the noble Baroness with that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I appreciate that this is not the Minister’s department, but she will be aware that jobcentres have work coaches who provide support, particularly to young people. In my view, those work coaches have very limited training and provide very limited time. Can she assure us—or go back to her colleague’s department and then assure us—that young people with special educational needs get quality time and that the staff giving that support and time are properly trained?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Everybody who meets with a work coach should expect to get quality time, and my understanding is that the vast majority of individuals do. Of course, this is important for young people with SEND. DWP has a huge amount of experience in dealing with long-term health conditions and disabilities. Secondly, part of the work we are doing together with the DWP is to understand and knit together where education meets employment, to make sure that we get the best outcomes for young people.

Schools: Financial Literacy

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have to say that I do not really have any intention of saying to the Prime Minister that his plans are facile. More importantly, I point the noble Lord to the pickup in recruitment of maths teachers following our interventions over the last three years.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, those children and young people who are financially literate are less likely to make poor financial decisions. Unfortunately, we see many children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, who are not able to make those correct financial decisions. It is not just about teaching maths; it is actually about having practical opportunities and experiences. Will the Minister reflect on how we might do that in a more coherent way across all schools, particularly starting in primary schools?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government agree with the noble Lord that it is that combination of the fundamental knowledge in relation to mathematics and reading that support financial literacy and that can be taught in schools, having really high quality materials for schools to use. But, beyond that, they should have the experiences that the noble Lord refers to. That is why we are grateful to organisations such as Young Enterprise and the Money and Pensions Service for the work they do outside schools to complement what goes on inside.

International Higher Education Students

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really do not recognise what the noble Lord is saying. In 2019, we had 496,000 international students coming to this country; last year, there were 679,000. We have introduced a graduate route, which allows international students who are graduates to work in this country. We have increased our educational exports from this area from £19 billion to £25.6 billion and are heading to our target of £35 billion.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that we should have a diverse international student population in our universities, and is she not concerned that, of the 590,000 non-EU students, those from China, India and Nigeria dominate? Is she concerned about the 120,000 Chinese students and maybe their effect on security?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government absolutely agree that we need a diverse population of international students. The noble Lord mentions India and Nigeria; those were two of the countries that were specifically targeted in our International Education Strategy, and we are delighted to see how successful it has been.

Universities: Impact of Industrial Action on Students

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 16th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on students of industrial action in universities.

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

My Lords, while the Government play no role in such disputes, we continue to monitor the impact of strikes with employers and their representatives. This Government set up the Office for Students in 2018, which has wide-ranging powers to ensure that students’ interests are protected and expects providers to do all they can to avoid disruption to students. I urge all sides to work together so that students do not suffer further learning loss.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am very grateful for the Minister’s reply. As she is aware, students—and not only students—have had a very difficult time over the past few years, particularly with Covid and the cost of living crisis. The Sutton Trust has found that 49% of university students are doing a second job to be financially supported. With 10 to 15 days of strike action meaning that in some universities students have not been able to have their lectures or tutorials, there is real stress and anxiety for final-year students about whether they will get certificates at the end of their course. I know that universities are autonomous, but could the Office for Students give more direct advice about how we can support students in these difficult times? Given that students have big loans, will they get some of that loan back?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On the noble Lord’s question relating to the role of the Office for Students, obviously it is the regulator of higher education in this country; it does not get involved in industrial disputes. It has a part to play in making sure that universities continue to meet their conditions of registration, which allow them to be eligible for public funding, and their obligations under consumer protection law.

Schools: Data, Digital and Financial Literacy

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very happy to take my noble friend’s suggestion back to the department.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, independent research by Cambridge University, published by the Money and Pensions Service, suggests that money habits are formed as early as the age of seven. This shows that educating children about money at primary school is very important. Has the Minister heard of GoHenry, a charity set up by parents that gives a prepaid debit card to children, along with an educational app so they can understand financial affairs? If she has not, will she meet them? It might be of interest in developing this curriculum.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have heard of it, but I would also be delighted to meet them. Just to repeat, at the earliest stage, at key stage 1, the compulsory curriculum includes helping children understand how they make choices about how to spend, how to save and how to use money.

Education (School Teachers’ Qualifications and Induction Arrangements) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the regulations must be seen against a backcloth of startling falls in the number of domestic teacher training recruits. In the last five years, 102,588 teachers have given up teaching before reaching their 40th birthday. One in eight maths teachers is not a trained mathematician. Some 400 schools will not have a trained A-level physics teacher.

We remember the Government’s initial teacher training accreditation programme, which saw 68 trainers lose their expertise and capacity to train. In some areas, it led to a reduction in the number of trainees who were going to gain an ITT place at a time when subjects were already struggling to recruit suitably qualified teachers. The effects will be felt in particular in the east and north-west of England.

With regard to overseas students, the current legislation allows teachers who qualified in some countries to be treated as qualified in England, while others are not, even if they have the equivalent skills and experiences. Under the new policy, a new professional recognition system will be introduced that will set consistent standards, so that the qualifications and experience of suitable, qualified teachers from all countries can be fairly assessed for overseas teaching status, the intention being to create a consistent and fair approach for applicants from any country. We support that—of course we do.

The Government argue that the changes will increase the number of overseas teachers obtaining teacher status. The Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has challenged that conclusion, stating:

“The data suggests that the policy will only increase the number of overseas teachers if compared to 2021-22, when overseas QTS approvals were unusually low—compared to other recent years, overseas recruitment is expected to fall”.


It said that inadequate information was provided and that the department omitted

“key information on the policy, how it was formulated and its implications for the teaching workforce … We asked for further details in several areas and the Department for Education (DfE) agreed to revise”

and delay the policy. The committee stated:

“In response to further questioning, and despite initially saying it could not provide the information, DfE has now published its projections about the effect of the policy on the number of overseas teachers being awarded QTS”.


The data suggests that the new policy will increase the number of overseas students only marginally.

I have some questions for the Minister. Why did the Department for Education significantly hinder our ability to scrutinise this amendment through its reluctance to provide information when requested? Why was the department reluctant to provide the information on which it relied to formulate the policy? When published, the data did not entirely support the department’s assertions. Surely it is a fundamental principle of transparency and accountability that any information relied on to formulate policy should be published alongside the instrument or, as a minimum, be made available to Parliament on request.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee fairly said:

“We applaud the overall intention to provide a fair and consistent application process for overseas teachers from all countries … We have, however, noted that domestic recruits to teacher training are falling sharply and DfE’s own projections suggest that overseas QTS recruits will be well below the levels of recent years … we are concerned about whether there is a holistic and coherent strategy to maintain the teaching workforce in England”.


I regret that class sizes are going up. I regret that teacher shortages are going up. I regret that we are having real problems with the retention of teachers. Mention has been made of the industrial action planned for next week and the difficulties in recruiting teachers because of salaries. Does the Minister agree that the best way to resolve this issue is to refer it to ACAS?

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

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, for bringing forward a debate on this important issue; what a pleasure it is to stand across the Dispatch Box from her. I look forward to many more debates with her in future. I also thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its role in considering these regulations, which are a part of my department’s efforts to ensure that there is an excellent teacher for every child.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to the criticism from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about the quality of, in particular, the initial Explanatory Memorandum prepared by the department. I absolutely acknowledge that the original version of the Explanatory Memorandum did not meet the committee’s needs. My officials responded promptly and in full to the committee’s queries and re-laid the Explanatory Memorandum when those issues were raised. We committed to publish our projections in response to the committee’s original request and were in the process of doing so when the committee wrote to my right honourable friend Nick Gibb, the Minister for School Standards, to request them—so I do not accept the assertion made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the department hindered this. There was absolutely no intent to hinder.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

It is not my assertion; it is the assertion of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Well, I would just like to put on record that, although the department absolutely regrets the quality of the initial Explanatory Memorandum, there was no intent to hinder.

I turn to the wider issues and the content of the statutory instrument. As your Lordships know, qualified teacher status is seen as a gold standard globally. When fully rolled out, these regulations will introduce a level playing field in the recognition of overseas professional teaching qualifications. They will replace a system where some teachers can have their qualifications recognised with ease while others who may be equally qualified cannot. We initially projected that up to 1,200 more overseas teachers could be awarded qualified teacher status through these changes, but it is already clear that this is likely to be a conservative estimate; I will talk more about that in a moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, said that she regretted the impact that this could have on the teaching profession overseas. We are taking a more cautious approach to the rollout of our policy and will initially allow applications only from teachers who are qualified in mathematics, the sciences and languages in certain countries. Of course, we will monitor very closely the actual level of migration to teaching posts in England by teachers from newly eligible countries. We are in close contact with the regulators in those countries to monitor and discuss the impact of this.

Since we launched the Apply for QTS service on 1 February, we have seen a very high number of applications from many teachers able to apply for the first time. This has been driven by news coverage of the scheme overseas, some of which has been inaccurate and led to some misunderstanding of the scheme as offering candidates a job directly. Our initial review suggests that there will be a large number of candidates who do not meet the eligibility criteria, which rightly prioritises quality and subject need. But the significant level of interest from those who will meet the eligibility criteria is positive and shows that international recruitment can help boost teacher recruitment in shortage subjects. We will be able to provide a fuller picture of award numbers in the coming months, once applicants have gone through our assessment process. That will mean that the information we provide gives a true picture of the numbers of teachers who may apply for jobs in our schools.

Further, to attract the very best teachers from around the world we have also introduced an international relocation payment worth £10,000 to help overseas teachers and trainees in physics and languages to relocate to England, for the reasons that both noble Lords set out, and we have made bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000 available to non-UK trainees in the same subjects.

The noble Baroness questioned whether we had a coherent and holistic plan for the teaching workforce in England, and I say that international candidates are just one element of our plan. In 2019, we launched the first ever integrated strategy both to recruit and retain more teachers; that has been developed alongside, and welcomed by, teachers, education unions and professional bodies. We have made good progress on this: we opened the National Institute of Teaching, published the department’s first ever Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, refreshed the content of teacher training, and introduced the early-career framework, with all the support that that offers to early-career teachers.

Food Price Rises: Public Sector Food Provision

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think that I in part addressed that point in response to my noble friend earlier. We absolutely are supporting our domestic farmers and food production industry, but equally it is important that we give flexibility to schools to respond to opportunities in their local markets. They understand their needs and can deliver for the children in their care.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will agree that we want all children to have a nutritional hot dinner, particularly at lunchtime. She will also be aware that, when the coalition Government introduced free meals at key stage 1, there was a massive take-up of young people having a hot school dinner. Now we see a large and increasing number of families coming to school with a packed lunch, which in many cases is not nutritional and certainly is not warm. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that packed lunches are of nutritional value to the children who bring them into school?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

There is obviously a limit to the extent to which the Government should direct individual parents on the food they provide for their children. We are ambitious for our children’s understanding of the importance of nutrition and for their own opportunities to cook at school and become more confident in how to cook nutritious and affordable food. Again, I am aware of a number of examples of schools working closely with parents to equip them with those skills not just for lunchtime but for the evening.

School Buildings: Risk of Collapsing

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend asked about some very detailed aspects in that question, and I am happy to respond to her in writing. The department has regular exercises through which we test out a number of different scenarios, including the one my noble friend outlines.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, many children are taught in temporary accommodation—portakabins, or, as they are known in the trade, demountables, many of which are in the most appalling condition. In reply to a question from my right honourable friend Ed Davey, the Secretary of State could not say how many demountables or portakabins there were, or where they were placed. We need to know where this unsuitable temporary accommodation is, and a programme for replacing it. Will the Minister look into this?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am more than happy to write to the noble Lord with the details of where those portakabins are. We do have a programme for replacing them and, more broadly, schools that are in poor condition. That programme has been accelerated very significantly: 100 new schools were approved for rebuilding in 2021, and 300 in 2022.

Children: Bereavement Support in Schools

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

One hundred children every day are bereaved of a parent. From my own experience, I remember my two nephews losing their dad when they were seven and nine. There was little to no support from their primary school, and that is quite endemic to the problem we now face. Would the Minister agree that we need, as we have heard, every school to have a policy on bereavement, staff to have training on bereavement and, thirdly, a commitment to every school having full-time or part-time professional mental health support in the school?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sorry to hear of the noble Lord’s nephews’ personal experience of this. Of course, many of us in this House have been touched in different ways by the issues raised by the noble Baroness’s Question. The Government are doing many of the things the noble Lord points to. I mentioned training; every state school is being offered a grant, as are colleges, to train a senior mental health lead so that we have an effective response to these issues. Of course, education staff are not mental health staff in general, and nor are they bereavement or trauma specialists, but they are very well placed to observe the behaviour of children day to day and respond to that.

School Meals: Funding

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I commend my noble friend for the work she did during the pandemic when she was standing up very flexible responses. We continue to work very closely with schools to ensure that children get the support they need.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware from reports from various charities that there are children going to school who have not had a proper breakfast. She will be aware that children do not always get proper meals. This is not acceptable. She will recall that the coalition Government brought in free meals for all children in key stage 1. When asked about this, she always says that the benefit system is the way we provide support. If that money is not going directly to provide these meals, what is the Minister’s answer?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Minister’s answer is the same as when the noble Lord, understandably, challenged the Government on this quite recently. There are essentially two choices one can make. One is to give multiple smaller, specific handouts for particular issues. The other is to give funding to parents and allow the parents to choose how they wish to spend it. The Government believe in the latter.

Initial Teacher Training Providers

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If I understood my noble friend’s question correctly, I can tell him that there has been a reaccreditation of all providers in the field. Some providers chose not to apply to be reaccredited, some new providers applied, and the majority of both university and school-based providers were successful—80% of universities and 83% of school-based providers. We have been looking at supporting those successful organisations to work, where appropriate, with those that were not successful, to make sure that we can build those partnerships and ensure we have the capacity we need.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

With those accreditors that lost their accreditation, we are obviously going to lose their skills and subject knowledge. How can we use that effectively? Can the Minister assure us that, in certain shortage subjects—we mentioned physics—accreditors that have been the pipe stream providing those teachers are not ones that have lost their accreditation?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really am sympathetic to the issues that the noble Lord raises, but our principal focus is on the quality of initial teacher training, and then of course on the whole early career framework, to support teachers in the golden thread of support and training that the noble Lord has heard me talk about many times. That is our number one focus, and we will of course make sure that there is sufficient capacity and that those skills are used in the partnerships that I have already outlined.

Education System

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be happy to discuss this further with the noble Earl, but when we look at the data on uptake of some of these practical subjects, we can see very strong growth in computer science and design and technology, particularly at A-level.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that for every child to have the opportunities that she talks about it is important that we identify those children with special educational needs at an early age. She will also recall the Children and Families Act 2014, which we thought was going to be ground-breaking. Yet in terms of special educational needs we see long delays, tribunals or appeals systems costing millions, and Health not engaging. Can the Minister tell us why a comprehensive post-legislative review of the Act was eight years after it received Royal Assent?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware of the details of the timing of the post-legislative review but I point the noble Lord to the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision Green Paper, which the Government published and have consulted on, in which we really strive to address many of the issues that the noble Lord has raised; namely, that we should have a trusted, non-antagonistic system that is fair and transparent that parents feel confidence in and children can flourish in.

Young People: Skills (Youth Unemployment Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, the Government welcome the report Skills for Every Young Person and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for securing this debate and for his skilful and inclusive chairing, as has been referred to several times. I thank all members of the committee who contributed to the report and all noble Lords who have spoken today with such clarity. I was also pleased to see that the Government’s successes were recognised in the report, such as the establishment of careers hubs and the decreased rate of those not in education, employment or training for 16 to 18 year-olds in particular, which is currently one of the lowest on record at 6.4%.

As the report acknowledges, young people were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic, but I am pleased to say that through the historic levels of support, which your Lordships have acknowledged tonight, provided through the Government’s plan for jobs package, including programmes focusing on young people, we have seen a strong recovery.

A number of the report’s recommendations and of the comments from your Lordships tonight relate to school curriculums, so I will begin there. Every state-funded school must offer an ambitious curriculum that must be balanced and broadly based, promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and prepare them for wide-ranging experiences of life. I did not recognise some of the descriptions of the curriculum that your Lordships shared tonight. The curriculum currently encompasses both knowledge and skills, and the published programmes of study for national curriculum subjects demonstrate how knowledge and skills are intertwined. A very large body of evidence shows that fluency of knowledge acts as the building block for the development of skills.

Yours Lordships’ report recommends embedding digital skills within the national curriculum, so it might be worth mentioning here that that computing is a statutory subject within the national curriculum across key stages 1 to 4. There was a 16% increase in the number of students taking computer science in 2022. It was the second-fastest growth rate in STEM subjects after design and technology so, with respect, I do not recognise the description by my noble friend that there has been no innovation since the Edwardian curriculum. I am not aware of Edwardians studying computer science or design and technology.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, questioned whether design and technology is seen as important as other subjects on the curriculum. As the noble Lord knows, all state-maintained schools must teach DT to pupils between the ages of five and 14, that is in key stages 1 to 3. There is also a statutory entitlement for every pupil in key stage 4 to take DT if they want to, and the new Ofsted inspection arrangements place renewed focus on that broad, balanced and ambitious curriculum. We are also working very closely with a number of organisations, including the James Dyson Foundation, the Design and Technology Association and the Royal Academy of Engineering, to make sure that the curriculum is up to date and gives the knowledge and skills that employers want.

I turn to careers guidance, which was highlighted by the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, Lord Aberdare and Lord Shipley, as well as other noble Lords. We know that there is huge value in good careers guidance in terms of nurturing aspiration and ambition, and your Lordships rightly focused on the Gatsby benchmarks in your report. To give one example of their impact, evidence suggests that the proportion of post-16 students who are not in employment, education or training fell by 20.1% in the most disadvantaged quarter of schools since they adopted the benchmarks, and 90% of schools and colleges are currently part of a careers hub, which is accelerating the quality of careers provision. We are seeing rapid improvements in hubs and disadvantaged areas are among the best performers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, raised the important subject of careers education in primary school. We recognise the value of supporting primary schools to help children explore the world of work, and careers provision is embedded in the key stage 2 citizenship curriculum. Thanks to the Careers and Enterprise Company, we have also provided all primary schools with resources to help pupils explore the world of work and, as the noble Lords who joined me in debating the skills Bill will remember, we have allocated £2.6 million over the current spending review period to bring new programmes to support careers education in primary schools in the 55 education investment areas.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Aberdare, talked about a duty for young people to receive work experience. We absolutely agree about the importance of work experience, as is very visible in the whole approach we have taken to T-levels. A lot of work is going on in this area. There are now 400 cornerstone employers bringing together business effort and engagement with local schools and colleges and increasing the number of employer encounters for young people. We have more than 3,500 business professionals working as enterprise advisers with schools and colleges to develop their career strategies and plans for engaging with employers. If I may, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on the Gatsby benchmarks and go through the numbers. I fear I may be writing a long letter at the end of this debate, as I fear I will not have a chance to do justice to all the points raised.

The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Addington, made a really important point about the need for a culture change. The Government can do their bit but, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, parents and employers also need to play a part. We continue with our ambition to achieve equality of esteem between academic and technical routes. That will depend on the quality of the offer and on breaking down barriers between further and higher education.

The report made a number of references to bringing funding for further education more in line with that for higher education, so I hope noble Lords will be encouraged that from 2023-24 higher technical qualification student finance will be brought on a par with degrees. This is just one step, along with the lifelong loan entitlement and other reforms this Government are bringing in.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, described a top-down, soviet model of policy in this area. I think she referred to local skills improvement partnerships. I hope she will acknowledge that they are an important positive devolution of responsibility in making sure that we get the best possible interface with local areas.

As a Government, we are delighted that T-levels got off to a great start with the first cohort of students completing their courses this year with an impressive 92% pass rate. Your Lordships will be aware that every T-level includes important modules on digital skills. On the T-level transition programme, we are very clear that we need to support young people who might need a bit more help to access the programme and to ensure that that ladder of opportunity leads to higher technical qualifications.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, talked about what Labour would do in terms of a range of short courses and flexible options. I thought it sounded remarkably similar to the short courses and flexible options that we have been providing. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, touched on this. We have skills boot camps delivering flexible training for new skills in green construction, renewable energy, protection of natural resources and the transport sector, including, I hope the noble Viscount will be pleased to hear, £34 million so that 11,000 adults have been able to train as HGV drivers to meet some of the gaps there. In terms of green transport skills, I was sorry to hear about the noble Lord’s visit; I went to see a college recently which was very much focused on electric vehicles, so maybe this is just in transition.

Obviously, apprenticeships need no introduction to the House. The report made several recommendations for widening the support for apprentices under the age of 25. Currently, 53% of apprenticeship starts are by young people under this age—I was not sure that I recognised the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, cited. But we want to support even more young people to realise the benefits of apprenticeships; several references were made in the debate to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and her remarkable career starting as an apprentice. Noble Lords will also recognise the voice of my honourable friend the Minister for Skills, who formerly was chair of the Education Select Committee and has been a passionate advocate in this area. So there is no lack of enthusiasm in the department.

One of our measures is a new career starter apprenticeship campaign. We are trying to showcase apprenticeships suitable for those leaving full-time education. We know, too, that there is huge demand for degree-level apprenticeships; we are seeing year-on-year growth of apprenticeships at levels 6 and 7, and we are enabling higher education institutions to grow their delivery through the strategic priorities grant.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Storey, made the valid point about the apprenticeship completion rate, which we are very focused on. We are aiming to reach a 67% achievement rate on apprenticeship standards by the end of the 2024-25 academic year, and we have a programme of actions to make that a reality in terms of investing in a new development programme for the provider workforce, offering targeted support for employees and ensuring that apprentices get the best information, support and advice before and during the programme. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, cited the main reason. How many times can I hit this microphone? It is every time I turn the page. I apologise to your Lordships.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, suggested that levy funds should be ring-fenced for young people and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, made the case for the need to keep upskilling and reskilling our existing workforce. Clearly, our ambition is to offer opportunities in both areas.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for recognising the work that we have done on the Unit for Future Skills. I remember arriving in the department on almost my first day, sitting down with the Skills Minister and asking for the data on how we join this up—so I am personally delighted to see that we have taken this area forward. The unit is very ambitious about improving the quality and availability of data on skills and jobs, and we are making fantastic progress on that already.

I turn to green skills and I hope that the daughter of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will have an amazing career ahead of her—I am sure she will. I was very lucky to attend the COP 27 summit, really making the case for the importance of education in our sustainability agenda. We are working domestically but also, importantly, internationally, on the whole green skills agenda. Clearly, there will be global competition for green skills. We will deliver the first ever international green skills conference next year, and we are working with the further and higher education sectors, and with young people. We have been fantastically supported by the young people’s panel, industry and policymakers to deliver a conference that will really showcase the best of green skills learning and training opportunities and highlight green career paths and enhanced international partnerships. We have a very ambitious strategy on this in the department and, of course, many of our T-levels and other qualifications will underpin skills in this sector. I genuinely believe—not just for the daughter of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, but for all young people—that the scale of opportunity in an area that young people care so passionately about is really fantastic, so I hope that young people will leave equipped with the skills that they need and also with the hope that they can use them.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, questioned the impact of the Kickstart scheme. Since the launch in September 2020, over 160,000 Kickstart jobs were started by young people. Now that the scheme has closed, we are evaluating and learning from it. We built on Kickstart’s success to influence the Way to Work campaign, where we helped over 500,000 job-ready claimants, including young people, into work between January and June this year. The campaign provides claimants with more time with their work coaches and more nurtured connections with local employers to improve their employability. Through the Youth Offer, we are helping thousands of eligible 16 to 24 year-olds from all backgrounds to overcome the barriers and find work. It offers individually tailored work coach support.

The noble Lord asked about the qualifications of work coaches, who are part of the workforce. They are offered a tailored learning and development programme, so they have skills and knowledge, but also technical knowledge of the benefits to coaching, and they are encouraged to signpost customers who would benefit from expert careers advice to the National Careers Service.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I presume that is not a formal qualification but an in-house requirement.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

That is correct. That is not to say that some of them do not have formal qualifications, but they receive additional support.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, highlighted some powerful examples of children from minority communities, particularly in Tower Hamlets, and the barriers they face. I do not have the detailed data on the boroughs that she referred to, but 24% of those currently engaged in further education and skills education come from diverse backgrounds. We have an apprenticeship diversity champions network, which promotes diversity to employers and encourages people from BAME communities to consider apprenticeships. We have seen a significant rise in apprenticeship starts from those communities, and of course the noble Baroness will be aware that there has been a significant rise since 2010 in the number of 18 year-olds from ethnic minority backgrounds going to university, from 32% to 50%.

A number of noble Lords asked about funding for further education and skills in the recent Autumn Statement. I remind your Lordships that the Government have introduced major structural reforms, investing £3.8 billion in skills over the life of this Parliament.

In closing, we are rightly proud of our successes, and we absolutely recognise that some young people continue to face additional barriers to employment, including those from ethnic minority communities and those with special educational needs and disabilities. The reforms and measures I have outlined are about every young person fulfilling their potential, as well as equipping young people for the future workforce. They aim to give young people the opportunity to progress, whatever their choices and wherever they live. They are about better prospects for disadvantaged young people, because we share the commitment in your Lordships’ report that no young person should be left behind.

Child Hunger in Schools

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, of course no child should go starving. Would the Minister not consider extending the coalition’s policy of giving free school meals to all key stage 1 children to key stage 2, and at secondary school—key stage 3—ensure that every pupil whose parents are on universal credit gets a free school meal?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think I have tried to answer that question in a couple of ways. It comes down to: should the Government be funding a number of separate things to support parents or should the Government be putting money in the hands of parents so that they can make the choices that are right for their families? This Government believe in the latter.

Kinship Care

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I agree that it is cost effective, but I know that the noble Lord agrees that it is also really important because of the stability it offers children. It substantially outperforms other forms of care in educational and employment outcomes.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, noble Lords can go on to the charity Kinship’s website and look at each parliamentary constituency to see how many children are in care and how many are in kinship arrangements. In Liverpool Wavertree, there are 601 children in kinship care and 330 in local authority care. Does the Minister not think we need to ensure that all those children have the possibility of kinship care? One way to do that is to make sure that financial and other support is available for them; it should not be left to discretionary arrangements by local authorities that may or may not pay. Will the Minister and the Government give real consideration to making sure there is that support for these parents and relatives?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, the Government are considering all the review’s recommendations. More broadly on the noble Lord’s point, the variability in the use of kinship care across different local authorities is also very striking. For some local authorities it is as low as 2%; for others it is over a quarter.

Children in Care

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As a department, we look at all those options, but on the one hand we need to recognise the extraordinary challenges children faced particularly through Covid—particularly teenagers while their schools were closed—but we also need to acknowledge that we are in an economy with more opportunity and more job opportunities than ever before. I think we need to be empathetic to their experience but also optimistic for their futures.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will be aware that, over the past decade, an increasing number of children and young people have been put in placements outside their home area—there has been something like a 28% increase. Just imagine the trauma and mental anguish that that causes. We find that very vulnerable children often go missing. It is important that children relate to their area. Rather than more words, what can we practically do to ensure that this practice ceases?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think more money rather than more words. We have supported local authorities to meet their statutory duties through capital investment totalling £259 million, which will allow them to maintain and expand capacity in their areas.

Family-strengthening Policies

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know the noble Baroness will recognise that the Government have committed £37 billion to households most in need, and that £8 million of the most vulnerable households will receive an additional £1,200 of support for energy bills.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the current Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has a stated aim of ensuring that no child grows up in an institution. What help are the Government giving to ensure that that noble aim is achieved?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware of the work that was done by Josh MacAlister in his independent review of children’s social care and by the Competition and Markets Authority on children’s homes. We have said that we are considering both those reports, and we will report back later this year.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

That is the statutory guidance, but what is the Minister’s department doing in relation to those many local authorities which take no notice?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

That was in relation to illegal settings, and we hope that is straightforward. Alternative provision education is delivered in other settings—as the noble Lord has rightly drawn attention to—which do not receive state funding, are not required to register as an independent school, and do not meet, currently, the requirements for registration. The noble Lord is aware, I think, that in the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision Green Paper, we made a commitment to strengthening protections for children and young people in unregistered alternative provision settings, so that every placement is safe, offers good-quality education and has clear oversight. If I understand correctly, that is exactly what the noble Lord also aspires to.

I am pleased to report that on 11 July the department issued a call for evidence on the use of unregistered alternative provision settings. Again, I place on record my thanks to the noble Lord for his insistence and persistence on this very important issue, which is important, as he pointed out, for children whose parents may not have the confidence to challenge the system. The information collected will help us find the right solution that addresses these concerns effectively and proportionately.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for his Amendments 97A, 118J and 118K, and for the very constructive way that we have been able to work together. I hope we can continue to work together to address the points that he has raised. We have worked with Ofsted to develop the package of measures to investigate illegal schools, to ensure that we can take effective action against unlawful behaviour. Since Ofsted started investigating unregistered schools in 2016, we have gained a much better understanding of how to tackle this sector. There have been six successful prosecutions. The number of cases investigated reflects an increase in efforts to investigate. The actual number of unregistered schools, as the noble Lord knows, is unknown, sadly, but the measures in this Bill have been developed—working together with Ofsted—to address the key issues in the sector, which the noble Lord has rightly drawn attention to.

We believe that Amendment 97A is not necessary as we can already prosecute companies and charities which are operating schools unlawfully. We already inform the Charity Commission when charities are prosecuted. Education and childcare behaviour orders will allow courts to prevent individuals from continuing to operate from buildings that have been used for illegal schools. When we were developing the measures, we also looked at whether it would be appropriate to create measures which would allow action against landlords, in the way that the noble Lord’s amendment has set out. This is a very complex area, and we concluded that education and childcare behaviour orders, which could prevent those convicted of an offence from continuing to operate from a given site, were the more appropriate mechanism.

Amendment 118J replicates powers that Ofsted already has. Genuine part-time settings are not under a statutory obligation to register, so would not be caught by the proposed amendment. There is ongoing engagement between the department, Ofsted and other stakeholders on the effectiveness of measures to tackle unregistered schools. The effectiveness of the legislation will be kept under review. The need for accountability suggested by Amendment 118K is, we believe, best secured through the annual report that Ofsted presents to Parliament.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 110, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. We believe that this amendment is unnecessary as existing provisions—specifically in Section 136 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and in Clause 65 of the Bill—already ensure that new local authority education functions under the Bill will be within scope of Ofsted’s inspection powers. I therefore ask my noble friend Lord Lucas to withdraw Amendment 87 and hope that other noble Lords will not move theirs.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Committee stage
Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we support all three amendments in this group. I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I start by telling the Committee that every single school on Merseyside has a defibrillator. Why? As we have heard, at the school that my daughter attended at the time, a young boy called Oliver King had a tragic sudden cardiac arrest in the swimming pool and died. As noble Lords can imagine, the school was grief-stricken; the pupils and the staff needed counselling. However, from that awful tragedy something wonderful happened, in that Mark King established a charity in his son’s name, the Oliver King Foundation, with the simple aim of putting a defibrillator in every school on Merseyside. As noble Lords can imagine, the community rallied round—the local press, benefactors, et cetera—and it happened. As we have heard from other noble Lords, Mark has continued his mission, not just for Merseyside but for schools throughout the UK. He was a frequent visitor to Parliament, trying to encourage MPs and Peers to get behind his campaign. I have to single out former Education Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for whom I managed to arrange meetings with Mark King. The noble Lord had planned to celebrate, so that when we reached the target of, say, 1,000 defibrillators in schools, we would have a party. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, was reshuffled, or decided to leave, and that never happened, but he was very helpful and supportive in that campaign.

I mention that it is not going to be expensive, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, rightly said. We are not allowed to use props or visual aids in the Chamber, but an Australian and a Canadian—noble Lords have probably met them as well—have come up with something, because most cardiac arrests actually happen in the home. They do not happen in public places, at schools or sporting events; most happen in the home and it is too expensive to spend several thousand pounds to have a defibrillator in your house unless you are very wealthy. These two people—one is an inventor and the other a salesperson—have invented a defibrillator which is about the size of a notebook. They are very simple to use and they cost, I think, just under £200. If you cannot afford that, there is a monthly subscription of a few pounds, and there is no reason why everybody should not have one in their home. For those who cannot afford one, there should be some mechanism of support. I gave mine to my noble friend Lady Walmsley and she promised me she would show it to the Health Minister. Maybe she will show it to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, as well, or I will get it back off my noble friend. It is a real way forward.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, when he rightly says that this is about protecting young lives. There are various other things we can do. Defibrillators should be available in every school, but so too, for example, should an EpiPen—it should be mandatory for every school to have one. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, puts his finger on it when he says that every school should include first aid training as part of its curriculum. It does not take long. There is a gap when year 6 pupils have finished their SATs and are kicking their heels before they go to secondary school. That is an ideal time to do first aid training. It could be four or five sessions, and St John Ambulance or the Red Cross are only too willing to help out. There are wonderful schemes whereby they can provide lesson notes and all the rest.

Similarly, another area that should be mandated—by the way, I have a Private Member’s Bill on this—is water safety. We could prevent young people drowning if people knew proper water safety. This is about preserving lives, so it is hugely important. I am sorry that I have repeated the points that others have made.

The amendments on school buildings are absolutely right. At Second Reading I mentioned the internal memos, which the Minister will know about, outlining real concerns about the safety of our school buildings. This has gone on for a while—the coalition time was mentioned; I am not sure if that is true but perhaps it is. Of course, the Building Schools for the Future programme was excellent, but many of the buildings were very shoddily built and had a life expectancy of 20 or 25 years. Never mind the whole business of PFIs and whether they were good value for money—we will not go there—but I know from personal experience that many of the buildings, certainly the ones I have seen, are quite shoddy in my opinion; they are well past their proper use. These two amendments are hugely important and I hope that, between now and Report, we can look at them carefully and see what support we can give.

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

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for Amendment 156. Well-maintained and safe buildings and facilities are essential to support high-quality education, and they remain a priority for this Government. Perhaps the noble Baroness will be very kind and pass on my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for her update on the Welsh strategy.

As my noble friend Lady Berridge pointed out, responsibility for school buildings lies with the relevant local authority, academy trust or voluntary-aided school body. Those organisations are best placed to prioritise available resources to keep schools safe and in good working order, based on their local knowledge. We provide significant annual capital funding, major rebuilding programmes, and extensive guidance and support to the sector. We have allocated more than £13 billion to improve the condition of schools since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed this year.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am obviously cautious about speaking on behalf of Ofsted, but we have worked closely with it in developing this legislation. My understanding is that it is content, but I would not want to speak on its behalf, as it is an independent body.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

That is a very fair answer but between Committee and Report, will the Minister just make sure that Ofsted is completely content and there are no further loopholes?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be delighted to do that.

I was talking about how institutions might be operating separately but effectively as one institution. The evidence Ofsted might use to establish that could relate to individuals acting in concert or other evidence of links between the activities, such as the same pupils being educated on different premises. Clause 63 is intended to enhance Ofsted’s powers of inspection in these circumstances. This could include the investigation of so-called “tapestry schools”, with which the noble Lord is rightly concerned. In brief, we believe that those loopholes are closed.

As I explained, we do not believe it appropriate to regulate part-time settings until we have considered the response to the call for evidence on unregistered alternative provision. However, as we have discussed at length, parents have a duty to ensure that their children who are of compulsory school age receive a suitable full-time education. As we know from our earlier debates, local authorities can check this, and where a parent cannot demonstrate that the settings a child attends provide a suitable education, a school attendance order could of course be issued. A parent who sends their child to a different setting that provides only a narrow religious education with no secular education each weekday is very unlikely to be ensuring that their child receives a suitable full-time education, which I think is the point the noble Lord is rightly concerned about. I would be delighted to meet with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord to work through some of these examples in detail to assure them that we are meeting the spirit of their amendments.

Amendment 154 from the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman, would remove the charitable status of independent educational institutions. When the noble Baroness talked about a change of tone, I thought for a minute that we were going to go to a certain place, but I thank her for the very measured way in which she made her case.

Independent schools that are charities are already obliged to show public benefit, as the noble Baroness acknowledged. She questioned the strength of that, but we are concerned that we should avoid piecemeal reform of charity law, aimed at only one group of charities. The amendment risks creating pressure to extend the removal of charitable status to other sectors. All charities must exist for public benefit, but they are not required to serve the whole public. It is not clear why this principle should change for one group, namely independent schools, and not for other charities.

As my noble friend Lord Lexden explained better than I can and with much greater experience, 85% of independent school council members are already involved in cross-sector working. I have met with a number of schools that are in different partnerships. I think there is a real sense of mutual benefit for the private schools and state-funded schools working together. I know that the noble Baroness and the Government will not agree on this point, but we see independent schools as an asset in our school system. Our responsibility is to make sure they fulfil their charitable purpose and that we use that asset to maximum benefit.

Finally, on Amendment 171G, also from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, schools are already under a statutory duty to act in accordance with the arrangements set out by local safeguarding partners. The noble Baroness will remember the recommendations made in Sir Alan Wood’s report following the review of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. The Government legislated in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 to remove the requirement for local authorities to establish local safeguarding children’s boards. The 2004 Children Act was then amended by the 2017 Act to include provisions relating to those three safeguarding partners—the local authority, police and health—including a duty to make arrangements for them and any appropriate relevant agencies to work together to deliver their safeguarding functions. So there is some history here that we need to remember and take into consideration. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to point out that the independent review included a recommendation to make schools a statutory safeguarding partner. It is something that needs proper consideration and to which we will respond in our implementation strategy later this year.

I therefore ask my noble friend Lord Lucas to withdraw his Amendment 146A and I ask other noble Lords not to move the amendments in their names.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand. However, that would be a civil matter but we will confirm it in writing.

If I may proceed, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker, Lady Brinton and Lady Garden, and the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Knight of Weymouth, for Amendments 97D, 97E, 102 and 103, which all seek for additional information to be included on the registers. The Bill allows for regulations to be made prescribing details of the means by which a child is being educated and other information that must be included in registers.

The Government have already signalled their intention for certain information to be required for inclusion on the registers via regulations, such as ethnicity, sex and other demographic information. This is in addition to whether a child is electively home educated or receiving their education in other settings. The delegated powers in the Bill would also allow for prescription of further data at a later date, which could include, for example, unique identifying numbers if that were desired.

I turn to Amendments 104 to 109, tabled in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. Under the new measures, local authorities will be able to require parents to provide them only with the information prescribed in legislation. They may, however, record any other information in their registers that they consider appropriate and have collected through other channels.

To be clear, local authorities will be able to require parents to provide them only with the information that is prescribed in legislation; in this case it will be secondary legislation. I hear the concerns raised by noble Lords, particularly in relation to proposed new Section 436C(1)(d). I will take that away and reflect on your Lordships’ comments.

Amendments that limit this ability could cause local authorities to act with unnecessary caution in relation to the collection and inputting of information. There may be cases where data, such as special category data, is collected that may not be initially deemed directly relevant to safeguarding a child or in their best interests but could in future be critical to protecting that child from harm.

On Amendments 113 and 114 from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, I will try to reassure her that any provision made in regulations will be lawful only if it has been “reasonably” made. I also thank her for her Amendment 98. Under education law, each parent of every child of compulsory school age is legally responsible for ensuring that their child receives an efficient full-time education. It is therefore appropriate that the name and address of each parent be recorded in the registers.

I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for Amendments 98A, 101A, 104A, 110A and 126B, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for Amendments 111, 112 and 127, which raise the important issue of data protection. Regarding data retention, the Bill already allows for regulations to make provision about the format and keeping of registers, as well as about access to and publication of the register. It is the Government’s intention to use this power to stipulate how local authorities must keep the information on their registers up to date and whether and how information is to be published. The requirement in the Bill for local authorities to provide prescribed information to the Secretary of State will help inform policy development; for example, in relation to the types and level of support needed by families and whether particular groups need more support than others.

It is also important that the Secretary of State is able to, if needed, collect individual level data. This can be linked to other datasets for research purposes; for example, to understand who benefits from home education. It is also vital in improving our understanding of children going “missing” from data systems. We would be unable to gather a full picture of this from aggregated data. The Government do not intend to use the power on setting out how the registers are published to instruct local authorities to publish personal information about children or families, but again, I will reflect on the comments made by your Lordships in relation to that.

Registers will also include important information on children that may aid other professionals’ work for the purposes of promoting or safeguarding the education or welfare of the child. It is therefore necessary to enable relevant information to be shared with certain other persons external to a local authority without delay, especially where children are at risk of immediate harm.

Existing UK GDPR obligations will apply, however, and should ensure that all the information held in the registers is protected like any other personal data. It also requires that personal data not be kept for longer than is necessary and is proportionate to achieve the purpose of keeping it. Data protection will be a strong focus in the new statutory guidance, and we will continue to engage with stakeholders on that prior to publication.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for Amendments 100 and 101. Regulations are likely only to require details of where a child is being educated and the proportion of time there. This will help local authorities to ensure that children are receiving a suitable education and identify those who are missing education or attending illegal schools.

I turn to Amendments 109A and 110. These amendments relate to the ability to make regulations relating to provisions for the maintenance and publication of children not in school registers. The power to make regulations about whether and how the contents of registers are to be made available or published is important to ensure consistency across local authorities; consistency, or rather the current lack of it, has been mentioned by many of your Lordships today.

However, it may also be appropriate for some of this to be for local authorities to determine, based on local circumstances and requirements. For example, while we would expect to make regulations concerning how the register is to be kept updated, we may not initially wish to prescribe the registration forms that local authorities must use. Similarly, we may not ultimately wish to prescribe whether an authority needs to publish specific information from its register.

I turn to Amendment 133 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox. The regulations prescribing the information to be provided to the Secretary of State have a narrow scope, as only information included within a local authority register can be shared. Information will be used to inform policy development to support safeguarding and children not in school. The Government believe that the negative resolution is appropriate for these regulations.

Regarding Amendment 171S, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, existing UK GDPR obligations will apply and require that all the information held in the registers is protected, like any other personal data. In addition, work is already under way in my department to develop a certification process, independently endorsed by the Information Commissioner’s Office, that will cover the education sector to regulate the sharing of children’s data across the whole sector in a better way.

I hope I have managed to cover this large group of amendments on this important topic. I will take away a number of your Lordships’ remarks and reflect on them. With that, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, feels able to withdraw her amendment and that other noble Lords will not press theirs.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Before the Minister finishes, I say that the local authorities have been heavily involved in this data information issue. What sort of consultations were held with the Local Government Association and what information do local authorities actually need about a child?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If I may, I will include the answer to that question in a letter to the noble Lord.

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we too very much welcome this review and thank all those involved in presenting it to us. I associate my remarks with all those people involved in working with children and families at all sorts of levels; they do an amazing and fantastic job.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care provides an opportunity to unlock potential for recognising that loving relationships and supporting kinship networks lead the way to sustainable and ideal solutions for children in social care. Her Majesty’s Government’s response focuses on providing foster carers and social workers with more support but does not address the supporting of children themselves. This review is a wake-up call to Ministers who, after a series of reviews, must finally address the scale and severity of the challenge to provide adequate support to those who rely on us. The report recommends injecting a minimum of £2.6 billion into the care system over the next four years. Will the Minister reassure us that the Government will commit to this kind of important investment?

The Government’s response so far does not address the discrepancy between care-leavers and the continuing success of the individual throughout their life. Every child, no matter where they live or what their circumstances, deserves a great start in life so that they can have the support, relationships, skills and knowledge needed to succeed. We on these Benches believe in young people being allowed to stay in care until the age of 25, as well as increased financial resources through expanding the bursary for those leaving care from £1,000 to £2,000, access to mentors and support networks. We champion bridging the gap between care and a fulfilling adult life in a way that current government policy does not meaningfully address.

Furthermore, Her Majesty’s Government’s proposed policy places the onus of finding care providers for vulnerable young children on the relevant local authority while underfunding those very same councils. The providers in the private sector are charging exorbitant rates—£4,000 a week—for inadequate care, knowing full well that there is a shortage of care providers. The predictable outcome is that the authority finds care from the lowest bidders, often unregistered providers with no quality assurance of care.

Young people are the future of our nation. How can we be content to allow such a situation to continue? Can the Minister give an assurance that the Government will stop these vulnerable children and young people going into inadequate, unregistered care provision? We welcome many of the review’s recommendations, including a renewed emphasis on supporting families, financial allowance to parental and kinship carers at the same rate as foster carers, and providing parental leave to kinship carers. This will support our nation’s most vulnerable young people while allocating funds towards those who are best able to support them.

Without the resources and proper structures of support, children will continue to be placed in unregistered care situations, which can of course be incredibly harmful. It is of paramount importance to use this report as a springboard for sustainable and meaningful change for those who deserve a safe and purposeful upbringing.

We talk about levelling up but, if we are actually to make any meaningful changes, we need to deal with the root causes of what these children and families often find themselves in. It is about making sure that we tackle poverty and provide the best educational opportunities. It is about making sure that families in the most disadvantaged communities are supported.

Finally, I remind the House that we have a Select Committee looking at the Children and Families Act, chaired by my noble friend Lady Tyler. Many of these issues are being discussed in that Select Committee, so I welcome that opportunity as well to highlight these important matters.

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

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their remarks. As a Government, we absolutely acknowledge that the children’s social care system needed a fundamental report. That is why we commissioned this independent, broad and bold review. We will be publishing an ambitious and detailed implementation strategy later this year that will deliver for our most vulnerable children. The noble Baroness asked for a timeline on that; we can be clear that the implementation plan will be published before the end of the year.

Obviously, a lot of work is already ongoing within government but, in response to the review, we have been clear about three key priorities that we want to focus on initially: first, to improve the child protection system so that children are safe; secondly, to support families to raise their children so that they thrive; and finally, for those children who need to be placed in local authority or foster care, to have the right placements in the right places and in a timely way. On Monday we announced plans to establish a national implementation board, which will challenge us to achieve the best for our children. One of the strengths of this review, as I am sure all noble Lords will agree, was the incredible contribution from people with lived experience of the care system. We commit to ensuring that their voices are also represented on that national implementation board.

We are prioritising work with local authorities to recruit more foster carers, which we think can make a real difference in the short term, and to support social workers, particularly early in their career, and give them additional focus on child protection given its key role in their work. We are developing a national children’s social care framework, which will set out a clear direction for the system and provide an evidence base for all those working in the sector. Finally, we are introducing a new digital and data solutions fund, which will help local authorities to improve delivery for children and families through technology.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, commented on the pressures that the social workforce faces. I do not question for a second that those are very real, but I remind the House that the number of social workers has increased by 14% since 2017 to 32,500. One of the points noted in the report was that the average caseload has come down slightly. We are not arguing that every case is the same, but the figures are going in the right direction.

The noble Baroness asked whether we were planning legislation. In response to her question and that of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about our commitment to funding additional services, I say that we need to wait and see what the implementation panel recommends. We will respond to its recommendations but taking real care with implementation is crucial, because your Lordships will all know very well of examples where implementation has not delivered on the aspirations within such reports.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord referred to the situation with children’s homes. This Government are absolutely not against companies making a profit, but we are absolutely against profiteering, which I think was the phrase the noble Baroness used. We are putting funding into local authorities now so that they can expand their provision as quickly as possible while we look at some of the longer-term structural issues raised in the Competition and Markets Authority review as well as the care review.

In relation to unregulated provision for children in care, we are investing over £140 million to introduce new standards and Ofsted-led registration inspections for supported education to ensure that young people are safe and have the high-quality living arrangements that they deserve.

The noble Lord also referred to support for care leavers. We are providing £172 million over the next three years to support care leavers as they transition to independence, with better move-on accommodation and practical and emotional support from a personal adviser.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord rightly challenged the Government on how we will implement this. There is real commitment and ambition to try to address some of the tragedies which we have heard about all too often in this House, and the systemic issues that we face in the child protection and care system. We look forward to working with all noble Lords across the House in our attempts to do this.

Schools White Paper

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for being a few minutes late; I hope that I shall not be sent to the back of the class.

I thank the Minister for the Statement. I like the tone of it; I like the fact that we are celebrating schools and the hard work that teachers do. I detect a real change in the way that we look at our education system.

All the research shows that parents are not interested in structures. We go on about academies, academy chains and LEA schools, but parents want good teachers, good leadership of a school and a curriculum which excites, motivates and enthuses pupils. I am afraid that we get hung up far too often on structures. I think I detect the glimmer of hope that we will again move away from the notion that structures are the way forward—they are not; it has to be about the quality of the education provision and of the teacher.

Turning to academy trusts—we have long debated this in the past—I have a number of observations resulting from the Statement. First, we hear that the voice of the parent should be heard. Perhaps the Minister could assure us that those academy trusts—few, thank goodness—which have done away with governing bodies for each school will be a thing of the past. Schools, even in multi-academy trusts, need to have a governing body, particularly so the parent voice can be heard.

My second observation, which I raised time and again with the Minister in the Lords before this Minister, is about chief executives of academy trusts and how their salaries have got completely out of control—some are getting up to £300,000. Over the last two or three years the number of chief executives of even small academy trusts earning more than £100,000 has grown. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, assuring us that he was going to tackle this issue, but his tackling of the issue has seen the problem escalate rather than get better.

As was mentioned in Oral Questions, academies can choose the curriculum they want. There are certain things which are crucial for all children. Again, when we discuss the White Paper, we need to look at giving all schools the same freedoms and opportunities, but with those freedoms come responsibilities. There are areas of the education curriculum where we should ensure that every school, whether a local authority academy—there is a new thing—a free school, or, if they still exist, any local authority schools not in academy trusts, must teach.

One thing that slightly jarred with me in the Statement was that only one school was mentioned. It was not that anything this school—Oak National Academy—had done was wrong, just that only one was picked out. A teacher would not pick out one clever pupil in the class, they would celebrate the whole class. There are lots of examples of schools which have done just as much, if not more, innovative things than the Oak National Academy. That jarred slightly.

This afternoon we talked about creative subjects and the EBacc. I challenged the Minister to give a direct reply, which she was not able to do, and I understand why. The White Paper will give us all an opportunity to explore the effect the EBacc has had on certain subjects in the curriculum. It might well be—it is not my particular wish, but I got this sense from the Minister’s reply—that she sees T-levels as providing the less academic, more vocational route, hence they would not be part of the EBacc. That would be a grave mistake and the EBacc should encourage creative subjects as well.

I am pleased the Government have listened to the issue of a national school register, but there are a number of other matters, as the Minister well knows, such as unregistered schools. One of the reasons we are not able to take action against unregistered schools, as Ofsted will tell you, is that they can morph into very small units. Unless we are prepared to see home education treated in a different way, it will be very difficult to deal with unregistered schools. That is an area where we need to focus.

We are told that Ofsted will inspect all schools. That is right, but let us remember that schools have been through a terrible time just keeping the doors open and keeping children educated. I would hope that Ofsted would be more about an opportunity to work with schools and would offer a supportive inspection. Rather than waving a big stick where perhaps the wheels have wobbled during the pandemic or things have gone wrong, I hope that Ofsted might proverbially put its arm around the school and say, “Look, these are the issues that need sorting out.”

I have a few questions. First, we know that children from deprived communities have suffered the most for all the reasons that we have debated and discussed in the past. I was a bit disappointed that that issue was not particularly addressed in the comments. Secondly, children have missed out on extra-curricular social and academic experiences—opportunities to develop the skills that they will need for the future. Why have the Government not used the first White Paper in six years to change and expand the range of opportunities that are given to children? Where is the ambition?

The White Paper has so far had quite surprisingly mixed reviews. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that, although the paper outlined promising measures, it lacked ambition or “big ideas”. The Education Policy Institute think tank said that pushing all schools to become academies was “no silver bullet”, and that, although the White Paper contained “some bold aims”, it seemed

“unlikely that many of these bold pledges will … be met.”

My party looks forward to the opportunity that this White Paper gives to address not just the questions that I have raised or those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but issues such as children being permanently excluded from school, how they are treated, and how we need to make sure that we give them a much better opportunity and a much better education. I look forward to working with the Government on the White Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks. I will do my best to respond to them now, but I look forward to further opportunities to discuss the White Paper in more detail.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked where all this comes from and criticised the thinness of the document. The White Paper stems from a very clear ambition for our children at every stage of their schooling and beyond. We have approached this by trying to understand what is already working well in our school system and scaling that up. The gap between what the best schools and trusts achieve for our children at key stage 2 and key stage 4, and what that means for their future prospects, is very sizeable, particularly for disadvantaged children. Our focus is on scaling up what works and has been shown to work over the last 12 years.

The big idea is to make that work on a national scale. I understand why the noble Lord questions where the sparkly new policies are. There are, of course, new elements within the White Paper but the big, difficult idea and the hardest thing to do will be to scale up that quality. Our ambition is crystal clear: it is about quality for all our children. We have approached it in a spirit of looking at the evidence and being very transparent about that evidence. I hope that the noble Lord will have a moment to look at the data annexe that sits with the White Paper; it is not in the hard copy but is available online. I hope he will feel that it is anything but cherry picked. We have made every effort to be as transparent as possible, including both data that supports our arguments and data that does not, so that we can show how we have reached our conclusions. Most importantly, we have approached this in a spirit of fairness—it should feel fair to all of the actors in the system as we move forward.

The noble Lord asks why we have a fixation on academic standards, particularly in English and maths. Of children who did not reach the expected standard at key stage 2, just 21% achieved grade 4 or above in English language at GCSE and only 14% achieved that at key stage 4 in 2019. Of those with five or more GSCEs, 55% completed a degree, compared to 6% of those with fewer; post GCSE, they are 16 percentage points more likely to be employed, and they earn on average £9,000 more a year. I could go on. The impact on the economy is massive—these are huge and important markers at the start of a child’s life which translate to their future prospects, their future social mobility and the future health and wealth of them, their families and our nation.

I did not follow the noble Lord’s argument on the funding formula. It is clearly not at the expense of disadvantaged areas—quite the reverse. We currently have an outdated mechanism for funding our schools. We now have a national funding formula, and we will be working progressively and incrementally to make sure that funding goes to schools directly in response to the need and nature of the cohort that they serve.

The noble Lord also asked about compulsion and requiring schools to become academies. We are keen and have worked very hard in this White Paper to try to make sure everyone involved in the schools system feels they are part of this journey. We are considering all options, and we will engage with the sector to deliver a fully trust-led system.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about the importance of local governing bodies. In preparing the White Paper, we—and I personally—spent a great deal of time with local authority-maintained school heads, particularly primary school heads. One of the things they talked about that was almost universal was a sense of being local and part of their local community. Therefore, in the governance plank of the five planks of our “strong trusts” framework, we are clear that schools need to feel local, have a sense of local identity and have a role in their local community.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, talked about families of schools and families being strung out across the country. I will not take the analogy too far, but we will be working hard on commissioning to make sure we have geographically coherent trusts, so they can benefit from all that that offers.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about CEO salaries. We take that seriously and are continuing to follow on from the good work of my noble friend Lord Agnew. The Oak National Academy is not an individual school; it was the platform that was created during the pandemic that delivered all the digital lessons for children across the country. I apologise if the name was confusing.

To finish, the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson, said we would need a number of measures to turn things around for our children. That is what is in this White Paper—it is about great teachers, a great curriculum, good attendance, good behaviour, a pledge to parents if their children fall behind, and creating a system that delivers the strongest, fairest and most ambitious school system for our children.

Schools: Creative Subjects and the English Baccalaureate

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the teaching of creative subjects in schools since the introduction of the English Baccalaureate.

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

My Lords, the Government remain committed to ensuring that all pupils receive a high-quality cultural education as part of a broad curriculum. This starts during the early years and continues in school, with art and design, design and technology and music all forming part of the national curriculum from age five to 14. The percentage of young people entering at least one arts GCSE between 2010 and 2021 has remained broadly stable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will be aware that since the introduction of the EBacc in schools, there has been and is a creativity crisis—for example, in music there has been a 16.83% fall in A-levels—and there has been a 31.47% fall in students taking those subjects. Obviously, that has a pipeline into universities and only one university now has an English professor. I want to ask the Minister a direct question—no ands, ifs or buts. If it is not the English baccalaureate that is causing the crisis in creative subjects, what is the reason?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We simply do not accept that there is a crisis in creative subjects. The noble Lord rightly quoted some data, but I point out that the percentage of students taking art and design at GCSE is up from 26.5% to 30.4%. He is right that there have been declines in some other subjects, but he will also be aware that the numbers taking vocational and technical qualifications have gone up very substantially, particularly in media: since 2018 the figures for media have risen from 4,500 to 55,000 students.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, coming from up north I do not really understand about the Central line and Crossrail. What I do remember was the Liverpool overhead railway, commonly known as the dockers’ umbrella. It was scrapped before the new transport system had proved its worth and chaos resulted.

I preface my remarks by thanking the Minister. I do not think I have come across a Minister so prepared to listen and engage—I am sucking up here—and to consider changes. That is the way it should work in the House of Lords and I pay tribute to her. I also want to pay tribute to the Government because we have talked about the importance of further education and vocational education for a long time but, frankly, successive Governments have done nothing about it. They have done little bits at the edges and margins but not actually done real, radical change. We now see something which is going to be really important to not only the skills agenda but young people particularly.

My comments from our Benches are not being made from a stance of party dogma. They are being made from a stance that it is important to get this right, as the noble Lords, Lord Baker, Lord Blunkett and Lord Adonis, have said. We want the Government to be successful. We want them to be able to triumph in this legislation, so the areas we are finally down to are just small changes which would make sure this really happens. I want to talk about two important areas, in the order that we have discussed them.

First, on the local skills improvement plans, yes, it is now important to have a plan in each locality and for all the partners to be joined up to it. Those plans will vary from area to area—of course they will. I have never quite understood why we should exclude the further education providers or local combined authorities, or whatever they are. They have not only budgets; they have influence and expertise. I take the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, made about us not wanting it to be bureaucratic but we want to make it successful so, as I have just said, it is important that those stakeholders are there.

Colleges bring a wealth of experience. You cannot expect them to provide the courses and skills needed unless they are truly involved. This notion of the combined authorities just ensuring that the plan is not signed off until they raise the white smoke is not good enough. They should be working alongside by influencing, empowering and suggesting, not as some huge bureaucratic body but through some simple opportunity to work side by side. Actually, the employers need to be in a position to tell the colleges where they have got it wrong and how they can improve by doing things to step up to the game. We feel strongly about that and if it goes to a vote, we will support it.

We have heard the talk about the BTECs. Again, I do not really understand it. It was interesting to see what Pearson said, which was that the introduction of T-levels need not lead to a requirement to defund other qualifications. Why? Because there is a clear distinction between T-levels and career focused BTECs, which have different structures and different purposes.

It seems to us that we have long advocated this, as far back as the Sainsbury reform of vocational qualifications; again, it is a bit like the local skills plan. It is important to get it right and we are not convinced that you can rush at this. The two qualifications have to work alongside each other. This is not an area I have any expertise in but listening again to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who has expertise in this matter, the Government would be wise to take on board his suggestions. We are saying that we clearly want to see BTECs not being defunded for at least four years, and we want to support the very important amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for the contributions they have made to this important debate and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for acknowledging the importance of the Government’s work in this area. I also thank my noble friend Lady Wolf for her descriptions of how local skills improvement plans should work in practice. I attempted to write something down but she put it very well.

We are trying to balance having a clear focus on the needs of employers, for all the reasons that your Lordships are well aware of—given the feedback we have from employers that students do not come to them with all the skills and experience that they need—with drawing on the valuable local insight and intelligence to which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others of your Lordships referred. We are trying to strike a balance between those two things.

In relation to the role of local authorities in this, particularly those which have a devolved adult education budget, the Secretary of State will have the ability through regulations to add local authorities in England to those relevant providers already subject to the duties in the legislation. These regulations will be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution in Parliament.

Those independent training providers that deliver English post-16 education or training will also have duties on them where that training is material to a specified area. There is already a duty on them to co-operate and engage in the development of the local skills improvement plans.

Turning to the vexed issue of defunding BTECs, I am concerned about my communication skills. I am not sure how many times I have stood at the Dispatch Box—I know colleagues at the other end have done the same—trying to reassure the House that we are not defunding most BTECs, as the noble Lord, Lordusb Watson, said, deploying a scorched earth policy, which the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, suggested, or leaving them as a niche qualification, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, suggested. We see them as an absolutely core part of the offer in giving young people choice, diversity and quality, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, described. We agree absolutely and think that the suite of qualifications we will have in future will do those three things.

To my noble friend Lord Johnson’s point about blighting and—these were not my noble friend’s words—besmirching the quality of BTECs, it is absolutely the reverse. Once we get through this and we are clear which BTECs are remaining, they will have absolute endorsement from the Government that they meet the standards of quality and future employability which are so critical for our young people, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. All will be on a level playing field and have that endorsement.

Higher Education Reform

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I may have touched on some of the points that I hope can address the right reverend Prelate’s question. To go back to the consultations, they are explicitly to help us avoid unintended consequences and to get input from as wide a circle of stakeholders as possible. Obviously, we believe, as Philip Augar did in his review, that a modular, lifelong education system with the funding to back it up will be accessible, lead to greater career development over somebody’s lifetime and meet the skills needed in the economy. Specific elements, such as the scholarship I mentioned, can be used not just for higher education but for further education and apprenticeships. Lastly, these changes must also be taken in the context of the major investment in and major reforms we have made to further education and the bringing together of the funding approach between higher technical qualifications at level 4 and 5 and degrees.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister talks about fairness in access and increasing the options for young people. But we know how the EBacc has reduced the options for young people in our schools, particularly those who want to do a creative subject. By doing that, the pipeline into universities, and indeed FE colleges, has become less, so we are seeing low numbers following creative subjects in higher education. Indeed, in the whole university sector there is only one professor of music. Surely if we want to increase options, we have to ensure that those options are available at our secondary schools.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am certainly aware from the many schools I visit that some of the best of them offer a great deal of choice, both within and outside their curriculum. I understand and hear the noble Lord’s concerns, but if we look at the success of our creative industries—which are world beating, in that well-known phrase—we see that we are clearly providing our children, through school and through further and higher education, the skills they need to be very successful within them.

National Tutoring Programme

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I had not thought about Neil Armstrong for a while. I thank the noble Lord for the reminder, but I do not think that that is an accurate reflection. There is absolutely no complacency in the department about this contract. We are committed to delivering 2 million courses, and we are working extremely closely with Randstad to make sure this happens.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, what would the Minister say to Garry Ratcliffe, the chief executive of an academy trust of primary schools in a deprived community in Kent? One Saturday morning, 20 or so pupils were gathered together for their tutoring session and 10 minutes beforehand, it was cancelled. We hear from school leaders up and down the country about the poor quality of tutors, their lack of punctuality, “no show” and lack of specialist knowledge. Surely it is time that the financing of this programme be given directly to the schools. Independent schools could be involved to make this a really successful programme.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I remind the noble Lord that the bulk of the programme is being directly delivered by schools; that is what they recommended to government, and we listened. Some 230,000 tuition courses started through the school-led pillar, 52,000 through tuition partners and 20,000 through academic mentors. There is a reason for the blend of approaches. It is clearly unacceptable for a tutor not to turn up, and I hope that Mr Ratcliffe has been able to resolve that.

Higher Education: T-Levels

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It is absolutely a high priority for this Government. Within the department, we have three key areas of focus: skills, schools and families. I hope I can reassure the noble Lord that we are all very focused on this issue.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is important that we make the T-levels the success that they should be for vocational education as a whole. I am not sure the Minister properly answered the question about rural areas, where there will be a much narrower choice of options and students will struggle to find employers who will give placements. Could encouragement be given to those employers through financial incentives?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I will gladly take the noble Lord’s suggestion back to the department. Obviously, the colleges can deliver the T-levels that they believe will be most relevant in their community and where work experience exists.

Covid-19: Effect on Education in Deprived Communities

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education of school children in the most deprived communities.

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

My Lords, pupils were one to three months behind in their learning in summer 2021; an improvement on spring 2021. Pupil premium pupils were around half a month further behind in reading and maths at primary level and 1.7 months further behind in reading at secondary level. That is why, as well as the universal offer to all students and staff, we are targeting our £5 billion of education recovery funding at pupils who most need support to recover their lost learning.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. She will be aware that the Education Policy Institute has announced that, for the first time since 2007, pupils have fallen behind. It has also said that the number of students on the poverty line has grown. If this so-called £5 billion recovery plan is not successful, what will the Government do? Will more money or other funding streams become available? Will the Minister comment on Teach First’s proposals that we rethink the pupil premium?

School Absences

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, as well as the absentee rates in schools, as the Minister knows we have hundreds of thousands of children not in school at all. They are missing from the system. Some may be home tutored, but we do not know that. What plans have the Government got for those home tutors to register their children, so that we know they are safe and know where they are?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am pleased to update the House that, this morning, we announced our response to the Children Not in School consultation and have confirmed that we will be setting up a register of home-schooled children.

Alternative Education

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, in January 2021 there were 12,800 pupils whose main registration was in a state place funded alternative provision, or AP. A further 9,200 pupils were dual subsidiary registered in state place funded AP, meaning their main registration was at another school. Additionally, local authorities arranged 32,700 placements for children and young people in other independent or non-maintained registered and unregistered settings. Around 59% of these were in independent and non-maintained special schools, many of which are not AP placements.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, of the 40,000 or so young people in alternative provision it is widely recognised that once they finish their schooling, many leavers—particularly those with special educational needs—still have anxieties of a large institutional environment. The only funded progression opportunity that exists at entry level would be a further education college. Will the Minister look at supporting these year 11 leavers in alternative provision and pupil referral units who require time to develop and progress towards level 2 with post-16 alternative education funding?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I recognise the work the noble Lord has done in this really important area. He is right that the percentage of young people leaving alternative provision who go on to be NEET is far too high. Over the last two years we have provided £15 million of funding for the AP year 11 transition fund, which allows settings to support year 11 students to transition into sustained post-16 destinations. That fund supported over 6,000 pupils, which is about 55% of pupils in year 11.

Child Safeguarding

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement, which I thought was very thorough. I agree with every word. It is a tragedy that Arthur lost his life in such a horrific way. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, talked about those photographs of a happy young child with his school bag on his shoulders. You just cannot believe how people can be so evil as to do that to a child, to poison and abuse him in the way that they did.

A single child abused, a single child suffering as poor Arthur did, is one life lost too many. Sadly though, as the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, both rightly said, we have been here before. Daniel Pelka, Keanu Williams and Keegan Downer are the names of only a few children murdered by their guardians. What lessons have we taken from those previous cases to empower social services with the mission of preventing child abuse?

Let us not forget that the serious case review published after Baby P’s death in 2007 said it could and should have been prevented. Every agency involved in his care, including health, the police and social services, had been well motivated and wanted to protect him, but their practice collectively and individually was completely inadequate and failed to properly challenge the explanations of maltreatment. More than 10 years on from that appalling crime, we see this tragic murder of young Arthur.

I think people struggle to understand why the photographs of his bruising and the complaints raised seemed not to satisfy those concerned. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that this should not be a blame game against social services. As a head teacher, I worked with social workers a great deal and I found caring, hard-working individuals. However, not through the fault of any individual, I also found that bureaucracy meant that it took time for issues to be dealt with.

I remember the case of a little girl who we felt was being abused. We contacted social services, but a case conference had to be arranged and we had to make sure that all the partners could be at the case conference. We would be told, “We can’t make this date or that date”, as the weeks went on. Eventually, the case conference was held and, I am glad to say, strong action was taken in that case; we were right to have raised the flag on that event. The point I am making, however, is that it is not the fault of individuals—individuals care. No social worker, teacher, police officer or health worker wants this to happen. What they want to see is speedy action but, sadly, that does not happen because of the system that we currently have. In this case, these were evil people who, sadly, would probably have circumvented any system, but that is not to say that we should not have tried.

I was interested to hear the comments of the Children’s Commissioner on “The Andrew Marr Show” yesterday. She made a number of important points and commented on the serious case review under way, saying that

“we need to see what that says but we must take decisive action and now.”

We cannot wait months, or whatever it may be, for this case review to happen; we need to know what we are going to do now. So I put it to the Minister: following the words of Dame Rachel de Souza, what does the Minister think we should directly do now?

It is essential that we protect vulnerable children and families. The national review needs to take into account the significance and scale of the circumstances of Arthur’s murder and allow findings to be disseminated around the country. We must identify the lessons that must be learned and ensure that nothing like this is ever allowed to happen again.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank both noble Lords for the tone of their remarks and their support for the Statement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I reiterate that we will leave no stone unturned in trying to understand and address what happened in this case, both in terms of its local implications and nationally.

I understand the focus of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on funding and the pressures that local government and children’s social care have been under, but I would say again that there really has been a shift; since 2019, there have been year-on-year real increases for local government. The latest spending review shows that the core spending power for local authorities is estimated to increase by an average of 3% in real terms each year until the next spending review. Importantly, that includes £200 million for family help, as part of a £500 million package to make sure that all children get the best start in life.

Both noble Lords asked what is happening on the ground, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, raised the issue of the performance of local children’s services teams around the country. He will be aware that we have moved from only 36% of children’s services teams being judged to be good in 2017 to, today, 50% being judged to be good or outstanding. Solihull’s children’s services team is currently rated as requiring improvement. We intervene decisively where local authorities are failing, and we continue to facilitate and fund sector-led improvement.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Storey, who said that we cannot wait; we need to do something now. Work had already started in Solihull. It is part of the strengthening families programme, which is very tailored support for local authority children’s services teams, where they follow a clear model. That work started in October this year. It is also getting support through the sector-led improvement partners, which is the more bespoke element, so the first takes well-understood and well-established improvement programmes and applies them in the local authority in question, and then the sector-led improvement partners allow for a more bespoke approach. Clearly, events such as this give a renewed urgency to the work that was already in train, and I will of course write to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, with more detail on the implementation plan.

Both noble Lords asked—possibly not in these words, but I hope I paraphrase accurately—how we avoid being here again. We have the two new reviews that we have just announced, and we will need to wait and see what they advise. We cannot pre-empt them. We also have the care review, which we hope will come forward with very practical, actionable recommendations focusing on empowering social workers to take those extremely difficult decisions to which both noble Lords referred.

I genuinely think that great progress has been made over the past 10 years in implementing almost all of the recommendations of Professor Eileen Munro’s review, and major investment is going into the workforce, with 10% more social workers today than in 2017. A great deal of work is going on. We are trying to ensure that that is sequenced and delivered in a way that is practical and effective on the ground.

Education: Teacher Departures

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that starting salaries for teachers were increased last year by 5.5%. As I have already said, our commitment to starting salaries of £30,000 remains. That is important; in the research we did, we looked at both public and private sector jobs and set the target at a level that we believe is genuinely attractive in comparison with both.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will know that teacher retention is often undermined by high workloads and unsupportive working conditions. What does the Minister think of the proposal from Teach First to reduce teachers’ timetables by 1% in the most disadvantaged areas, often staffed by the most inexperienced teachers, and then scale up the policy if it has a positive effect? By the way, I am sorry I did not give notice of that question beforehand.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department is very open to testing and exploring new ideas. I will take that back and discuss it with colleagues. We are seeing a lot of good practice, particularly in some of the larger multi-academy trusts, in managing these issues. I genuinely think that, through the pandemic, some of the strengths of that model, and the pressure it has taken off teachers, is something we can learn from going forward.

Education: Music and the Arts

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that arts-led education encourages those traits, but not only arts-led education encourages critical thinking. I think that she does the teaching profession a disservice; perhaps she would like to join me on a visit to a school to see how little is being done by rote.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will know from her time at DCMS the importance of creative and arts subjects and their importance to the British economy. Is she concerned that there has been a 24% drop in all six creative subjects over the past five years? How does she view the EBacc’s responsibility for the demise of all our creative subjects?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government do not accept that the EBacc has contributed to a decline in the adoption of creative subjects. The percentage of children doing an arts subject to GCSE has remained broadly stable over the last 10 years. The EBacc mandatory curriculum is intentionally focused to give space for other subjects.

Schools: Examination Assessments

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My party would like to welcome the Minister to her new role and wish her well. We also pass on our best regards to her predecessor. My question to the Minister is about summer-born children; she will know that children who are born in the summer could miss a year, 11 months, 10 months or nine months of schooling. Why is no consideration taken of this fact in the guidance regarding assessment?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord has been a champion of summer-born children, and I understand that he is one himself. As I am a winter-born child, obviously we might not see eye to eye on this. But we have had to take into account multiple elements in thinking about the adaptations for this summer, and we have tried to reach the fairest possible point in both adaptations to the system and in grading.