Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

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

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

[Lord Storey]

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

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

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I shall speak to Amendment 15. I preface my remarks by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that it should not all be about processes. There are thousands upon thousands of teachers out there working their socks off to provide for our future generations, many of them in very difficult circumstances.

I would not want us to leave this discussion just talking about the successes of academies. We have many successful maintained schools. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, put it all one way. Although he complained about education in his native country of Scotland, he did not give a fair reflection of what is happening in England. As we know, more than 80% of council maintained schools are currently rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted. Councils perform above the national average in terms of progress made by pupils by three times compared with the largest academy chains.

When the Minister replies, will he put his mind to three issues about coasting? The first was rightly raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. The Bill gives power to future Secretaries of State to decide what may or may not constitute coasting. What will be the process for that? What consultation will be taken on that? We must be clear what is being said.

Secondly, it is not just about particular progress measures but the intake—the cohort—in a particular year. We must consider the number of children in a particular year or particular school for whom English is a second language; we must consider disadvantage. All those issues have a huge impact on the results that the school obtains. It might appear at first glance that it is coasting in terms of the strict definition as laid out in the Bill, but what is being achieved may paint a very different picture. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is right: other issues in a school are hugely important for not just academic progress but the well-being of our society.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, first, I must apologise to the Minister: I referred to Amendment 20, as the noble Lord, Lord True, rightly pointed out. All I can say is that perhaps that has given the Minister advance notice of any issues that might be raised when we come to that group, but I apologise for misleading the House on that point.

Secondly, my noble friend Lady Hughes and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, until he got into his view about academies and other schools, made the point that these debates on structures are rather tedious and sometimes detract from our overall concern about the outcome for individual pupils at our schools. I thought that the chief inspector, in his recent report, had it right when he said:

“Much of the education debate in recent years has revolved around school structure”.

He refers to academies as having,

“injected vigour and competition into the system. But as academies have become the norm, success or failure hasn’t automatically followed. The same can be said of those schools that have remained with local authorities”.

I appeal for some balance in our debate. I do not understand the argument that academisation is automatically the route to be followed, because the evidence is not there. Where is the evidence? It is a fact, is it not, just to take the recent DfE 2015 data, that recent key stage 2 improvement results show that improvement is significantly greater in primary schools that are not academies—that it is actually greater in maintained schools? This becomes a very sterile argument. We have been debating this Bill for many happy hours and I am still waiting for the Minister to say something positive about maintained schools. Surely the 133 local authority schools graded as outstanding since 1 January deserve some recognition.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I will be brief. I know how important transparency and accountability are to the Minister. This amendment is to do with the cost of conversion to academies. If, as the Prime Minister says, by the end of this Parliament all schools will become academies, it will put an enormous burden on resources to make that happen. Will those resources be available from within the existing budget or will extra resources be needed? Can we be assured that any school that becomes an academy will get the same financial advantages as academies currently do or will there be a reduction in that provision? I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, there were some pertinent questions in the noble Lord’s short introduction to his amendment. One might think that the Explanatory Notes to the Bill would provide some helpful information in that respect but I pay tribute to the drafting of officials in the Minister’s department because they elegantly provide no information whatever.

The Explanatory Notes acknowledge, as the Minister has done, that this policy is bound to lead to increased expenditure by the Minister’s department. They say:

“The cost of any additional intervention will be considered as part of the normal Budget and Spending Review process”.

We will know the outcome of that next week. I do not know when we are coming back on Report but I assume that by then the department will have worked out the consequences for its own spending programme over the next three years, and that we might get some reassurance that we will be given some more information on Report. In the expectation that the noble Lord receives no comfort this afternoon, perhaps he will bring this back on Report to probe a little more on it.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, Amendment 35, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to require that the Bill cannot be commenced until a report on funding the costs of the academy conversions resulting from this legislation has been laid before Parliament.

In the light of the ongoing spending review it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on the future costs of academy conversions. As I am sure noble Lords will appreciate, the spending review will determine the Department for Education’s total settlement and it will be that which determines the final cost. I will be delighted to comment more on the DfE’s total settlement on Report, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested.

Of course, while I cannot provide specific details of the future funding regime, the existing grant rates for schools converting to academy status are already publicly available and published on GOV.UK.

As the published guidance sets out, there are various types of grants available to schools becoming sponsored academies. There is a grant awarded to all schools prior to opening as an academy to cover costs such as staff recruitment, project management and legal costs. There are three flat-rate amounts for this, depending on the level of transformation the school requires. In the most serious cases of concern, sponsored academies may also receive a small capital grant to improve the school environment and indicate a fresh start for the school. Overall, in the academic year 2014-15, the department paid nearly £20 million to academy trusts in pre-opening grants. We are committed to ensuring that funding for academy conversions results in maximum value for money. Since the days before 2010, we have very substantially reduced the costs involved. Funding amounts are regularly reviewed to ensure that the grant levels are appropriate.

The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that, where a school has failed, there will be swift and decisive action to bring about improvements. We anticipate that this equates to up to 1,000 inadequate schools converting to academy status over the course of this Parliament. The exact number will vary depending on Ofsted judgments, but it is important to emphasise that this number represents a continuation of the trend we have seen over the past five years. When the previous Government came to power in 2010, there were 203 sponsored academies and now there are more than 1,500. Including converter academies, there are now more than 5,000 open academies overall.

I turn to the assertion made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the Prime Minister’s vision was that every school would become an academy during this Parliament. In fact, he did not say that he expected that to happen: he said that his vision was for every school to become an academy, but he did not put a timescale on it. As far as coasting schools are concerned, as we have already discussed, that is not a default option.

Alongside failing schools, the Bill also proposes that schools that have been notified that they meet a new coasting definition should become eligible for intervention. When we discussed coasting schools earlier in Committee, I went to some lengths to stress that regional schools commissioners will exercise discretion to decide whether and how to act in coasting schools, and that not all coasting schools will become academies. As noble Lords will be aware, we are currently consulting on our proposed coasting definition and no school will be identified as coasting until after the final 2016 performance data have been published. It is therefore impossible to predict, before the definition has been finalised and the tests have been set, exactly how many schools we expect to be labelled as coasting. We expect, however, to identify hundreds of schools which can be challenged and supported to improve.

In light of the assurances that I have given about the existing costs of conversion and the number of schools we anticipate will become sponsored academies, I hope that the House will agree that a report on the future costs of conversion is not necessary and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.