Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 10th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I rise to support my noble friend Lord Addington’s amendment. I want to tease out of the Minister some answers on sharia law and its effect on accessing education opportunities for all. I was with a group of about a dozen Somali women on Sunday. They have that conflict between faith and education. The Minister will remember that in 2014—nine years ago—the Government published a report on Islamic finance in the UK that acknowledged the lack of an alternative financial product to conventional student loans. It was a matter of concern. The report also identified a solution: a frequently used non-interest-bearing Muslim financial product. The Government explicitly supported the introduction of such a product. However, since then no sharia law-compliant student finance scheme has been made available. Why not, Minister, and what we are going to do about it?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 11. Before doing so, however, I want to touch on a point that the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, made about sharia-compliant loans. I can remember a time so far back it was before the Minister was even in your Lordships’ House, during the debate on the Higher Education and Research Act. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, will remember, because he was very active in that. At that time, the issue of sharia loans came up. That finished immediately prior to the 2017 general election, six years ago. Why on earth has it taken so long? I suspect the Minister will not have the answers now, but someone in the Department for Education—or maybe the Treasury—should have. The answers must be found, it cannot be that difficult. Basically, I echo what other noble Lords have said: get a move on because it is a problem that surely cannot be insuperable.

Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2022

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 25th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jones, for that tour de force, and, having spent the week in Anglesey, we have a Welsh connection.

As the Minister rightly said, the construction industry is hugely important to the economy of the UK. She also referenced the need for a pipeline of skilled workers. What she did not talk about was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that there is a national crisis in the shortage of construction workers, which could hamper the many infrastructure schemes that we have—not just big infrastructure schemes, but local and small ones. If my noble friend Lord Stunell was here, he would tell the Minister in no uncertain terms, which I think he has already done, about the dire consequences of not ensuring that those brickies and pointers, as the noble Lord, Lord Jones, said, are recruited as quickly they should be. I have also wondered why more women are not involved in the construction industry.

The Construction Industry Training Board undertakes a large number of activities, and the Minister spelled them out in some detail, but this is perhaps a time to question what has been going on. I wonder whether the CITB would be considered by Jacob Rees-Mogg as part of his bonfire of the quangos. I hope not, but I hope that it will be reformed and refocused, because there are real concerns. You have only to listen to the National Federation of Builders, which is calling for a fundamental restructuring of the CITB, including an end to its levy-raising powers. It states that the majority of construction employers asked do not see the CITB as adding value to the industry and do not believe that it meets the labour market or industry needs, and that they cannot access the training they need when they need it. That is quite a concern.

Employers in the construction industry are facing many issues, post Covid. Is it fair that the academic institutions receive so much more; should not the levy go directly to levy-paying employers? The levy returns can sometimes be challenging and time-consuming for employers, generating additional administrative costs. Importantly, there needs to be an easier and quicker way to complete the required documentation without further record-keeping. As I have said before, a business must focus on the job of the business, making a profit and securing jobs. When the bureaucracy gets in the way, that often causes real problems for the business.

I hope that the Minister will listen to the comments made and answer them. I too had scribbled down that it would be useful to know, on a regular basis, the names of the small group who advised: let us name them and see who they represent. I had also scribbled a note asking whether the TUC was involved.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to the order, which it is fair to say is not controversial. It states that

“the Secretary of State is satisfied that the industrial training levy proposals are necessary to encourage adequate training in the industry”,


and we concur. For that reason, I do not propose to say much at all about the levy itself, which will continue much as before. Rather, I shall focus on the CITB and its role in assisting the construction industry to address some of the issues of recruitment and training it currently faces.

In a previous life, further back than I care to remember, I was a full-time official with a trade union in the engineering sector, and I recall dealing with several industry training boards on a number of different issues. Indeed, from memory, there were more than 20 in the 1980s, until the number was significantly reduced by the Industrial Training Act 1982. It is to be regretted that, apart from those in the film sector, only the Construction Industry Training Board and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board are still in place today. The last two are non-departmental public bodies, and thus accountable to Parliament and, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, possibly within the sights of the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency—a quaint name, without a department behind it.

The order we are considering today runs to six pages, but its impact assessment is five times that length. That is to be welcomed, because it contains much interesting—in some cases, fascinating—information and statistics about the levy, the board and the construction industry itself. From it, we learn that the industry has had a levy and grant arrangement for 58 years. The impact assessment says that it currently employs more than 2.5 million people—the Minister said 3.1 million, so I am glad to hear it is growing—contributes 8.6% to GDP, and, if I caught it correctly, 9% of gross value added, which, as an economist, I think is a productivity metric. Both demonstrate the importance of the industry.

The CITB exists to ensure that the construction workforce has the right skills for now and the future, based on three strategic priorities: careers, standards and qualifications, and training and development. As is made plain in the impact assessment:

“There remains a serious and distinct market failure in the development … of skills in the construction industry”.


It is stated that this is because

“the trading conditions, incentives and culture do not lead to a sufficient level of investment in skills by employers.”

Unfortunately, this malaise is not restricted to the construction sector. UK employers in many sectors have long been unwilling to recognise the need for upskilling and to pay for it, and that is a major factor in the low productivity levels from which our economy suffers. The introduction of the apprenticeship levy five years ago was a clear sign of the Government’s acceptance that employers will not in sufficient numbers invest of their own volition in skills development, and thus require a firm hand on their collective shoulder to encourage them to do so.

The training levy plays a key role in equipping the construction industry with the skilled and flexible workforce it needs. In the post-EU world in which we find ourselves, and given the large number of EU nationals who have traditionally worked in the construction industry in this country, it is not just important but absolutely vital that the industry is in a position to train, and continually retrain, its workforce for the challenges facing the economy.

Indeed, to quote the Explanatory Memorandum:

“It is essential, now more than ever, that employers have access to the support needed to upskill existing workers and adequately attract and train new talent, as industry seeks to fully recover from the impacts of the pandemic.”


Absolutely. This order will raise more than £0.5 billion between now and 2024 to invest in training skills, which is why employers have always strongly supported the levy and value the payback they get from their contributions.

However, as the Minister will have noted from the impact assessment, the consultation among employers on the CITB’s proposals for this levy produced a figure of 66.5% in support. That should cause some concern, because not only does it mean that a third of employers were not in favour of the levy—for reasons unknown, or at least not listed in the impact assessment—but the 66.5% figure was down from 76.9% when the vote was last held, in 2017. Perhaps the Minister can say whether DfE officials and/or Ministers have asked the CITB for its explanation of that reduction and what action, if any, the board will be asked to undertake to ensure it does not fall further in three years. More positive is the survey on the final page of the impact assessment, which shows that, when asked whether the statutory levy, grant and funding system should continue, 75% of employers said that it should.

The CITB has had an awkward few years recently, with more than its fair share of criticism from within the sector. The board was forcefully led by Sarah Beale from 2017 until her departure last year, and now has Tim Balcon as its CEO. Ms Beale oversaw a restructuring that saw its workforce cut by two-thirds as it returned to its core business, but that has not assuaged all in the sector. One of its largest participants, Build UK, recently called for fundamental changes, stating that there remains

“widespread frustration with the performance of CITB”.

Mr Balcon deserves the chance to make his influence felt, but are the Minister and her officials aware of the discontent with the board felt by some of the employers it exists to assist? If so, can she share any information as to what support—I am not talking about financial terms—might be offered to the board?

One of those areas should be the need for much greater diversity within the construction industry. The CITB itself deserves credit for becoming, under Sarah Beale, a female-led organisation in a male-dominated industry. One of the potential benefits of that was that it allowed the CITB to push boundaries and promote change, but much more remains to be done. ONS data shows that the construction industry’s 16% female workforce—a point referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Storey—compares with 23% in transportation and 25% in water supply and manufacturing, the other worst sectors.

The 2011 census showed that 13% of the UK population identified as black, Asian or minority ethnic, yet ONS data found that the percentage employed at that time in UK construction was just 7.5%. More worryingly, in a 2015 survey of its own, the CITB found that the actual figure could have been closer to 5%. We should be told what the current figures are, so that the board can begin to plot a course towards increasing the number substantially. As Kay Jarvis of the global infrastructure company blu-3 reported in 2020:

“The 2018 OutNext/PwC Out to Succeed survey also found construction had the third-worst image of all industries as an LGBT+ employer.”


A recent study by recruitment analytics specialist Hays discovered that, of those black people

“who managed to break into the construction sector”—

that term is perhaps of some importance—no less than

“78% claimed they had experienced career restrictions due to their race or other demographic factors such as sexuality and age.”

Whether this is down to structural prejudice or unconscious bias, it highlights the significant and clear challenge of discrimination in the hiring and promotion process, which surely must be addressed. The CITB is well positioned to do so; I hope that the Government will offer it every encouragement, perhaps by setting a baseline and then measuring year-on-year progress against it in respect of equality and diversity in various forms in construction.

Schools White Paper

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the briefing that she and her officials provided for the Labour education team yesterday.

This White Paper is a thin document that we believe represents a missed opportunity in many ways. Paragraph 123 says:

“The system that has evolved over the past decade is messy and often confusing … Unclear expectations of academies and local authorities permit grey areas which have sometimes allowed vulnerable children to fall through the gaps. Government has not been able to intervene adequately in the small number of trusts that have fallen short in the expectations of parents”.


So what have the last 12 years been all about?

Other than an attainment increase at key stage 2 and GCSE, for which there is minimal detail, this White Paper betrays a real lack of ambition by the Government. When the headline soundbite is some schools staying open for 10 or 15 minutes longer, there is something seriously lacking.

The Secretary of State would have done well to have studied the speech given by his shadow, Bridget Phillipson, at the ASCL conference earlier this month, where she spoke about the broader aims of education and the importance of soft skills, creativity and balance in the curriculum. The White Paper never really gets beyond a fixation with maths and English.

There is no recognition of why many employers are seriously critical of the current school system and curriculum. There is seemingly no understanding that England is becoming an outlier internationally in its narrowness and fixation on academic subjects and end-of-course exams. There is no attempt to set out a vision of what education is for and of the kind of world that we are preparing children for.

There are no funding commitments of any seriousness, and inflation will surely erode much of what has already been agreed. This needs to be seen in the context of the new funding formula, which has been introduced at the expense of the most disadvantaged areas and is quite contrary to the Government’s levelling up ambition.

One proposal that I welcome is the introduction of a register for children not in school, which is long overdue, not least in terms of safeguarding issues.

On structures, some potentially interesting changes are proposed, but without the detail it is hard to assess them. It could imply the effective replacement of individual funding agreements by a statutory framework. It could imply the end of the free school programme except where there is a demographic need for new schools. In recent weeks, the education media have been fed stories of all schools being forced to become academies. The White Paper does not state that explicitly. Can the Minister clarify the Government’s intent? I read paragraph 146 as enabling forced academisation where the local authority wants it, irrespective of what individual schools want, as has been the case in places such as Hull, Leicestershire and Thurrock.

The Government admit that contracting with academy trusts is at an end and will be replaced with “academy trust standards”. No further information is given. Is this a return to direct grant schools, which Labour abolished in the late 1970s, with academies remaining independent schools? Is the intention to set up a new type of school which is “Secretary of State maintained” rather than local authority maintained, similar to the grant-maintained schools? We just do not know, and there is scant evidence that the Government do either.

The premise that trusts are the best way of organising schools is asserted but not proved. Occasionally, data is cherry picked. I ask the Minister how many trusts do not contain 7,500 pupils, which is said to be the benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness. How does the DfE propose to deal with the many trusts that are not that size? Talk of a family of schools quickly comes up against a basic problem: that of geography. How can you have a family of schools scattered the length of the country?

Chapter 3 focuses on targeted support. There is no definition of students falling behind, but the White Paper says that you must not label children as “behind”. Can the Minister clarify where the funding for this support will come from? Of course, the elephant in the room on the whole question of education recovery is the Chancellor. Sir Kevan Collins knew exactly how much was required to deliver meaningful programmes, but the Chancellor callously put his red pen through it and hundreds of thousands of children throughout the country are living with the consequences of his parsimony. Yesterday’s DfE-commissioned report on pupil learning loss from the pandemic bears that out.

There is no recognition of the huge issues in teacher recruitment at present but quite a lot about the current attempts to change initial teacher training, with the imposition of a political ideology on all stages of teacher development. The proposals around the Oak academy turning into a provider of resources and lesson plans could be a worrying step towards enforcing a national model of pedagogy and curriculum content.

After two years of pandemic chaos and six years since the Government’s last schools strategy, this plan will leave parents, teachers and pupils wondering where the ambition for children’s futures is. Clearly, it is not with this Government.

[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.

Child Safeguarding

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I do not doubt the sincerity of the commitments that it contains. This has to be one of the most harrowing and tragic deaths any of us can imagine. My heart goes out to everyone who knew and loved Arthur Labinjo-Hughes. Talking to friends over the past few days, the first reaction they expressed was of course sorrow, but that was quickly followed by anger as to how such an awful fate could have been allowed to happen to little Arthur.

A serious case review is now under way and, while it is of course essential that it leaves no stone unturned in establishing what happened and what went wrong, it must also avoid simply repeating the recommendations of previous such reviews, such as those in respect of Victoria Climbié, Baby Peter, Daniel Pelka and too many others. Their serious case reviews reached conclusions that were depressingly familiar: warning signs were not picked up; the invisibility of children; poor early interventions and support for families; social workers’ high caseloads; and poor lines of communication between the various agencies. The main issue for Government this time is surely that these failures keep occurring. How can we avoid being here again in a year or two in similarly distressing circumstances?

Obviously, there are many questions to be asked in relation to what did or not happen locally, but I hope that the blame game that has already started will not point fingers at social workers, because it is well established that they are overworked and often lack the necessary experience to cope with distressing cases. In respect of the Statement, I welcome that it contains a clear defence of professionals in the various agencies.

Too many social workers on the front line who are recently qualified are sent into situations to deal with difficult households, often with manipulative parents such as Arthur’s. Social workers need to be supported by senior management, and by that I do not mean the directors of children’s services; I am talking about line managers and senior managers who themselves will have built up experience of troublesome families and should more often accompany inexperienced social workers, to provide the support that they need so that their teams can provide what is required by children in those difficult and often chaotic families.

If questions need to be asked about what happened at the local level, they also need to be asked in the national context. When the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in 2016, he committed his department to the target of all vulnerable children receiving the same high quality of care and support, with the best outcome for every child at the heart of every decision made. Three years later he returned to the committee and was obliged to admit that the target was delayed until 2022 because the DfE did not have a detailed plan in place to deliver the target. I do not like the blame game but, in the case of little Arthur, if it is going to begin then let it begin at the top, with a department that is inexplicably unable even to put in place a plan to protect the most vulnerable children in society. We are three weeks away from 2022 so does the Minister know whether her department yet has that plan ready? I do not expect her to be able to answer that question today, but we all deserve an answer and I hope she will write to me when she has it.

Let us not ignore the elephant in the room: the funding of local authorities and, by extension, their ability adequately to fund children’s services. Both have suffered substantial cuts through the austerity policies of Governments between 2010 and 2019—decisions, as I have said many times in your Lordships’ House, rooted in political ideology not necessity. The Minister mentioned the MacAlister review of children’s social care, which has already signalled that an increase in resources will be necessary to begin to bring children’s services up to an acceptable level. I look forward to that report when it appears next year, and I hope the Government will use it as an opportunity to reassess the importance that they attach to children’s social care and wider children’s services. We hear a lot about adult social care, and rightly so, but we definitely need to hear more about children’s social care. I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to do—I hope I am quoting the Statement correctly—whatever it takes, whatever is necessary, to keep children safe.

Over the last few days my mind has consistently returned to an image of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes that appeared in many newspapers and on many websites. It showed a happy little boy in his Birmingham City football top, with a big smile, full of potential and with his whole life ahead of him until two evil monsters shamefully and horrifically cut his young life short. Let us try to remember that smile, not just the awful events that took it and his life away.

[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.

School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions (England) Order 2021

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the wording of this regret Motion is self-explanatory. When inflation is taken into account, this order amounts to a reduction in pay for all but a very few teachers at the lowest levels of the pay scale. Even there, the increase of £250 is measured against the increase to the national minimum wage. Is that really an appropriate yardstick of the respect which the Government accord to our teachers? It would appear so.

Government policy on teacher pay since 2010 has created significant problems, and the current policy—which is, in effect, a pay freeze—will create further problems. Concerns on the key pay issues for teachers are reflected across the profession, as seen in the joint union response to the School Teachers’ Review Body report, to which the STRB draws attention.

A month ago, the Chancellor’s spending review offered a historic opportunity to demonstrate that this Government value education and educators. Despite his rhetoric, he failed to do so, as does this order.

The aspiration of “levelling up” is a worthy one but government policy on education is achieving the opposite. As the Public Accounts Committee noted in October, education funding policy is actually driving resources away from areas with greater relative need, and the spending review announcements will not address those inequalities.

The Minister may have noticed that yesterday the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report which showed that the most deprived fifth of secondary schools have seen their funding cut by 14% in the decade to 2019 compared to a drop of 9% in the least deprived. If the Minister, or indeed anyone else on behalf of the Government, can offer a justification of those figures, I am sure that I would not be alone in being very interested to hear it. For what it is worth, the Institute for Fiscal Studies also says in its report that a teacher’s starting salary of £30,000 and a 3% increase for teachers across the board are “affordable”.

It was with some incredulity that I and many others heard the Chancellor boast in the spending review about restoring school spending to 2010 levels—when Labour was in government. I thank the Minister for the endorsement—however belatedly—by her Government of our Government’s understanding of the level of funding necessary for education. However, the admission that a decade of cuts to education was a mistake went only so far: those 2010 levels of spending will not be restored until 2024. I suggest that that should be a matter not of pride for any Government—more one of embarrassment.

Teacher pay has been eroded in real terms by successive Conservative Governments, increasing the numbers of recently qualified teachers leaving in their first five years. The Government are not obliged to accept the recommendations of the STRB, so it is at least welcome that they have done so on this occasion. However, any additional costs resulting must be fully funded so that school leaders are able to properly reward and retain all their staff.

We cannot understand why the Chancellor and the Government as a whole do not share our view that pay rises are an investment in public services and in ensuring that we have the teachers we need in front of classes. Public sector workers support the economy with their spending on the high street, which they are less able to do if they are struggling to make ends meet. The era of real-terms pay cuts—there has been a 15% reduction since 2010—and an alarming exodus of recently qualified teachers has been wholly destructive and should now end.

According to the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies this order, the DfE says that, while the majority of teachers will not receive a headline pay uplift, teachers earning below the maximum of their pay range may still be eligible for performance-related pay progression. The department says that it remains committed to increasing the teacher starting salary to £30,000—a 2019 manifesto commitment, it should be said—and that while pay restraint in 2021-22 will slow progress towards this commitment, steps taken in recent years, including a 5.5% uplift to starting pay in September 2020, have made

“a substantial difference to the competitiveness of the early career pay offer”.

However, I regret to say that that claim is not substantiated by evidence.

In its report, the STRB warned of a “severe negative impact” on the retention and recruitment of teachers if the pay uplift pause for teachers continued beyond the 2021-22 academic year. That caused it to urge the Government to allow it to make recommendations on pay uplifts for all teachers and school leaders in 2022-23. The Government effectively rebuffed the STRB, merely committing in its response to “reassessing” the pay award position ahead of the 2022-23 pay round. From experience, I suggest that neither teachers nor school leaders will be holding their breath in anticipation of a positive outcome to such a reassessment.

The Government have not only imposed a pay freeze on virtually all teachers in England, they have prevented the STRB from fully considering the impact of that and proposing alternatives. That demonstrates both the weakness of the Government’s case and undermines the role of the STRB. The STRB’s remit is regularly restricted to specific areas of government policy. The teaching unions continue to call for an objective, evidence-based assessment of all the key issues on teacher pay, such as: pay losses against inflation; the impact of pay cuts on teacher supply; and the need for a fair national pay structure, including better pay levels and progression based on experience without the restrictions imposed by performance-related pay.

The national teacher pay structure has been dismantled over recent years, with schools given significant discretion on teacher pay. This pay “flexibility” has not worked, as evidenced by the development of serious teacher supply problems over the past decade. With teachers and school leaders having been denied the pay progression they deserve as they acquire experience and expertise in their roles, I believe the case for a return to a national pay structure to protect the fairness of pay arrangements is a strong one.

Ministers appear to believe that levels of remuneration for teachers are not a big issue because their pay is significantly higher than average. Yes, the average teacher salary in 2020-21 was £38,400, although that figure was lower in the nursery and primary sectors. But the profession needs to be able to compete with other graduate professions, so comparing teacher pay with average pay across the whole economy is not only misleading but does not serve any meaningful purpose. As the STRB has pointed out, the position of teacher pay in the graduate labour market has declined significantly, and the decline correlates with the real-terms cuts to teacher pay since 2010 and with the development of serious teacher supply problems over that period.

I will not enter into any detail on performance-related pay other than to say that the case against it is clear and it is opposed across the teaching profession by teachers and school leaders. It is being dropped by an increasing number of multi-academy trusts and the Welsh Government have dropped it from teacher pay.

The second part of this regret Motion refers to the consultation process taking place over the school summer holidays. The Minister will be familiar with this issue because I have raised it with her twice already in relation to other consultations in the short time since she took up her post. I may be wrong, but I sensed on those occasions that she did not disagree with me.

Four consultees on this order concluded in a joint submission that the timing of the consultation had created significant problems for consulting meaningfully and with regard to planning at school level. It seems that only the Government have failed to notice that most people take their main holidays between mid-July and mid-September.

I note the excuse offered by the DfE in response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House. In its report on this order, the committee recalls that it has previously expressed concerns about the timing of the consultation on teachers’ pay. Asked why the consultation had again taken place over the summer, the DfE told the committee that, as with the situation over the past four years, HM Treasury and No. 10 now insist that all review body reports and consultations should be launched on the same day. In a mea culpa, the DfE then went on to state:

“So, although we would have been ready and happy to publish much earlier than we did, we were subject to the decision from HMT and No10.”


If that is indeed the case, the remedy is quite straightforward and surely not onerous: the Government should alter the date on which all review body reports and consultations are launched. They could be brought forward from October, but even if they went beyond that month it would matter not, as the provisions of these orders are currently made retrospective, with September being the month from which they apply.

I suggest that what needs to be applied here is common sense. Again, I have a suspicion that the Minister may be sympathetic to the case that I am advancing, so will she give me an assurance that she will discuss this with fellow Ministers in her department with a view to the DfE taking the lead in injecting that shot of common sense? After all, the summer holidays are more of an issue within her department than any other, and, as we know from its own words, the DfE is ready and happy to publish much earlier. So I say to the Minister: over to you. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, there is a wonderful expression that infant teachers often use: I am sad in my heart. I am sad in my heart that teachers in maintained schools are in this position and effectively having a pay cut. If we have a system where we consult on pay and conditions, surely the hallmarks of good consultation are, first, that it should be at a time when we can maximise that consultation and not at the tail end of the summer period—as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson—and, secondly, that we really listen to the views of those people who know what they are talking about. In the last education debate in this Chamber, we all extolled the virtues of teachers and how important they were to young lives. We spoke of how we should value them, reward them and consider their worth. And yet this happens, so, yes, I am sad in my heart.

Let us understand what all the teacher associations or teacher unions have said. All have had the same reaction: that this will undermine our attempts to stem the constant haemorrhaging of teachers. Geoff Barton, the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has said:

“Teacher and leader salaries have already failed to keep pace with inflation over the course of the past decade and the imposition of what is effectively another pay cut undermines retention of existing staff and makes salaries less competitive.”


The national teachers’ union described the Government as being “out of touch”. Its joint General Secretary, Kevin Courtney, said:

“The government’s pay freeze for teachers is demoralising”


and causes

“recruitment difficulties as we come out of the pandemic.”

It was interesting that he should use the word “pandemic”, because, at the time of the pandemic, the Government said how important teachers were and how much we valued them. Then we hear from the head teachers’ union, NAHT, which says the same thing: that this will be challenging in retaining and recruiting teaching staff, particularly for senior positions, and, again, that it is seen as

“eroding leadership supply, and risks prompting an exodus of leaders when the pandemic finally lifts”.

Finally, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers carried out a survey in which 94% of teachers said they disagreed with the pause on pay uplifts, with 83% saying that it would have a negative impact on the recruitment and retention of teachers.

So I would be interested to hear what the Minister says. I have one cheeky, direct question for her: if it is all right for Peers to have their allowance updated for inflation, why is it not all right for teachers in the maintained sector?

School Admissions Code 2021

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make a number of comments about school admissions, and follow up on some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made. On the statutory instrument, I do not have any particular issues, although maybe there are a couple of questions. On the issue about catch-up and the code, that will help parents, particularly those of disadvantaged pupils.

The whole business of school admissions is fraught with all sorts of problems. You cannot just wave a magic wand, even with increased data, and expect that everybody will get the school that they want. That just does not happen. What is true is that parents who can afford it will often move house to get into the catchment area of a local school so they can get their child or children into that school, whereas disadvantaged parents and pupils obviously cannot do that.

I remember from my experiences in Liverpool before the advent of academies that it was an absolute nightmare. Often, decisions were made not on what a school was achieving or not achieving; it was often the case that inner-city schools with very successful examination results were disregarded by parents, who wanted to go to the leafy suburbs. So you had the leafy suburbs and aided schools with huge waiting lists, while inner-city schools such as Paddington Comprehensive, which was built in the early 1970s, a 10-form entry school with state-of-the-art equipment, ended up with one and a half forms of entry. As an aside, I remember trying to persuade Shirley Williams, who at the time was Secretary of State for Education, to turn it into a tertiary college—but she was having none of that.

I make these comments just to show how difficult the whole situation is. Yes, it is important to have all the data, and the composite way in which the data is portrayed will help parents. But when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talks about local authority schools he is, presumably, talking about academies as well. Academies choose their own admission requirements so, if we are going to have a standardised approach, it should be for all schools. He made the point, which I do not disagree with, that from looking at the various websites you realise that the workload of the staff means that it is something that they have not given their full attention to. Equally, when looking at the websites of academies, one might say the same as well.

The school admissions process, especially where it helps disadvantaged children or children in care, is hugely important. It is one way in which we can change life chances. We want to ensure that every child is treated in a fair and accountable manner, with local schools and local authorities working together to make sure that the needs of young people in that community are met. Sadly, we often see that that is not the case where schools almost jealously guard their independence from a local authority, and both sides do not want to collaborate in the way they should. Local authorities should have responsibility for place planning to ensure that academies co-operate in providing places. While it is slightly beyond this SI, we think that schools should be able to set aspects of their own admissions policy in compliance with the national code that allow them to specialise in, for example, music or business if they so wish. However, the local admissions process to administer the policy and allocate individual children to schools should be carried out by the local authority rather than by individual schools.

Where the code refers to the oversubscription criteria, are we talking about the waiting list? Is that what we mean? When I have had parents contact me and say, “Oh, I didn’t get a place, but the school’s put me on the waiting list”, is that what we mean by the oversubscription criteria? Would looked-after children be top of that list of criteria, irrespective of the type of school it is? If not, why not?

We talk about admission for disadvantaged children, but we do not define what we mean by disadvantaged children. Perhaps we ought to. It is a very general term. I presume that we are talking about looked-after children, or are we talking about children with special needs? Can they be in separate categories? The explanatory note just talks about disadvantaged children. Maybe I have missed something.

I welcome the fact that mid-term admissions are more codified—that absolutely makes sense, so I do not have any problem with this SI.

I did not realise that the year 7 catch-up premium had been discontinued, for the reasons stated. I presume that there was an SI to establish it. When we have the arts premium, will there be an SI for that?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, may I start by saying how grand it is to be back in the Grand Committee Room after pretty close to two years? I always enjoy debates in this particular Room.

I should declare an interest of sorts, in that I have a son, aged 10, and we have just made an application for his senior school through the admissions policy applying in our London borough. I have no reason to believe that we will not be successful, but it has sharpened my preparations for this debate.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling this take-note Motion allowing noble Lords to debate these regulations and the wider issues around school admissions that he outlined, with which I would agree. I found the Explanatory Memorandum to the school information regulations very helpful in providing clarity on links with the new admissions code.

I shall not say much today about the removal of the year 7 catch-up premium grant. I challenged the Minister’s predecessor on this on more than one occasion last year, principally concerning fears that the overall amount allocated from the national funding formula would not meet the level of support provided by the year 7 grant. However, I noted that, in July this year, the Government announced that the amount allocated through the secondary low prior attainment factor for the 2020-21 academic year would increase from £924 million to £973 million, so it is only fair that we give the benefit of the doubt and reassess that position in a year’s time.

I think it is fair to say that there have long been concerns about the fairness of in-year admissions. The DfE’s own Review of Children in Need, published in June 2019, found that such children

“were more likely to seek a school place outside the normal admissions round and that delays in securing a school place in-year could lead to children missing education.”

Children in care are among the most vulnerable in society, of course. Surely it is of paramount importance that a school place that is in the child’s best interests is found as quickly as possible. We therefore welcome the DfE’s decision to reform the admissions code to give priority to children in care, or those who have previously been in care, in its oversubscription criteria. It is hoped that this will improve the clarity, timeliness and transparency of the in-year admissions process to ensure that all vulnerable children can access a school place without delay.

We also welcome the additions to the fair access protocol outlined in chapter 3 of the code. There are, it is fair to say, more serious deficiencies in the admissions code, which raise questions about social inequality. That is why Labour believes that local authorities should have responsibility for school places, with oversight and control of all admissions within their boundaries. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Storey, support that change. Surely it is nonsense that, at present, councils have legal responsibility for finding a school place for any child arriving in their area, yet they cannot force an academy to accept a child even if the academy is not at capacity. Surely that is not an efficient way to operate school admissions.

All too often, the current system results in school segregation by family income, which has implications for social mobility—or social justice, as I prefer to call it. The point here is the extent to which a child’s family background determines their success. If a child’s chance of attending a high-performing school is effectively determined by their family income, that will clearly act as a major brake on social improvement. There is also a further issue around the social and political implications of young people from different socioeconomic backgrounds being educated separately. That hardly seems likely to assist in building a fair and cohesive society—something that, it might be assumed, is a key component of the Government’s much-vaunted levelling-up agenda.

The Minister will know that many education specialists, commentators and school leaders have called on the department to make further changes to the admission code to close the disadvantage gap, which has spiralled due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The leaked presentation on the needs of schools and pupils following the pandemic from the Government’s sadly short-lived recovery tsar, Sir Kevan Collins, revealed:

“Children from poorer households, who have often struggled most to learn from home, have lost most learning with the attainment gap expected to widen by 10-24%”.


Labour has committed to an education recovery premium, which would support every child to reach their potential by investing in the children who faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years to further education. We also advocate doubling the pupil premium for children in key transition years, delivering additional support for the children who need it most.

The former Chief Schools Adjudicator, Sir Philip Hunter, has warned that, although the admissions code requires schools

“to adopt, publish and administer admission criteria which are objective and reasonable”,

the very criteria that allow schools to

“give priority to children who live closest to the school, live in a defined catchment area, have siblings already at the school or, in the case of aided schools, are members of a particular church or religion … will, if unregulated over time, result in priority being given to children from privileged backgrounds”

at the expense of their disadvantaged counterparts,

“so the criteria will need to be even more rigorously applied”

as this will lead to schools becoming “yet more selective” and “more elitist”.

On disadvantage, the Minister may have had drawn to her attention by her officials what I regard as a worrying report, published three months ago by Humanists UK. Entitled Careless or Uncaring? How Faith Schools Turn Away Children Who Are or Were in Care, the report found that, in their admissions policies,

“41% of all state secondary schools of a religious character discriminate against children who are or were in care not of their faith … In Kensington and Chelsea, 50% of all state secondaries (religious or otherwise) discriminate against children who are or were in care not of their faith.”

Covid-19: Education Settings

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, once again I want to pay tribute to all education staff, pupils and parents, who have done so much over the past 16 months to ensure that children and young people were able to have as much learning as was possible in the most trying of circumstances.

Last week, in a repeat of an Urgent Question in your Lordships’ House, I asked the Minister to confirm that parents, pupils and teachers would know what was to happen in September to school bubbles, before this term ends, allowing school leaders time to put plans in place and give their staff a desperately needed break over the summer. Naturally, it is satisfying that the Government responded to my personal plea with a Statement made by the Secretary of State two days ago, but only up to a point.

The main restrictions on education and childcare are ending with effect from 19 July. With more than 640,000 children in England absent from school last week due to Covid, whether that is the right thing to do, just days before the school year ends, is questionable. The summer holidays act as a natural circuit breaker, and surely it would have been preferable to use that as the end point for restrictions that were unhelpful for learning but were necessary to minimise the spread of Covid.

The Government have been desperate to do something—anything—to meet the clamour from many of their MPs and their supporters in the media, but the new Health Secretary was candid in his admission, a few days ago, that England was entering what he termed as “uncharted territory” in its wholesale scrapping of lockdown rules from 19 July. New infections could easily rise above 100,000 a day over the summer, he said—more than at any point in the pandemic. The concern felt by many parents and children, at the sweeping away of the current system for containing Covid outbreaks in schools, colleges and nurseries, is understandable.

The Statement says that by 19 July, grouping pupils into protective bubbles within schools, colleges and nurseries in England will no longer be required, along with several other preventive measures. The use of self-isolation for children with close contacts will end in mid-August. Last week, when I invited the Minister to explain why secondary pupils had no longer been required to wear masks in classrooms from mid-May, at a time when cases were rising and masks still had to be worn in shops and indoor spaces, she replied it was done on the advice of Public Health England. Is that also the basis of the Government’s latest guidance removing requirements such as staggered school start and finish times, social distancing and the recommendations for the wearing of masks in communal areas, and—where bubbles have never been able to be enforced—on school transport? If so, will the Government publish the data that informed those decisions?

Doing away with bubbles from 19 July means more schools will have just a few days before the end of term. Many, I suspect, will feel it is not worth changing until the new term. Of course, by then some will already have begun their summer holidays. When the Secretary of State delivered the Statement in another place on Tuesday, he was asked several questions by my colleague Kate Green MP. Not many received a response, so I will repeat some and offer the Minister the opportunity of addressing these issues.

The DfE has run pilots using testing instead of the bubble system in schools, but that was not mentioned in the Statement. What were the results of the pilot, using daily testing in some schools? Did this mean more hours in the classroom? Did it result in more cases being detected? If the JCVI does propose vaccinating older children, is the Minister confident that the necessary infrastructure to begin that process will be in place before schools return in September?

Also, with regard to exams in 2022, the Secretary of State said on Tuesday that mitigations would be put in place to take account of the fact that many children, facing exams in the forthcoming academic year, particularly year 10, had missed a great deal of school over the past year. What sort of mitigation has been considered by the DfE to support children caught in that situation? Given the chaos and confusion that reigned both last year and this year, those young people deserve to know, when they arrive for the new term, what format of exam system they will face.

Our aim with these questions is not to catch the Government out. We genuinely want pupils to return to school after their summer break knowing what to expect, and for their parents to have confidence that sensible and effective measures to keep everyone as safe as possible from a further spread of Covid are in place. I look to the Minister for reassurance that that is not too much to ask.

[Lord Storey (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I add my thanks to all those teachers and support staff, children and young people. I am surprised that this is being done now and we have not waited until the beginning of the autumn term, which is literally only a few days away.

The Minister’s Statement is made against a backdrop of rising cases. School outbreaks are up to the highest level all year and rising sharply. Children, of course, remain unvaccinated, at risk of transmitting the virus and suffering from long Covid themselves. The Government have consistently claimed to be following the scientific advice before making decisions. Will the Minister publish the results of their trials on daily contact testing as an alternative to self-isolation?

We now know so much more about Covid-19 than we did a year ago, yet the Government are not learning lessons from either the knowledge that we have gained about the virus or the effective measures taken in different countries. We know that airborne transmission is the main way that Covid-19 is spreading. Countries such as Germany have invested in upgrading air-conditioning units and providing mobile purifiers. What are the Government here doing to improve ventilation in our schools?

In the Statement, the Minister says that education settings

“will continue to have a role in working with health protection teams in the case of a local outbreak. Where necessary, some measures may need to be reintroduced.”

What are the measures that will be reintroduced? The Minister says that, in classrooms or communal areas, face masks and social distancing will no longer be required. Does that include whole-school assemblies, or the daily act of worship in Church schools?

The requirement for a staggered start and finish time for schools and colleges can continue until the end of the summer term if schools wish. Is it sensible to have hundreds of children and students leaving schools and colleges at the same time, with, for younger children, hundreds of parents at the school gates to meet them? What is the scientific advice to stop staggering school start and finish times? If a school wishes to continue staggering the start and finish of its school day, can it do so?

Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I want to see as many children in school as possible and I want to see children and staff safe. The Statement is not a plan to deal with Covid-19 in our schools; it is lettered with instances of “maybe”, “we should” or “we advise schools to”. It ends with these words:

“children and young people will be able to get on with their education and lives”.

But if Covid is ripping through our schools, colleges and universities, there will be no “getting on with their lives”; in fact, we are putting their lives at risk. I fear that this is playing Covid roulette with our children and young people.

Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it is fitting that the Statement emphasises the tremendous efforts of all staff in schools and colleges who have made schools as safe as they can be, at some risk to themselves. I echo these sentiments.

It was obvious before Christmas that there were likely to be problems with grades. Indeed, I and other noble Lords said as much when the ministerial Statement on exams and accountability came to your Lordships’ House on 8 December. Why did the Government sit on their hands and pretend otherwise until it was too late to come up with a genuinely robust proposal? Can the Minister explain why, despite schools closing at the start of January, exam board guidance will not be available until the end of March? That simply increases the uncertainty and anxiety already widely experienced by students, parents and teachers. The proposals for checking and confirming teachers’ grades seem flimsy. It would have been possible to build in much more comprehensive moderation arrangements between schools, using the skills of experienced examiners and exam markers. Without this, there can be no guarantee of consistency and fairness. There is surely a risk that the rigorous will lose out, compared to the less rigorous.

There is also a serious risk that schools, colleges and teachers will be exposed to unreasonable pressure to give students the grades they—or their parents—expect. It must be made clear and emphasised that exam boards, not schools, are responsible for issuing grades and appeals. As things stand, it seems that a school can appeal against a grade awarded by one of its own teachers. This is awkward, to say the least.

The likely volume of appeals and disputes will also present a capacity issue. How can the Government guarantee that the system will be able to cope with these pressures? Faith in the proposals has hardly been enhanced by the very public resignation of Sir Jon Coles from the Ofqual recovery committee just as the new measures were being announced. He was a former DfE director-general and the department’s own nominee to the Ofqual committee. What does this say about the robustness of these proposals?

I turn to the return of schools and colleges. During the first week back, they will be required to carry out three tests for each of the 3.4 million secondary-age pupils. Many schools have lost income or face higher costs because of the pandemic. What support and resources will the Government make available for schools and colleges to deliver the testing, including additional financial support?

In January, the Secretary of State said that he wanted school staff to be in the next wave of vaccinations. Yet, despite the obvious benefits this brings in facilitating the return to school, there has been no commitment since to prioritising school staff. Do the Government no longer believe that teaching staff should be a priority?

Finally, 8 March is also the date on which independent training providers are expected to have the majority of apprentices and trainees back on site. ITPs and their learners seem to be at the back of the queue for receiving Covid home-testing kits. The Association of Employment and Learning Providers says that a general rollout is not expected before April. This cohort includes high levels of vulnerable and disadvantaged learners who are more likely to be affected by Covid-19. It is unacceptable that they should be doubly disadvantaged by a lack of access to testing. Many have little or no access to the technology needed for remote learning, so anything that delays their return to classroom delivery is damaging.

There is an obligation on training providers and employers to provide a safe environment before learning can resume. Already, providers are concerned that they are potentially leaving themselves open to legal action. Can the Minister explain what providers are meant to do in these circumstances?

We all want not simply to see schools and training facilities fully reopened but for it to take place on a sustainable basis. This requires a creditable system, underwritten by a plan B. If the Government have learned anything during the last 12 months, it is surely that a fallback position is necessary to take account of fast-changing events. This Government have been characterised throughout the pandemic by indecision and U-turns. This has had a particularly damaging effect on young people seeking to gain the education and qualifications that will prepare them for the world of work. How can the Minister guarantee that the measures outlined in the Statement will offer a more certain way forward for students, parents and teachers?

[Lord Storey (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this Statement. The last 12 months have been like a giant wrecking ball for the education of our children. We welcome the reopening of schools and the Covid measures that the Government have put in place, but we have consistently argued that individual schools are best placed to respond to their circumstances. We should give head teachers the flexibility to know how to operate their schools safely.

We welcome that Sir Kevan Collins will work on the recovery plan, crucially together with teachers, schools and parents. It is important that we get this right. Each child’s circumstances vary enormously. The learning gap has widened. Today, the Education Policy Institute has reported that sixth-form and college students from poorer homes find themselves about three A-level grades behind their more affluent colleagues. A few extra lessons of catch-up will not compensate for a year’s loss of mainstream education. We need a rigorous and far-reaching plan to ensure that nobody is left behind. I am surprised that there is no mention in the Statement either of additional support for the well-being and mental health of children, or of children with special educational needs.

I turn to this summer’s exams. Thank goodness that there will not be assessment by algorithm. It is right to have teacher assessment. The amount of learning and study that each pupil has been able to access will vary enormously. Teacher assessment is the only fair way to understand individual pupils’ circumstances and learning. Can the Minister confirm that there will be no school league tables of results? Why not use a more broadly based quality assurance model rather than relying on random sampling? I am sure the Minister is concerned about grade inflation. What plans do the Government have to reverse it?

Finally, how will home-educated children and older adults be assessed for GCSEs and A-levels? I am sorry to spring that question on the Minister. If she does not know the answer, perhaps she could write to me.

Teachers and support staff have worked flat out to keep school learning on the road. We owe our school staff a huge debt of thanks for their dedication and professionalism.

Exams and Accountability in 2021

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Well, my Lords, we have had to wait quite some time for the Secretary of State to respond to the concerns of pupils, parents, school leaders and trade unions, all of whom have been seeking clarity on how next summer’s exams can be conducted fairly. We welcome many of the measures announced in the Statement, which will mitigate the impact of the pandemic, including those on SATs and the delay in Ofsted resuming its inspections, but we believe that the measures announced on GCSEs and A-levels do not go far enough and leave a number of issues to be resolved.

The first concern is the Government’s apparent belief that a one-size-fits-all approach is appropriate. Why should that be the case? The changes being proposed will apply to all students, so everyone will know about the topics to be covered, everyone will be able to bring in certain aids, everyone will be graded more generously and so on. Significant numbers of pupils have been and will continue to be absent from school due to Covid, causing disruption to their education. The pattern across the country is uneven, and students’ experiences have been different, so how can making changes that apply to everyone specifically help those who have had the most challenging experiences and therefore need more support?

One size fits all will lead to fundamental inequities between students who have suffered different levels of disruption to their learning, and makes it inevitable that some young people will be examined on what they have not been taught rather than what they have been taught. This is an issue that the interim chief regulator of Ofqual has red-flagged, highlighting the gap in learning loss across different regions, describing it as

“one of the most intractable issues”,

with any potential solutions

“fraught with difficulty”.

The Minister may point to this as being within the remit of the expert group, but with someone as experienced as the head of Ofqual saying it is close to being unmanageable, does the Minister believe there is a solution to be found? If there is not, the question of whether the exams can ever be fair for pupils in the hardest-hit Covid areas must be addressed.

I mentioned the expert group, but we have had relatively little information on it. Why has it been established so late? Who will comprise the group and will it include representatives of school leaders and teachers? Most importantly, when is it expected to report? Additionally, will minutes of its meetings be published, as now happens with SAGE? Will its members, like those who comprise the DfE’s Covid-19 recovery advisory group, be required to sign non-disclosure agreements? That would be completely unacceptable at a time when concerned parents and pupils surely deserve transparency on discussions about their future. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the distribution of grades is spread evenly across schools and postcodes this year, so that the most disadvantaged pupils are treated fairly? We still do not know which parts of the syllabus will be in the exam papers and which will not, leaving schools less and less time to adjust their teaching programmes.

A further concern is why it has now been revealed that funding for catch-up tutoring will be spread across two years. Apparently, around £140 million of the £350 million allocated to the national tutoring programme remains unspent. That might not have been the case had the programme not taken so long to begin its work but, given the widely accepted disparity in the amount of education that school pupils have been able to access since the start of the pandemic, surely every available resource should be used to ensure that every pupil is prepared for this year’s exams, rather than rolling over that part of the funding into next year, because for some that will be too late.

The Minister may point to the separate catch-up fund, but that does not justify holding back resources already allocated for spending in this financial year, particularly when it is so critical that they reach those young people most in need. Students should have the opportunity to show what they have achieved in unprecedented circumstances. Despite the delay, these proposals fall short of what is required to facilitate the fair exams that the Secretary of State promised.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I first join the Minister in congratulating Dr Frost but also pay tribute to teachers and school leaders up and down the country who have pulled out all the stops to make sure that schooling for their pupils is happening. We welcome the Statement. Clearly, on this occasion, it has been very thoughtfully worked through and every aspect has been covered, unlike last year’s fiasco.

We feel that, had teacher-managed assessments been used, the Government could have given teachers far greater certainty about how to work, what to teach, how to assess and which subjects to prioritise for the rest of the academic year. It is interesting that research carried out by Exeter University shows huge variances across the country in the amount of schooling and learning that children have been afforded. There are huge regional variations, with more teaching and learning in the south compared to the north. There have also been huge discrepancies between types of schools, according to Exeter University’s research, which is why continuing with exams will be deeply unfair given the opportunities that this academic year gives students in different parts of the country and the different effects on remote education. Having school assessment grades would have given schools far greater certainty about how to work, what to teach and how to assess.

But we are now going to operate in the way that the Government propose, and I welcome many of the proposals in the Statement. I have a number of concerns to raise, which I hope the Minister will deal with in her reply. Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I would like the Minister to give more details about the statement:

“We will … commission an expert group to assess any local variations and the impact the virus is having on students’ education.”


What does this mean in practice and how will it work, et cetera?

Secondly, we welcome the decision on school accountability for assessments taken, publication of results and how Ofsted will operate. Perhaps the Minister could expand a little more, because this is an opportunity for Ofsted, in a “non-threatening way”—in inverted commas—to support those schools that were judged inadequate and requiring improvement. Perhaps that could happen during this period.

We have concerns also about those children and students who are home educated. This could happen in two ways. Some have chosen to be home educated, but others have had to home educate and deregister from the school, perhaps because a close member of their family has a life-threatening condition and has to be supported and protected, so the child or student cannot go into school. What support is being given in terms of exams and learning for those children and students?

Finally, when we say that our young people will be sitting exams, but that places additional burdens on schools in terms of organising them. Will additional advice and support be given to schools on how to operate and socially distance students, because it is not an easy thing to do? I do not know whether the Government have considered this, but some of the exams might have to be phased so that all pupils can take them in a very safe environment.

Lifetime Skills Guarantee and Post-16 Education

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Labour broadly welcomes the contents of the Statement and we certainly share the stated determination of the Secretary of State to raise the status of further, technical and vocational education. However, we cannot welcome his statement that,

“for decades, this sector has been overlooked and underserved, playing second fiddle to higher education.”

That is an attempt by the Conservative Party to spread the blame for the role of successive Governments over the past 10 years in starving further education of the support it needed to make its full contribution to supplying the skills that our economy needs. That and the failure of the advanced learner loan scheme acted as barriers to many young people accessing further education.

For those looking to access training beyond level 3, it seems from the Statement that they will have access only to a flexible loan system. This does not seem to be a Government who listen to what people want and respond to the mistakes of the past. The need for training and retraining is urgent. Last month, the Open University’s latest business barometer revealed that 56% of UK employers continue to experience skills shortages.

I shall repeat some of the questions put to the Secretary of State when he made the Statement in another place last week. My colleague Kate Green MP put several questions to him, very few of which received an answer. I therefore hope that the Minister might do so now. On apprenticeships, the Statement talks of addressing some of the barriers that small and medium-sized enterprises continue to face three years after the apprenticeship levy was introduced. What additional support will be made available to that crucial sector of the economy, as well as to non-levy payers, to enable apprenticeship opportunities to be increased?

The Statement says that the lifetime skills guarantee will bring about equality between the further and higher education sectors. If that is to be the case, can the Minister say whether learners who study for the new funded courses at levels 2 and 3 will be eligible for maintenance support on the same basis as that which applies to higher education courses?

For adults not qualified to level 3, the Statement says that everyone

“will be able to call on a flexible lifelong loan entitlement for four years”.

There are around 9 million people in that category. Should they all want to participate, it will work out at about £250 per head. Does the Minister really believe that that is sufficient for anyone to build the necessary skills and qualifications that they will need? That figure is reached by dividing up the £2.5 billion we have been promised will represent the value of the national skills fund. When the Secretary of State made the Statement last week, he told the shadow Secretary of State:

“We launched the national skills fund, announced in our manifesto.”—[Official Report, Commons, 1/10/20; col. 545.]


Only the second part of that is true. Not only has the fund not been launched but the consultation on it has not even commenced, as the Minister will know because last week she told me in a Written Answer that no date for it has yet been set. Is she any closer to being able to do so today? That is symptomatic of general government lethargy in relation to skills and job creation, which is inexcusable, given the urgency of the situation. Another example is the Chancellor’s announcement in July of 30,000 traineeships to get young people into work. That is a good idea but, three months later, procurement of the contract for that has still not commenced. Why is that?

The final piece of evidence is the Statement itself. It is upbeat and full of good intent but its provisions are scheduled to come into effect not next week or next month but next year—six months down the line—in April. Who knows what state the country will be in by then? However, we now know that we face an existential crisis of unemployment and the need for skills and retraining is acute. Why do the Government not see things that way?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, this is very good news. I do not have to sit on the Bishops’ Bench to say, hallelujah. As the chief executive of the Association of Colleges said:

“For many years, further education colleges have not received the recognition they deserve.”


In fact, for 20 years or more, we have allowed further education and vocational education to wither. The skills gap is huge: you have to look no further than the Grenfell inquiry, which daily produces examples of people carrying out tasks and supervision far beyond their skill level, with catastrophic consequences. The forthcoming building safety Bill will impose big requirements on design, construction, supervision and regulatory personnel, who will need CPD in-service training, plus a stream of incoming trained starters. There are critical safety gaps at present.

The Chancellor’s scheme of £3 billion to spend on retrofitting energy improvements to homes—which, by the way, is to be done by next April—opens up another huge gap. Most small jobbing builders do not have the full range of skills needed and there are not enough energy performance assessors to prepare or supervise them. Of course, the loss of EU workers is keenly felt in London and the south-east. The work visa plan is unworkable for an industry in which peripatetic working around different jobs with different employers is normal. There is no evidence that anybody has a grip on these issues. That is why this Statement is critical and we hope that “rolled out as promised” or “build, build, build” will be a joke.

An entitlement to a fully funded level 3 qualification and more flexibility in levels 4 and 5 are important steps forward, as the Government begin to implement the Augar review. We very much welcome the proposals on apprenticeship, which have lost their way in recent years. We welcome more training funding for small and medium-sized enterprises and more flexibility on how the levy-paying employers can use their funds. Can the Minister tell us whether the apprenticeship measures will be funded from the existing £2 billion a year apprenticeship budget?

The Minister will be familiar with the recommendations of the independent Commission on Lifelong Learning, convened by our former leader, Vince Cable, so this is something that we very much welcome. We would be glad of the opportunity to talk to the Minister about it. What consultations have already taken place with the sector about the detail of the plans, how they will look and how they will be rolled out in practice?

I am sure that people working in adult education and skills will welcome the ambitions that the Government are setting out. It sounds like they are being asked to alter ways of working and upscale capacity massively with a few months’ notice and during a pandemic. They need to be thoroughly consulted on these proposals and supported with the practicalities of delivering them.

We welcome the commitment to fund courses for anyone who left school without an A-level or its equivalent. It is, of course, essential to ensure that the benefit of this new plan is felt by those who need the support the most. As an aside, it seems that we are getting nearer to the day when GCSEs will no longer be needed.

Given the pace of change in the jobs market due to AI and automation, and the number of job losses being projected as a result of the pandemic, the Government should consider more ambitious proposals to give funding support to more people, with the introduction of universal personal education and skills accounts.

There is no mention of university technical colleges, which have done an excellent job. Does the Minister see an enhanced role for them? No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Baker, will pick up this point. In addition, in reply to a Written Question from me a couple of days ago, the Minister revealed that there are now 390,109 young people on education, health and care plans. Will these young people be supported through the FE sector with the resources that they need? Finally, although this is not mentioned in the Statement—I raised this last time—I want to write to the Minister, if she does not mind, about the Kickstart programme and how it is not involving 16 and 17 year-olds.

Schools and Colleges: Qualification Results and Full Opening

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, my apologies: I thought that the noble Baroness the Minister was going to repeat the Statement.

I start by congratulating young people across the country on their GCSE and A-level results, which have caused them much more anxiety than necessary. Labour is absolutely clear: we want children back in school and we want them to stay there safely. As the shadow Secretary of State said yesterday, we will always work constructively with the Secretary of State to achieve that, and the questions that I put to the Minister should be taken in that spirit.

The vast majority of schools will reopen fully over the next few days. We welcome that, but many issues of concern remain. For example, schools were denied the necessary information to prepare for reopening, with the Government’s guidance for head teachers to plan for tier 2 restrictions only being published last Friday.

Over the past month, we have been presented with the extraordinary saga of the 2020 examinations. Ministers’ fixation on avoiding grade inflation led to the adoption of a statistical approach that was never going to survive contact with real live students. Mr Gove’s reforms to exams meant that there was no back-up to call on. It beggars belief that the Secretary of State was warned of the debacle and yet allowed such flawed results to reach publication before the inevitable retreat, thereby causing not just distress to so many students but chaos in the university sector. It seems that we have a Government that resolutely refuse to recognise problems that are so obviously coming down the road, proclaiming absolute confidence in their ostrich-like convictions until the moment of the screeching U-turn.

With regard to this summer’s exam results, can the Minister say when the Secretary of State first knew of the potential problems with the flawed standardisation approach, and what action he took as a result? The evidence given by Ofqual to the Education Committee today has raised serious questions about the Secretary of State’s role in the fiasco. We welcome the apology in the Statement but not his repeated attempts to blame Ofqual and officials for the exams crisis. It is now clear that he was responsible. The head of Ofqual has gone and the head of DfE is going. As we say in Scotland, Mr Williamson’s jaiket is on a shoogly nail.

In a helpful letter to all noble Lords last week, the noble Baroness the Minister stated:

“The relevant awarding organisations have assured the DfE that students will receive their results by this Friday.”


That was 28 August. Can the Minister say how many BTEC students have still not received their results?

On the national tutoring programme, can the noble Baroness say when it will take effect? Yesterday, the Secretary of State merely referred to “this academic year”, which is, to say the least, open-ended. Is she also aware that there is scope for the independent sector to demonstrate public benefit under its charitable status by becoming registered tutors under the programme? Not all the work should be handed to private tuition agencies, but whoever is involved it must start soon.

Finally on the return of schools, can the Minister say why early years and post-16 providers remain ineligible for the catch-up premium, and what extra support will be available for children with SEND?

Turning to the 2021 examinations, the tinkering around the edges proposed by Ofqual does not begin to address the scale of the problem that Years 11 and 13 have faced this year and will face next year. The call by teaching unions to change the exams more fundamentally is right: we need to address how we can “build back better”.

Two immediate principles should underpin exams in 2021. First, as the noble Baroness may recall, I argued—in response to the Statement of 8 July—that a plan was needed when schools returned, not in desperation as June 2021 approaches, to cope with the disruption that has already happened, and, just as importantly, for what may happen next year. A robust system does that, and it is surely a condemnation of the Government’s approach that there was no such plan this year. Failing to announce a plan that would have gone some way to reassuring students that they will not be penalised because of the possible future impact of the pandemic amounts, essentially, to a head-in-the-sand assumption that the next academic year will run smoothly and exams and progression in 2021 will operate as if nothing much has really happened. That is surely wishful thinking.

Schools, colleges and universities need time to plan. What discussions are Ministers having with the sector and UCAS to ensure that workable arrangements are in place? Can the Minister guarantee that a contingency plan will be put in place this month in case exams are disrupted again? Removing the cap on admissions by individual universities without a strategy for dealing with the fallout from that decision merely pushes the problem into next year.

Children and their families should have been the Government’s top priority over the summer, but their interests have been placed below those of the Government and Ministers. That must now change, for the good of all young people--for their education and their futures.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I was slightly confused because I thought the Minister would start by reading the Statement—I do not quite know what happened, but I have obviously got that wrong.

We welcome the fact that children and young people are returning to school, and we have to do all in our power to make this work successfully—and to make it safe. Naturally, the Government have produced reams of guidance for schools. Head teachers have told me that some of it is quite contradictory. I shall give one example. The guidance says:

“No-one should be excluded from education on the grounds that they are not wearing a face covering.”


Yet it also says that when children are walking down corridors or are in open-access areas in schools they should wear a face covering. However, the guidance says that, no, you should not be excluded or told that you had to wear one. That guidance has to be there—I understand that—but head teachers, schools and teachers are looking for simplified, easy-to-follow advice that they can adhere to.

During this period of school closures, children have fallen further and further behind, particularly disadvantaged pupils and those from BAME communities. Schools should be doing everything in their power to ensure that those children are able to catch up on those lost months of learning. I have seen it floated that the Government are considering doing some formative or summative testing to find out what the gap is and what the loss of learning is and how that can be supported. I welcome that—it is an important initiative that should happen.

I am concerned about three areas. One is that, during the period of school closures, children and young people who were excluded from school—they were not on any register because they were excluded—and those young people in alternative provision were the most vulnerable pupils in our system, and they need extra support and help. I do not know what the Government view on that should be, but alternative providers are concerned that those young people could easily get into further trouble.

Then there is the question of the 60,000 home-educated children. I strongly believe, as I suspect the Minister does, that now is the right time to introduce a policy to ensure that home-educated pupils are registered so that we know what is going on in their learning. However, I was concerned to see that external, home-schooled students have not received an A-level or GCSE grade. Could the Minister shed light on this? I am told that 20,000 students have been informed by their institutions that they will not receive a GCSE grade this year.

Let me give noble Lords the case of a young man from Oxford—I apologise to the Minister for throwing this out now and I will give her the correspondence afterwards. Due to personal reasons, he had to be home educated and do his own learning for biology, chemistry and physics at GCSE and A-level. He had a place at a university, but he has been told—I presume that this is true of other young people too—that he will not get a grade because he was an external candidate, not through a school. That is incredibly worrying. Could the Minister look at this issue?

Finally, I go back to mainstream schools. If, God forbid, a pupil is tested as Covid positive, who tells the school? Who tells the head teacher? Is it left to the parents to inform the school? Who is it left to? I am told by head teachers that there are no processes whereby the testing regime should automatically inform the head teacher. That is crucial for the well-being of schools and pupils, and to making the return to full-time education successful.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, we want to see every child safely back in school when the new term begins in September, but simply willing it, or even making it compulsory, does not mean it will happen. Parents must have confidence that it is safe for their children to return, and this Statement does not in itself provide that because it contains many unanswered questions.

By September, almost six months will have elapsed since any child has experienced a normal education. A number, although disappointingly small, have been attending school throughout as the children of key workers, and more recently selected years have been able to return, but despite teachers working flat out, few—if any—of these children, or those being home-schooled, have experienced education in any sense as it would have been had the coronavirus pandemic not happened. The result has been the development of a major gap in their learning for millions of young people, and perhaps the saddest aspect of that is that the narrowing of the gap between children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds, painstakingly achieved over recent years, has been reversed. The impact of lost time in education on children’s life chances is incalculable, but we know for sure that for some, ground lost this year may never be regained.

The Statement talks of schools continuing to minimise contact between children through grouping children together in bubbles, with whole year groups in schools kept separate, but how practical is that? The proposals for managing schools are complicated, confusing and unlikely to work in many situations, not least in terms of the proposed whole-year bubbles. How will they work? How will wraparound care work? How will transport to and from school be addressed? For example, siblings will be probably be in different bubbles but will mix on transport as well as at home. Another practical point concerns supply teachers. Will they be able to move between schools?

What seems to be being suggested for secondary schools requires a huge re-organisation of space, timetable and staff deployment, all to be accomplished in a few weeks. The cost of all this will be considerable—the additional cleaning alone will be very significant—yet schools are being told they have to manage on the resources they have. Is that fair or practical?

On the subject of funding to deal with the crisis, I want to press the Minister on the resources announced by the Secretary of State two weeks ago: the so-called Covid catch-up funding. Last week, when this Statement was presented in the other place, the Secretary of State told the shadow Secretary of State, Kate Green MP,

“there is new money for the covid catch-up fund.”—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/20; col. 542.]

That is ambiguous. Is there some new money or is it all new money? Given that on the same day as the £1 billion was announced, a further announcement scrapped the year 7 catch-up premium, I think we are entitled to be just a little suspicious. I hope that the Minister will today allay any fears about whether the fund represents new rather than recycled resources.

Exams in 2021 are a real concern. Pupils are already anxious that missing so much time in school will adversely affect their results and hence, potentially, their future. The Ofqual consultation seems to be doing little more than tinkering around the edges of the issues. There needs to be a fall-back position in place, widely known and understood, in case the 2021 exams are also disrupted. There should be a commitment that Ofqual will use the techniques established when exams are changed: of following the principle of comparable outcomes. Can the Minister confirm whether that will be the case? Announcing this by the time that schools return in September would go some way to reassuring students that they will not be penalised because of the impact of the virus this year, and possibly next year.

Even that would not solve all problems and there will remain a huge risk that disadvantaged pupils, whose learning was more disrupted, will lose out disproportionately again. Crucially, I ask the Minister: will track and trace be working properly, with information properly shared? The Government’s record thus far—in terms much wider than the educational—does not exactly inspire confidence.

I return to the issue of a lack of confidence among parents, which has prevented more of them allowing their children to return to school since June. What can the Minister say to parents that will enable their confidence to build in the short time between now and September?

[Lord Storey (LD) [V]]

I thank the Minister for the Statement. We need to get children back into schools and education, and to be working with all those interested parties to make this essential return successful and safe. There are some key issues.

Will the DfE be collecting data on attendance and examining reasons for absence, rather than talking about fining parents? The Secretary of State talked about

“a broad and balanced curriculum.”

How feasible is this? He talked about the £350 million for catch-up and claimed that

“six to 12 weeks of tutoring”—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/20; cols. 538-39.]

will give five months’ improvement. This claim is, presumably, based on research but five months of lost education is very different from topping up full-time education. There will be particular issues for special schools, which were barely mentioned other than declaring that all children with an education, health and care plan should be in school. This is clearly impossible, given the state of knowledge about Covid-19.

I particularly want to press the Minister on the estimated 500,000 children who are missing from schools permanently. Some 80,000 of those children are home-schooled and 6,000 are going to unregistered schools; the Children’s Commissioner has talked of 120,000 children who have fallen outside the register. If there is home-school tuition, you do not need permission to home teach. You do not need any qualifications. There are no requirements on hours. You do not need to conform to the national curriculum or have to do SATS—and, of course, you do not have to be registered, let alone inspected. Will the Minister give an assurance, first, that those children who are home-schooled will at least be in an environment where safeguarding practices are maintained, and that those settings should be registered? Secondly, will she take action against those unregistered schools? Thirdly, will she ensure that we have a school-roll system which does not allow children to slip through the net? What we need is an open discussion about our schools returning, so that all our children can begin their school career again in September safely.

Children’s Homes etc. Inspection Fees, Childcare Fees, Adoption and Children Act Register (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, my father and his brother were adopted into a loving family, and it changed his and his brother’s lives for good, so in a sense I have a vested interest in this important debate. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the Motion to Regret and thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for moving it.

I am deeply troubled that the Government’s behaviour has made such a debate necessary. I remember that, during the coalition Government, the then Prime Minister David Cameron rightly spoke of the importance of adoption and the need to ensure that children are matched with the right family and that the process is not dragged into bureaucracy of our making.

I paid careful attention to what the Government said in the Explanatory Memorandum about the revocation of the regulations referring to the adoption register, but there is no explanation, merely a statement of what the regulations state, ending with the following sentence:

“These revocations are necessary as the Secretary of State will not be operating or maintaining an Adoption Register from 1 April 2019”.


That is the sum total of the Government’s justification for simply allowing the adoption register to lapse. They have abandoned—or let lapse—plan A without any plan B.

In the letter to the scrutiny committee, the Children’s Minister says:

“I would like to reassure the Committee that this decision was made following careful scrutiny of all the evidence and I am confident that it will not have a negative impact on children and adopters”.


However, there is no information about what “all the evidence” comprised, nor details of the “careful scrutiny” that the Government claim to have undertaken. It is difficult to challenge the Government’s decision, as the Explanatory Memorandum offers no explanation. The Government cannot claim that there will be no “negative impact”—nor, indeed, any other impact—as they have not undertaken an impact assessment of any sort. The adoption register has disappeared without trace and without any transition arrangements being put in place. Worse than that, there is no suggestion as to what the Government intend to do to replace the register.

Later in his letter, the Minister admits:

“It is my understanding that the charity Coram, the former contractor for the Adoption Register, also intends to set up a matching service. They have communicated that to all local authorities, but I do not know when this service is expected to launch … I do not know how many local authorities choose to subscribe to additional services … I am unable to say what the distribution of local authorities across that range is, except to say that around £5,000 is the average. The amount paid is a matter between individual local authorities and Link Maker”.


The Minister goes on to justify the decision by saying:

“The Adoption Register ceased operating on 31 March 2019, and, since then, I have not received feedback from any adoption agency to suggest they are struggling without it”.


I hope that the Government do not think that the lack of feedback within just seven weeks is evidence that there is no problem.

Some people may think that the regulations are just tidying up some unnecessary bureaucracy or getting rid of another length of red tape, but they would be wrong. It is always easier to talk in the abstract, but this is a shameful—perhaps dreadful—example of the Government pulling out of or back from doing something positive. The Government are washing their hands of hundreds of the most vulnerable children.

According to Coram—it ran the adoption register, as we heard—the hard evidence is that 277 of the most difficult-to-place children were found families in the single year up to 31 March 2019. Although I say “most difficult”, the difficulties are not of the children’s own making but their often complex needs mean that they need adoptive parents with the skill, determination and commitment to provide them with a proper home.

The alternative for many of these children is life in an institution of one sort or another—a life that could be transformed by finding the one set of parents in England that could meet their need for a family life, as happened for my father. In her letter to the scrutiny committee, the chief executive of Coram stated:

“The Adoption Register was the only registered, child-focussed pro-active independent service helping agencies to find adoptive homes for children when all other approaches have been tried. It was a vital extra chance for those who wait the longest - those with additional needs, developmental uncertainty, BAME or in sibling groups”.


In its excellent briefing, Coram said:

“Without the Register, agencies may pay to use an alternative product, with the total cost to the sector likely to exceed the value of the Register contract”.


The commercial alternative, depending on the size of the local authorities and the looked-after children population, is typically between £5,000 and £10,000 per local authority. We are all well aware of the dire situation of children’s services and the difficulty in them finding even this relatively small sum. To cover its annual costs, the register needed to help to find adoptive families for just two children who would otherwise have remained in care for the rest of their childhood—a target that has been achieved every year since it was created.

For some children, the adoption register was their last chance. For every child not adopted because the Government have abandoned the register, and for every adoptive parent not matched with an adopted son or daughter, the impact is incalculable. This Government should be ashamed of allowing the register just to disappear.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, due to the announcement in Part 4 to close the national adoption register for England, these regulations are subject to a regret Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, on which I congratulate him. I should also say that we do not believe that the negative procedure is appropriate in this case. It should be used for routine matters; by no stretch of the imagination is the sudden closure of the national adoption register—with no proper replacement identified, far less in place—a routine matter. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, the Explanatory Memorandum provides no rationale for it.

When a local authority considers placing a child for adoption, it looks for a match with a suitable family, which is often found locally. For some children, it needs to look further afield to families “recruited” by another adoption agency. To facilitate this process, the national adoption register was introduced in 2002. The database included details of children who had been approved for adoption but were waiting to be matched, approved prospective adopters and prescribed information about children for whom the adoption agency was considering adoption. It was used by social workers and approved prospective adopters to seek matches until it was closed down in March this year under these regulations.

Like the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, we find too many unanswered questions associated with the closure of the register. The committee drew the regulations to the special attention of the House on the grounds that the explanatory material laid in support provides insufficient information to gain a clear understanding about the instrument’s policy objective and intended implementation. It also expressed concern that there was no public consultation on the closure.

Such was its concern that it held an oral evidence session with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families. The committee remain dissatisfied with Mr Zahawi’s responses to its probing about the potential implications of the Department for Education ceasing provision of the register before a replacement system is ready, particularly regarding the impact on hard-to-place children. At that session, the Minister stated repeatedly that his aim was to end what he called the “silo mentality”, saying that he wanted to bring fostering and adoption into one place. That is a worthy aim, but, unfortunately, he offered no suggestion as to how that might be achieved and said nothing at all about when or even if a new type of national register would be established involving children available either for adoption or fostering or both. How the needs of children would be separated if such a register were ever to be established was not left hanging because it was not even mentioned.

Relationships and Sex Education

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for arranging a briefing with his colleague the Schools Minister, Mr Gibb, yesterday for myself and other noble Lords.

The guidance has a 15-week consultation period, which I presume starts today. Six of those 15 weeks will be taken up by the school holidays, when parents, children and teachers tend be doing other things, so it is not really much more than a nine-week consultation period, which is pretty short. Will the Minister consider starting the 15-week consultation when schools return in the first week of September?

That said, we welcome the guidance and the fact that the Government listened to, and have acted on, the amendments tabled by noble Lords and MPs during the passage of what became the Children and Social Work Act. The guidance required for young people going through school today is quite different from what was required even 10 years ago. As the parent of a seven year-old, I am pleased that some of these issues are to be addressed at both primary and secondary school level.

It is vital that young people understand that certain what might be termed “difficult” subjects can be discussed openly, from grooming and the use of the internet to the meaning of relationships and what is appropriate or inappropriate sexual activity, to sexual orientation, bigotry—and perhaps the bullying that emanates from that—and transphobia. It is vital also that mental health, healthy eating, the need for exercise and issues involving alcohol and drugs will all be covered in schools via this guidance—again, that is a most positive development.

I have some questions for the Minister, most associated with the mandatory nature of the guidance. The right for parents to withdraw will surely become an issue and will, I imagine, be exercised by a significant number of parents, although I hope not too many. Can the Minister clarify how the issue will be dealt with after the “three terms before the pupil turns 16” cut-off? That is not clear in the Statement, which says:

“The draft guidance sets out that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, the parents’ request should be granted until three terms before the pupil reaches 16”.


Just before that, the Secretary of State says:

“I therefore propose to give parents the right to request their child be withdrawn from sex education delivered as part of RSE”.


So my question is: after the three terms before the child turns 16, will parents have no right to withdraw their child from sex education? What if the school is a faith school that does not recognise 16 as the age of consent for sexual activity? What will happen if a child of 16 opts to ask for information on sex education, which the guidance says all of them can do? Will the faith school then be legally obliged to provide that sex education even if it does not wish to do so? In that situation, how will a child seeking sex education be expected to proceed? Also, will schools be required to inform all children and parents as to what information they are entitled to? Clearly, nobody can access their rights if they are unaware of what they are.

Further, can the Minister confirm that the guidance will apply to all schools—maintained schools, grammar schools, academies, free schools, faith schools and independent schools? It is my understanding that it will, but only the first two of these types of school follow the national curriculum. How will the Department for Education know that children are receiving relationships and sex education in line with the guidance? Ofsted does not check independent schools, so who will, and how does the DfE intend to monitor all schools and ensure that the guidance is being complied with?

Finally, what resources will be made available to schools in addition to those that they already have? Many schools are facing huge budget pressures and cannot be expected simply to assume other responsibilities and the costs of training or teaching materials simply on the basis of what they have at the moment. Clarification on that point would be most welcome.

Parents want their children to be fully educated with the facts about all aspects of their own safety. What plans does the DfE have to ensure that teachers receive the necessary training to enable them to deliver guidance effectively? Already, teachers have heavy workloads. It is important that they are resourced to do this job properly, so what do the Minister and his department envisage as necessary by way of additional resources for teachers?

I hope that the Minister can answer those questions, but I should be clear that we offer our support for this guidance and its important aim of ensuring that young people are properly equipped for the challenges that they will face in keeping safe and healthy as they grow up.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches very much welcome this Statement and congratulate the Government on bringing it forward. It is a very welcome first—perhaps not historic—positive step forward in equipping our children and young people to cope with life in a modern society.

I think it was David Cameron who, referring to Europe, said that we should “stop banging on” about it. I am, however, glad that on this issue so many Peers, MPs and organisations outside Parliament did bang on for some considerable time. That banging on has meant, in the end, that the Government have taken note. It is right to congratulate not just the present Government but the former Secretary of State, Justine Greening, who did a lot of work to get to this stage. I particularly remember meeting Edward Timpson, the then Children’s Minister, who was very clear in his view about this topic.

The importance that not only our party but young people, parents and teachers attach to this subject is clear from the 23,000 responses to the call for evidence. While there is no definitive tally of similar calls for evidence, I am confident that this number would be near the top of that particular league table. I have looked through the consultation, and I am glad that, as most school terms finish tomorrow, sufficient time has been allowed for schools to respond in the autumn.

It is quite interesting how the world, and government policy, have moved on in the last five years, but it is disappointing that what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, the Minister’s predecessor, said in this House five years ago—

“The Government believe that PSHE is a vital part of a broad and balanced curriculum and that excellent PSHE provision is part of the life-blood of all good schools”—[Official Report, 24/4/13; col. GC 426.]


—has not led to a commitment to go one step further and make PSHE a statutory part of the curriculum. I certainly do not accept that economic education is covered by the current provision in careers, maths and citizenship, as the Statement claims. It is welcome that students can decide, from the age of 15, to opt in to sex education even if their parents do not want them to. However, there is still a discussion to be had about whether one term of sex education in the year before the age of consent is sufficient.

Liberal Democrats believe there should be an independent standards authority to pilot, phase in and resource policy changes. Such an authority would be better able to monitor the introduction of RSE than either civil servants or Ofsted. A broad and balanced curriculum for life, as the Liberal Democrats would like to see, would also include mental health education, first aid and emergency life-saving skills and financial literacy, in addition to relationships and sex education. The Welsh Assembly has already introduced a new RSE curriculum on the basis of extensive research and consultation. What discussions have the Government had with the Welsh Minister?

In 2013, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, informed us:

“I agree that we need to improve the focus on this area through teaching, schools and ITT providers”.—[Official Report, 18/6/13; col. 136.]


I cannot, however, find any mention in the Statement about who will provide the resources to train teachers. Initial teacher training had been totally fragmented, and I am sure that head teachers will be trying to work out how to provide the high-quality CPD to bring their staff up to speed with yet another new demand on finite and shrinking resources.

I have three questions that I hope the Minister will be able to clarify. First, the Statement says that RSE will be prescribed core content for all schools. The phrase that I am unsure of—perhaps the Minister will explain how it would work—is that it,

“leaves flexibility for schools … with a religious character to deliver and expand”,

on that content. I am not sure how that will work in practice and what it means.

My second question has, I think, been asked by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. It is important not just to introduce this measure in 2019-20 but to make sure that it is of good quality, with qualified teachers and good resources. What funding has the Minister set aside to invest in high-quality training and continuous professional development?

Finally, the Minister says that financial education should not be made compulsory, as it is already covered in the national curriculum in maths and the careers strategy. The national curriculum, however, is not compulsory in academies and free schools. Are we planning to make it compulsory for those schools, so that this subject will be taught?

Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the protection of children is perhaps one of the most important things that we should be doing. We welcome the safeguarding practice panel; if noble Lords do not mind me saying so, what an inspired choice Edward Timpson is as its chair. His work on the Children and Families Act was second to none.

I want to raise a particular issue that I hope the Minister will address: self-employed tutors. Unlike tutors employed by agencies, they are not legally obliged to apply for a Disclosure and Barring Service, or DBS, check. Accountants, vets, even traffic wardens are required to have such checks, despite the fact that their jobs do not involve regular access to children, yet private tutors who regularly work and are involved with children do not. In a Commons Oral Question, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education said:

“It is ultimately the responsibility of parents to assure themselves about the suitability of any private tutor they might choose to employ before they engage them, for example by seeking and checking references, and asking to see a copy of any Disclosure and Barring Service certificate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/3/18; col. 12.]


As it stands, self-employed tutors cannot apply for a DBS check. Instead, they can apply for a subject access request, containing similar information, for a fee of £10, but they are not legally obliged to do so. I hope that the Minister will use this opportunity to deal with this rather strange anomaly. Either we insist that all tutors, whether self-employed or employed by an agency, have the correct requirements or, as a second-best option, they can apply for the certification, as suggested by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these important regulations. We recognise the paramount importance of child safeguarding, which should never be compromised, no matter the circumstances. We further recognise—in doing so, we are confident that we reflect public opinion—the need for a revamp of the system of serious case reviews following a number of deeply disturbing cases in recent years, compounded by the often inept handling of reviews into how such crimes were allowed to occur.

Many of those concerns were articulated during the passage through your Lordships’ House of the Children and Social Work Act and I do not intend to revisit them. Revised regulations and a new system of reviews was necessary and, in clearly outlining the requirements for such reviews at both local and national levels, these regulations perform an important function—no less so the requirements being placed on the relevant agencies to ensure the kind of joined-up action that was often absent in the past.

That said, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is another incursion by central government into what is properly a local government responsibility, yet more resources are being found to establish yet another ministerial body—or are there? Just what resources, in the form of new money, will be made available is less than transparent. Yesterday, when these regulations were considered in another place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Nadhim Zahawi MP, said:

“The funding should be sufficient to cover all elements of the arrangements. We do not expect the new arrangements to cost more than existing structures”.—[Official Report, Commons, First Delegated Legislation Committee, 8/5/18; col. 5.]


That suggests that the Government do not treat this serious matter seriously enough to commit to additional resources, should they be necessary. The existing system was not performing adequately, hence these regulations. To suggest that this revamp, and the appointment of a new body, will not add to costs is surely not realistic.

We know that the former Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson—he of the shoe shop family—will chair the new Child Safeguarding Review Practice Panel. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that, with his record, he is a man in whom we have some confidence to carry out the task effectively. He will bring experience and authority to the post and we wish him well. However, he will be a busy man because he was also appointed last month as chair of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. He will receive £500 a day as chair of the panel, and his members, £400 plus expenses. Those rates do not sound unreasonable but if I have a concern, it is over the number of times that the panel will be required to meet and the number of panel members that it will require. I suggest that the cost remains an unknown, but perhaps the Minister can give us the Government’s thinking on this and how much, in rounded figures, it is expected to cost. As I said, it is not realistic to think that establishing a new body will not involve additional costs.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I acknowledge that the Bill is a better one than when it began its progress through both Houses. We shall not seek to impede its journey to the statute book.

The addition of the amendment promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and others, represents an important step forward in ensuring that school pupils have explained to them the full range of options, not just those whose choice of an academic route might benefit the school’s coffers. It should not have been necessary for an amendment to be passed to secure that, because strong careers guidance is critical to promoting apprenticeships in schools. If the Government’s target for apprenticeship starts is to be achieved and sustained, as we all hope, then it is crucial that young people are alerted early enough in their school life to the importance and attraction of technical routes.

However, it is disappointing that the Government have not been willing to accept Amendment 1 passed by your Lordships on Report. The decision to exclude apprenticeships from the category of approved education or training will serve as a deterrent to some young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills said last week:

“The crucial point is that the vast majority of level 2 and 3 apprentices are paid more than £6.30 an hour, and 90% of them go on to jobs or additional education afterwards”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/4/17; col. 714.]


But that is not the crucial point; in fact, he has missed the point. At least 90% of university graduates go on to jobs or additional education, so there is no difference in that respect. And whether apprentices earn £3.50 an hour—the legal minimum, which, as I said on Report, not all of them get—or £6.50 an hour, their parents are still disqualified from receiving child benefit. That is the nub of the issue. Clearly, though, we have not been successful in convincing Ministers of that point.

It was interesting to read last week of the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, in defence of the Government’s position, coming up with a figure of some £200 million a year by 2020-21. So apprentices—the young people we need to train in order to fill the skills gaps that we know exist—are to be treated unfavourably compared to their peers who choose full-time study because of the cost. The Government can miraculously find £500 million to create new grammar schools yet cannot find £200 million to ensure that the number of apprentices from the poorest families rises from its current very low level of just 10%. If there is logic in that policy stance, it escapes me. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said in Committee that she would discuss this issue with ministerial colleagues in the DWP. By Report there had been no such meetings, and we learned from the debate in the other place last week that those meetings have still not taken place. So where did the £200 million figure appear from, if not the DWP?

In passing, I say to the Minister that I submitted a Written Question asking for the Government’s workings that produced the £200 million figure. As I understand that those Questions disappear on Dissolution, I ask him to write to me with the answer so that we can gain an understanding of the foundation on which the Government have erected the barrier to treating apprentices as “approved learners”.

On Amendment 6, initially I was dismayed that the Government were unwilling to accept the will of your Lordships’ House on careers advice in further education colleges, although that was perhaps not too surprising as the Minister told us on Report that it was not necessary. However, the Government’s amendment in lieu actually appears to be stronger than the original amendment. First, it goes further than further education colleges and refers to “FE institutions”, which of course covers all training providers on the register.

Secondly, the original amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which your Lordships’ House voted for at Report, called on Ofsted to “take into account” the careers advice made available to students by colleges. Government Amendment 6A states that Ofsted must,

“comment on the careers guidance provided to relevant students at the institution”.

For that reason, I welcome Amendment 6A, as Ofsted will be obliged to be proactive in reporting what it discovers in FE colleges that it inspects. That is certainly to be welcomed, although it comes with the caveat that it will apply only to those colleges that Ofsted actually inspects. How many will be? Realistically, how many can it be?

At Report, I asked the Minister to give an assurance that Ofsted would be adequately resourced; I fear that he did not reply. Mr Marsden asked the same question of the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, and he did not reply, so perhaps the Minister can now tell noble Lords how many additional staff Ofsted will have to enable it to inspect as many training providers as possible out of the 2,000 likely to emerge. It cannot do that with its existing staff, and we have a right to know what additional resources Ofsted will receive to enable it to cope with large new demands. I look forward to his response on that. I suggest that he must have one because it is surely inconceivable that he and/or his officials have not met Amanda Spielman or her deputy, Paul Joyce, to discuss the resources that they will require as a direct result of the Bill.

We are now at the end of a process that has produced the Bill, which will strengthen the sector but could have achieved much more. I thank all noble Lords who have participated in our debates, as well as Ministers, who have moved some way, if not as far as we would like, during our deliberations.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 6A. The Minister has put it better than I could, so I shall be very brief. I have always thought that the key to making the Bill successful was twofold. First, there was breaking the logjam of mainstream schools not allowing for or understanding the important role of technical education, whether it be FE colleges or university technical colleges. The acceptance of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, was a crucial step forward. Secondly, there was careers. You can have all the courses in the world, but unless young people get a successful career at the end of it and an understanding of what is available to them, it is all for naught. I am delighted with the amendment. It sends a clear signal not only to the further education sector but to schools themselves. The explicit wording in the amendment means that there is no hiding place.

This is an important Bill, and I congratulate the Minister and his colleagues on carrying it through the Chamber in such a sympathetic way. I also thank the civil servants, who have been exemplary in the support that they have given us all. We could not wish for anything better. Finally, I thank my noble friend Lady Garden—she cannot be here—who led for my party on the Bill, and other colleagues who have supported us.

Public Sector Apprenticeship Targets Regulations 2017

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comprehensive introduction of these regulations. He has gone into considerably more detail than Mr Halfon did in the other place, and that is helpful. I will look with interest in Hansard at the amount of information on the different sectors that the noble Viscount outlined. It would probably be quite a surprise if I began by saying anything other than that we welcome these regulations and the aim of the Government that they seek to facilitate. The extent to which it is achievable may be slightly more problematic, but only time will judge on that.

As the Minister said, apprenticeships have a crucial role to play in ensuring that young people—but not only young people, of course—are provided with the ability to take up proper training that enables them to progress to well-paid and sustainable employment into their adult lives. The public sector clearly has a major role to play in that, and I welcome the fact that the Government have placed an onus on the public sector to play, and to be seen to play, its part in the long haul towards the target of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020.

On that point, I would ask the Minister to clarify the target for the four years spanned by these regulations. I listened carefully to what he said and I think I am correct in saying that he mentioned the figure of 80,000 each year, which he said reflected the public sector’s proportionate share of the 3 million target. We are slightly puzzled by that because those projections do not suggest that the public sector will be pulling its full weight towards the aim of 3 million. My understanding is that the public sector accounts for some 16.2% of the total workforce, yet the figure of 320,000 apprenticeship starts over four years represents around 11% of the 3 million target, and 16.2% of 3 million is almost 500,000. Perhaps I am missing something—the fact that there is a significant gap between the two figures suggests that I may well be—so it would be helpful if the Minister could explain why the public sector target is not more in line with that figure of 16.2%.

I was struck by the fact that the only government department excluded from these regulations is GCHQ. I can just about understand why that might be—although is it not rather a shame that there will be no openings for apprentice spies, albeit those who operate in front of a computer screen or in a darkened room wearing headphones? Just imagine the surge of applications for those apprenticeships, had they been available—or is it the case that they are available but the information is classified?

A question which the Minister might be more comfortable answering relates to the figure of 2.3% of a department’s or a body’s headcount being the target for apprenticeship starts. That figure is to be averaged over the four years beginning next month, which is not unreasonable as the target is unlikely to be achieved in the first year and perhaps also in the second year. If that happens, it is self-evident that in future years the figure will need to exceed 2.3% to achieve the average. Is the Minister confident that that will happen? If he is, on what basis does he have such confidence?

I will not repeat the argument made by my honourable friend Mr Marsden in the other place about the demands being placed on local authorities by the funding shortfall that they face. The Local Government Association estimates that figure at £5.8 billion by 2020. The Minister cannot deny that this will place many in a very difficult position when it comes to funding apprenticeships. Yes, most will be subject to the apprentice levy on the basis of their pay bill and will be able to draw from that pot—but the smaller ones will encounter real difficulties.

The Local Government Association has advocated that apprenticeships emanating in supply chains should be open to public bodies to assist them in reaching their target. The Government have changed their position—which I welcome—by allowing a figure of 10%, although that is said to be provisional, to be included. Can the Minister say how the figure will ultimately be arrived at? By that I mean: how will it be calculated? I believe that there is considerable potential for including supply chains, given the multiplier effect that they have.

In terms of social mobility, it is also to be welcomed that Mr Halfon, the Apprenticeships and Skills Minister, announced some £60 million this year for apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds. Apprenticeships really can make a difference by giving young people opportunities that previously they were unaware of or turned away from. I look forward to hearing of at least a similar figure for the other three years of the scheme. In the meantime, as one who advocates moves that assist social mobility, the Minister will, I am sure, join me in welcoming the vote in your Lordships’ House on Monday on the Technical and Further Education Bill, which provided assistance for apprentices who might be dissuaded by families who stand to lose benefits if their son or daughter takes up an apprenticeship, when they would not do so had their offspring gone into further or higher education.

A similar situation was secured in that vote for care leavers in terms of bursaries. Both these measures will assist with social mobility and so, for consistency’s sake, surely the Minister can regard them only as positive developments. I trust that his colleague Mr Halfon will also adopt that view and will not seek to overturn the vote then the Bill returns to the other place.

Mr Halfon made an intriguing comment in the debate on these regulations earlier this week in relation to Schedule 2, excluding both Houses of Parliament. He mentioned that, although the ban on smoking in workplaces did not formally apply to the House of Commons, the Speaker had decreed that it does. Although I am not aware of the formal position in your Lordships’ House, I presume there must have been an equivalent decree by the Lord Speaker. So will the Minister say whether, although these regulations do not apply to your Lordships’ House, he would be in favour of seeking a means by which they could be applied? It would set an excellent example to other public bodies and there would be many opportunities for apprenticeships in interesting and fulfilling jobs within Parliament were that the case.

My final point concerns the gender balance within apprenticeships. It is widely acknowledged that 53% of apprentices are female, yet they tend to be in lower-paid sectors of the workforce. A year ago, in answer to an Oral Question in your Lordships’ House, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, stated that since May 2015 there had been 366,000 apprenticeship starts in England and that, while a narrow majority were females,

“of the 74,060 apprentices in engineering and manufacturing”,—[Official Report, 14/4/16; col. 354.]

a mere 6.8% were female, while in ICT the figure was 17.5%. I doubt that those figures will have changed markedly in the intervening period, but these regulations allow the Government to lead by example and begin to turn them around, ensuring that young women are encouraged to apply for apprenticeships that both require and develop skills that involve the STEM subject areas. There is certainly a wealth of opportunity within the public sector for that gap to be addressed.

A year ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, told noble Lords that only 26% of apprentices in her department were women. It would be both interesting and helpful if the Minister could tell noble Lords what the current percentage is within the Department for Education. His officials may have the figure at their fingertips—but, if not, I would be quite happy for him to write to me, including an outline of what specific plans his department has to ensure that it not only reaches a figure of 2.3% of the headcount as apprentices but indeed exceeds it. Can he say what the projected figure for the Department for Education in the first year will be?

I have posed a number of questions, not all of which the Minister will be able to answer in his reply, but questions of a wider nature will need to be resolved if the Government are to achieve the success that we on these Benches want to see in terms of a broad expansion of apprenticeships, not least in the public sector.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the statement from the Minister. We have seen a revolution in apprenticeships, which of course was started by the previous Government. While I am in favour of targets, they have to be sympathetic to the quality of the provision—I would much rather see quality provision even if we do not reach the exact target that we want.

I have four particular questions. Some of my other questions have already been asked. First, the Minister said that there were not going to be subtargets for people from different ethnic backgrounds—men, women et cetera—but I presume that if, from the information we get back, we find a lack of opportunities for, for example, young people from particular ethnic backgrounds, we might have to revisit that issue. Similarly, if we find a concern about the spread of levels of targets related to age, we might have to revisit that as well. So while I accept his comment about subtargets, we have to keep this under review.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, plagiarism is a form of cheating and an academic offence. “Contract cheating” is a particular type of plagiarism where a student commissions a third party to complete an assignment. They might even employ a ghost-writing tutor. The QAA says it poses a risk to the security of academic standards and the equitability of assessments, as well as reliability and validity. “Essay mills” produce assignments that are not completed under exam conditions, and other pieces of work such as coding assignments in computer science can be completed by a third party as well.

I knew nothing about this 18 months ago. It was not something I understood. Then a group of students from one of our redbrick universities made contact with me. They came to the House of Lords to talk about it. We sat out on the Terrace. They were genuinely upset that they saw this practice happening regularly among their fellow students. They said, “Why are we diligently doing our work when you can pay and you can cheat?”. As a result of them coming to see me, I wrote to the chief executive of the QAA, who kindly wrote back and said, “We don’t regard this as a particularly serious problem. The number of people we are talking about is minuscule”. I contacted him again and furnished him with quite an important file of evidence. He very kindly arranged to come and see me, and we talked it over—in quite robust terms. He then organised a private round-table discussion with a number of other academics. From that, a number of issues arose. I am very grateful to them for taking that initiative.

So how many students are we talking about? According to the QAA, about 17,000 students—about 0.7%—get caught cheating each year. Remember, those are the ones who are caught. The data do not show how many students plagiarised. Another report commissioned in 2014 showed that 22% of students reported having paid someone to complete their assignment. As I said, this type of cheating is referred to as contract cheating, a specific type of plagiarism where a student commissions a work produced by a third party for a fee.

How does this happen? Different approaches are taken and different sites can be used. The more established sites will have a bank of people who have previously written for them and essay commissions will go to those people, with the essay mill acting merely as an intermediary. Other sites go instead to an online freelance writer: the work will be reverse-auctioned and any writer registered on those sites will be able to bid for the work.

In a recent publication, Professor Phil Newton and Christopher Lang looked at the operational aspects in some depth. They found that turnaround times for commissioned essays are very small: between a day— 25% of those analysed—and 24 days. The average was five days. Most—80%—were fulfilled in the specified time. For every fulfilled request on a freelancer-type site, another 10 people bid for the work, suggesting significant spare capacity in the market. The prices range from £15 for law—a master’s, a 3,000-word dissertation —to £6,750 for a PhD or a 100,000-word dissertation, with a seven-day deadline.

I was talking to some students only yesterday who told me that people even approach them on their campus and say, “We can get you a 2:1. We can write your essay for you. We can write your dissertation for you”. These people actually approached them on the university campus.

What about the students themselves? Well, it must be noted that some students do not plagiarise intentionally. A disproportionate number of students who are caught cheating, I am sorry to say, are foreign students. We had the debate earlier on foreign students. Language competence is one of the main reasons for them cheating. There are also sometimes cultural difficulties. Interestingly, according to the Times investigation, foreign students are four times more likely to cheat. Universities have been criticised for enrolling foreign students with poor command of the English language because they pay higher fees. There is then real pressure on those students to complete their assignments.

What should we do about it? My amendment is based on what has happened in New Zealand, where it was quite a serious problem. As a result of them making the practice illegal, the problem has significantly improved.

I am minded to quote the QAA, which said that the way forward can be described in three words: “Education. Detection. Deterrence”. The QAA goes on to say that at present it has no legal or regulatory powers to take action against students quickly for plagiarism, using essay mills, websites or ghost writers. We see this as academic fraud. We need to take action now.

We are in our sixth day of Committee, and we have heard so many eloquent speeches about the importance of higher education, the incredible work our universities and students do and how important it is to maintain that quality. Well, maintaining that quality means making sure that academic fraud does not happen, and that all students are on a level playing field. I beg to move.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I will say a few words in support of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I commend him on the amount of preparation he has done for this amendment. I am very surprised at the extent of what he has revealed. I think we all know that, to a greater or lesser extent, cheating goes on—it is important to use that word—and in some cases fraud, but the extent of it is such that action needs to be taken. I am disturbed by the QAA more or less dismissing it, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said. And yet, as he pointed out, 17,000 students had been caught, and if that number were caught how many were getting away with it?

It is an issue that has to be addressed. Although there are means of catching cheats these days—software can be, and is, employed by universities that can spot and pick up patterns of writing—there are other ways that cannot be tracked easily. It would be helpful to have a recognition that this is a problem and for something at least to be said, if not done, by the Minister to indicate that the matter will be taken forward in a way that it has not been, effectively, up until now.

National Funding Formulae for Schools and High Needs

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I also thank him—or perhaps it should be his officials at the Department for Education—for assisting those of us who are unable to grasp the main arguments within the Statement by helpfully underlining the really important words in it, just as the red tops do for their readers. It is a quite extraordinary development in the issuing of Statements.

The outcome for schools across the country will undoubtedly be disappointing, even for the 10,000 or so—less than half of all schools—which are to gain, because no new money is promised by the Government. That is hardly a surprise, but what is a surprise is that the Government have chosen to release the Statement today, apparently oblivious to the fact that the National Audit Office was issuing its report on the financial sustainability of schools just hours earlier. This Statement has already been delayed for too long. Had it been produced in a more timely fashion, perhaps the Government could have enabled the NAO to take on board the plans outlined in it, but that has not happened.

I have no doubt that the Minister and the Secretary of State would rather that the National Audit Office had kept quiet, because Whitehall’s spending watchdog paints a markedly different picture to the upbeat scene sketched out in the Statement. The NAO says that the Government’s approach to managing the risks to schools’ financial sustainability cannot be judged to be “effective” or to be “providing value for money”. Schools have to make £3 billion in efficiency savings by 2019-20 against a background of growing pupil numbers and a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil. Indeed, Sir Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, does not pull his punches. He says:

“Schools could make the ‘desirable’ efficiencies that the Department judges feasible or could make spending choices that put educational outcomes at risk. The Department, therefore, needs effective oversight arrangements that give early warning of problems, and it needs to be ready to intervene quickly where problems do arise”.

Unfortunately, the department’s own Statement is not leading the news agenda because it has been overshadowed by the NAO report—which, unlike the Government’s, is not partisan because the NAO’s remit is to help the Government in their drive to improve public services, national and locally. However, I would forgive the Minister if, at this point, he does not quite view the latest intervention by the National Audit Office in that way.

Not only is there no new money, but less than half of schools, as I said, stand to gain from the new funding formula. There is scant information in the Statement about the losers, just a rather complacent comment that no school will lose out by more than 3% per pupil overall. In many cases, school budgets are already intolerably stretched, and there simply is no room to absorb any kind of cut, whether 3% or less. Can the Minister say precisely how many schools will lose, how much they will lose in total and over what timescale? Can he further say what estimate—if any—has been made of the resultant impact on them and their pupils? Will there be job losses? What will the effect be on class sizes? It really is unacceptable that the Statement does not even hint at such information. Perhaps it is in the more detailed papers that accompanied the Statement, which I regret I have not yet had time to scrutinise. But the Minister will have had sufficient time, so I hope he may be able to enlighten noble Lords.

The Statement repeats the palpably false claim that the core schools budget will be protected overall in real terms. The National Audit Office report debunks that myth, stating that although average funding per pupil will rise from £5,447 in the current year to £5,519 in 2019-20, once inflation is taken into account that amounts to a real-terms reduction. I suspect the Minister will be unwilling to accept that analysis. If so, I suggest that he hears it from the chalkface. He may, like other noble Lords, have been listening to Radio 4’s “Today” programme this morning when Anne Lyons, head teacher at St John Fisher Catholic Primary School in London, was interviewed. Of course, it is likely that schools in London will be among the hardest hit by the new formula. She said that schools were at breaking point:

“We realise we have to do more with less money in reality … But we’re now at the stage—we’re at breaking point”.

She also said:

“Like many schools … facing these cuts, we are worried … It means that we’re struggling to maintain the services we’ve been able to offer. We’re cutting activities. We’re a school that is increasing in size … we can’t increase the staffing in line with the increase in pupil numbers … the only way some schools are going to manage this significant cut in real terms is through staff cuts—and that’s going to add to workload”.

I accept that the news is not all bad, as high-needs pupils, as the Minister said, are to receive additional funding, and no local authority will see this part of their funding reduced. It is also to be welcomed that the issue of mobility has been recognised. But the Statement is plain wrong when it claims:

“Once implemented, the formula will mean that wherever a family lives in England, their children will attract a similar level of funding—one that properly reflects their needs”.

That is not the case, and this cannot be fine-tuned in that manner. A new funding formula was certainly needed, but it should have protected any school from suffering a reduction in funding, no matter how small, because schools simply cannot afford to have already stretched budgets reduced.

The Secretary of State should have fought her corner much more robustly with the Chancellor prior to the Autumn Statement to secure additional funding to protect schools scheduled to lose as a result of this Statement. The suggestion that schools make £1.7 billion in savings by using staff more efficiently just does not connect with the real world. Is the Minister unaware of teaching shortages? He certainly should not be, because I bang on about it often enough. Perhaps he can explain how efficiencies can be wrung out of schools that are already understaffed. Can he also confirm that there is no plan to pay for this funding formula by raiding the further education budget to some extent? That is often seen as an easy choice, and within the Department for Education it could be done. I am not saying there has been such a suggestion, but I would like the Minister to confirm that there is no question of stretching an already overstretched sector yet further.

For six years the Government forged ahead with an education policy containing just one strand, academisation. It was not particularly successful but at least it was consistent. Cue a new Prime Minister and suddenly, that has been turned upside down, with grammar schools now the answer. Of course they are not—only a small clique within the Conservative Party, of which I know the Minister is not a member, believes that—but it serves to highlight the turmoil within current government education policy. This approach has resulted in no progress against international comparisons, a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, a majority of secondary schools with budget deficits and now schools across the country facing the most severe cuts to their budgets in a generation, while the only new money being offered to schools in England is to expand the few remaining grammar schools— 80% of them, unsurprisingly, in Tory-held seats—regardless of where the need for new places is. I suggest that that sums up the Government’s priorities. Despite their platitudes about education for all, their concern is really only for the few. That simply is not good enough. Our children deserve much better than this.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It says that our current system is “broken and unfair”. Yes it is; as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has rightly pointed out, we have real problems of teacher supply in schools throughout the country, and teacher shortages in major subjects such as mathematics. There is also the current funding crisis.

I slightly disagree with the Statement where it says the Government have,

“protected the core schools budget in real terms overall”.

However, those school budgets have not taken account of the increases of on-costs and national insurance. Many schools have faced real financial problems. I welcome the Minister’s comments about the pupil premium and rural schools, and the promise of further financial resources for the disadvantaged. The additional safeguards, including the redrafted formula, are very welcome, but schools are still currently facing reductions of more than 3% per pupil, and this does not resolve their concerns or ours. The proposal does not change the real financial situation that our schools are facing. We are seeing real-terms cuts to education funding and, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has said, the National Audit Office has pointed out that by 2020 schools will have seen cuts of £3 billion and pupil funding fall by 8%. Those figures are just unimaginable.

We know—this is not illusory—that some head teachers are seriously considering cutting the school week to four days because their budgets are so tight that they just cannot operate a five-day week. Yet at the same time, against that backcloth, we have the Government committing £240 million-odd to the reintroduction of a grammar school system and, of course, the cost of enforced academisation.

I personally, along with my party, welcome the idea of fair funding. In my city of Liverpool, when my party took control, I felt it unfair that the previous party had funded pupils below the national average. We immediately increased the funding to above the national average, and the benefits were there for all to see: Liverpool pupils then outperformed the other core cities. Fair funding, as per its title, can be fair, but there are winners and losers. The only way that I think you can make it work is by ensuring that no school in a fair-funding system sees its pupil figure reduced; they have to be brought up to the top figure.

We are proposing a consistent base rate for every pupil at primary and secondary school that increases in value as they progress through the system. Does that mean that we will have differential rates of funding for an infant pupil as opposed to a junior, secondary or sixth form one? I thought the days had gone when we thought that an infant was not as worthy financially as a pupil at a sixth form college, when we know that in fact the equipment required for an infant costs far more. Perhaps the Minister could explain that point.

We welcome the consultation because it is important to get this right. How does the Minister see the consultation being fed back to your Lordships’ House?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, in speaking to their amendments the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and other noble Lords have outlined the importance of recognising that looked-after children may have unidentified or unmet communication needs, which could prevent children and young people understanding and engaging with the changes that the Bill proposes. For those with communication needs to fully benefit from the Bill’s changes, it is essential that any accompanying regulations and guidance stipulate that, as noble Lords outlined in last week’s Committee session, on entry to the care system the initial health assessment that local authorities are responsible for undertaking should include a mandatory screening for speech, language and communication needs.

The document Putting Children First, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, a few minutes ago and which dropped into our email inboxes about lunchtime today may well meet those concerns. It is a weighty document; not perhaps Chilcot-esque but there is quite a bit in there and it has not yet been possible to examine it in detail. I hope that that document, which I am sure is important, has some of the answers that have been asked for within this debate.

Amendment 32 would at least ensure that speech, language and communication needs are covered appropriately. To ensure that this is as effective as possible, it seems obvious and perhaps logical that people working with, supporting and caring for looked-after and previously looked-after children should receive training in awareness and communication needs, including knowing when to refer someone for speech and language therapy. It would surely be a matter of great concern if such referrals were not made due to the inability of the individual who comes into contact with them when they enter care. In the longer term, looked-after and previously looked-after children should have continuing access to speech and language therapy to help them address their communication needs as their lives progress.

I was surprised to learn that at present many children diagnosed as having speech, language and communication needs receive just one hour of direct intervention from a speech therapist each week and that at the age of seven, in all but the most extreme cases, that help often ends due to financial restrictions. Most then receive no further intervention until they enter secondary school three years later. That gap can surely have an extremely damaging effect on children with speech, language and communication needs. If that is so serious among the school population as a whole, how much more serious it is for children who are in care.

The fact that communication needs to be referenced so often in the various amendments we are considering today, not just in this group, highlights the importance of ensuring that such needs are identified when children and young people enter care and for those already in care to have any such needs identified when they are about to leave it. The importance of providing proper specialist support extends to the need for financial information and to understand relationships. So often, we have heard of young people leaving care being given their own accommodation without any proper planning or experience and with little ability to care for themselves. Debt soon follows, which can lead to accommodation being lost and benefits sanctions contributing to a terrible downward spiral. The difficulties of relationships ought to be another obvious area in which every step is taken to prepare young people as fully as possible for leaving care. Under some of the amendments we will deal with later, we will describe what can happen when people enter relationships without adequate preparation and support.

The amendments span both the corporate parenting principle and the local care offer. They strengthen the Bill and are worthy of our support.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 30, 32, 38 and 57. I wonder why the issue of personal advisers being trained in speech, language and communication awareness is in this group when we will be discussing their role under a later amendment; however, we are where we are. A number of issues need to be brought together and understood, perhaps after Committee.

I shall give your Lordships a flavour of what I mean. First, let us deal with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who rightly said that poor speech, language and communication limit not only children in care but young people generally. Eighty-eight per cent of unemployed men have speech, language and communication needs. They limit employment opportunities, affect their social and emotional well-being and contribute to literacy, behavioural and other social problems. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, “Let’s have mandatory screening”. What do we do in schools? Are we not screening there all the time? We are continually assessing and testing, so why do we need another form of mandatory screening? We need to ensure that that information gets passed to the relevant people.

I am sorry that my noble friend Lord McNally has been unable to stay. A year ago, I went to award the local youth offending team a dyslexia awareness certificate, which means that they can identify young offenders who have dyslexia problems. I was horrified to learn that no information is passed to that team on the academic, literacy or communication skills of those young offenders. Is that because of data protection issues? If we are to provide the necessary support for those young people in care, that information needs to be made available. If there is a body of information in schools, it needs to be passed on.

On personal advisers, your Lordships probably remember from Second Reading that I went through as many job adverts as I could find for personal advisers. I was concerned that there was no standard requirement; it was all over the place. Nowhere in any of those advertisements did I see any mention of speech, language and communication skills. The two are linked. If personal advisers are as important as they should be, part of their qualification or awareness must be in this area. How do we make that happen? Currently, there is no legal requirement on what personal advisers do, only suggestions. We need to spend time understanding that so that these people are the best who can be provided.

Finally, the key to this is making sure that the information is available in schools. By the way, this is not just an issue for children in care or care leavers, it is an issue for all children. I am glad that the Government, both in the coalition years and now, are addressing those issues in schools, through the pupil premium. I am a bit concerned—perhaps the Minister in replying could correct me on this—that we say that the pupil premium particularly should go to looked-after children. My experience in many schools is that it just goes into the common pot and the looked-after children, to use the vernacular, do not get a look-in. I want to be sure that perhaps Ofsted, when it is carrying out inspections of schools, makes sure that this pupil premium—where there are looked-after children—is particularly linked to the needs of the looked-after child.

Education: Academies

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. In it there was mention of people crowing at the Government’s climbdown. I am not going to adopt that approach, although I have to say that I can understand why many would. U-turns are becoming a regular feature of this Government’s attempts to initiate or see through legislation, and the number of times that we have witnessed the brakes being applied soon after bold statements of intent suggests that a little more than bad luck is at play here. Bad judgment is more likely, I think, and that is certainly the case with forced academisation. Before I leave the issue of crowing, I find it rather depressing to hear the Statement say that people are crowing about a victory in their “battle against raising standards”. Is that really what Ministers believe? Nobody is against raising standards. The Minister and the Secretary of State should realise that they and the whiz-kids at the No. 10 Policy Unit do not always know better than those who, day in and day out, are at the sharp end of things, delivering education for our children. Of course there are examples of where schools are underperforming, and they must be helped to improve, but that does not justify the conclusion that academisation is the only answer.

The opposition to the White Paper proposals encompassed a broad alliance, including head teachers—I hardly need to remind the Ministers here this evening that head teachers made their collective voice very clear to the Secretary of State when she spoke to their conference—and also parents, governors, teachers, local government leaders from all parties and Members of Parliament, more than a few from their own party. Although the Secretary of State has conceded on the ideologically driven idea of forcing good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes, she still apparently holds the ambition that all schools will become academies, though still without advancing a single convincing reason as to why this aim is sensible in the first place.

The Statement today is certainly welcome, but it none the less leaves questions, one of which is whether high-performing schools will be forced to become academies. At one point, the Statement says:

“We will therefore seek provisions to convert schools in the lowest-performing and unviable local authorities to academy status. This may involve in some circumstances conversion of good and outstanding schools when they have not chosen to do so themselves”.

Yet later it says:

“While we want every school to become an academy, we will not compel successful schools to join multi-academy trusts”.

I say to the Minister: which is it? The Government clearly cannot have it both ways.

There is also the issue of autonomy. Do the Government really believe that that is the outcome when a school becomes part of a multi-academy trust? They claim that academisation devolves power to the front line, but that is a myth. Schools and academy chains actually lose most of their autonomy because the chain controls their premises, their budget, their staffing and their curriculum. The ultimate irony is that chains have far more power over schools than local authorities currently do.

Last week, I asked the Minister in your Lordships’ House whether there was any evidence that academies automatically performed better than local authority maintained schools, particularly those that are already categorised as high performing. The Minister avoided answering the question, perhaps for the good reason that the honest answer was no. What he did do was to pray in aid what he thought was a supportive comment from the Sutton Trust. But what he did not tell the House was that the research by the Sutton Trust found that there is a very mixed picture in the performance of academy chains and no evidence at all that academisation in and of itself leads to school improvement.

The White Paper promotes academy chains as the preferred model, yet many chains are performing badly and significantly worse than many local authorities—a point recognised by the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw. There have been too many examples of financial mismanagement verging on corruption in academy chains and—perhaps it is a debate for another day—the Education Funding Agency is widely recognised as not being up to the job of supervising even the number of academies that we now have. So I again ask the Minister what evidence the Government have that only academisation leads to school improvement. Where is the choice and autonomy that the Government are so fond of emphasising despite advancing a one-size-fits-all approach? Is there sufficient capacity and accountability in the academy system to ensure that it is best practice, not poor practice, which is being spread?

These questions remain as the Government seek further powers to speed up the pace of academisation. Your Lordships might like to ask why this has been deemed necessary so soon after the Education and Adoption Act was in your Lordships’ House. We spent many days and hours going through the fine detail of that Bill; but were the White Paper proposals to be adopted, it would mean that we had effectively wasted our time on it. If the Government were so convinced that only forced academisation would do, why did they not amend the then Education and Adoption Bill appropriately? That would have been the honest approach instead of leading noble Lords and MPs down what is effectively a false path, knowing that the Bill was merely a stop-gap measure.

It is surely self-evident that we all want to see educational excellence everywhere, but at a time when schools are facing huge challenges from falling budgets and teacher shortages, top-down reorganisation of the school system will remove even more money, time and effort from where the focus should be. It is high time the Government recognised that further structural changes are at best a distraction and, at worst, could damage standards. Will the Minister now accept that, when it comes to change in education, the Government need to carry the professionals with them if such change is to be successfully delivered?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is actually good to listen; it is good to hear what other people have to say rather than immediately jump to conclusions, and I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to people who have considerable experience in these matters and adjusted the likely content of the forthcoming Bill.

The Minister said in the Statement that the Government wanted to,

“deliver a great education to every single child”.

But don’t we all? I suppose that the difference is that some of us do not believe that the blind concentration on structures and types of school is really the answer. We think that, more importantly, it is about the quality of leadership of those schools. It is about the teachers—who are highly trained, highly respected and given proper continuing professional development. It is about a broad national curriculum which every pupil takes, and includes, as some of the Minister’s colleagues believe, PSHE and good careers advice. It is about parents being involved in the education of their child, not divorced from it; and it is about a curriculum which celebrates technical, vocational and creative education.

There is no evidence that turning a school into an academy will improve standards. In fact, academies tend to perform less well in Ofsted inspections than local authority schools do. I hope that we will see, once and for all, the end of the ideological obsession with pushing aside the role of local authorities in community schools. They need to be cherished, nurtured and given the resources to do the job.

I am very pleased with what the Minister said in the Statement about rural schools, which have been neglected for far too long and need special attention. But putting them into multi-academy trusts is not always the best solution. If they have to go into a multi-academy trust, the trust has to have a relationship with the community that the school is in, because the community is hugely important to the rural school.

I have two questions for the Minister. So far, he has resisted publishing tables to compare trusts’ overall performance. Will he now agree that that should happen? Secondly, he has refused to let Ofsted conduct full inspections of academy chains. Will he now agree that this should happen as well?

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Monday 8th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, we have now reached the point where this Bill must return to the other place. From these Benches we have to say that it is regrettable that it will take so little in terms of amendments with it. As has been outlined, it has many faults, and despite claims by both Ministers that it is all about rescuing children from underperforming schools, many noble Lords believe that there is rather more to it than that.

I should say that I do not doubt the bona fides of either Minister. The relish with which they have advanced their arguments during the Bill’s time in your Lordships’ House reflects their own backgrounds and motivation. I understand that the noble Baroness has a history in the free schools sector and that the noble Lord has a history in the academies sector, each with some success. If I may draw an analogy, to be handed this Bill is tantamount to a girl and boy being given the keys to the toy shop. It is clear that they are in their element, because it allows them to pursue their personal and particular priorities. But it has to be said that their priorities are not necessarily those of wider society, judging by the briefings we have had from a very wide range of organisations, all of whom I thank, and not to any significant extent those of the education professionals, all of whom also have as their raison d'être providing the best possible education for our children.

We have spent almost 24 hours in debate on this Bill—a full day. I wonder whether we might ask ourselves whether we might have put it to better use—some may say yes—and I am sure that we are now all ready to move on to other things. But before we do so, I want to thank the Bill team. We on these Benches have worked rather hard. On my behalf I pay tribute to my assistant, Molly Critchley, who did the heavy lifting when it came to negotiating over amendments. She did much more besides, and both I and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath are indebted to her for her tireless efforts. This is the first piece of legislation for which I have had Front-Bench responsibility and I have leaned much and often on the experienced shoulders of my colleague Lord Hunt, for which I am most grateful. Having leaned much, I like to think that I have now learned much—but I suppose time will tell.

I think I am correct in asserting that this is also the first Bill as a Front-Bencher for the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park. She has perhaps had a slightly tougher baptism than she might have hoped for, but through it all she has retained an upbeat manner and an ability to assure—or at least attempt to assure—those on these Benches that the Bill was much more benign than we believed.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I have had—what shall I say?—our moments throughout those 24 hours. It seems that neither of us is ever going to convince the other of the veracity of our respective arguments, but at least we have given it our best shot. I have made a discovery about the noble Lord and, in spite of the fact that he has offered precious little in terms of concessions on the Bill, I am about to offer him one of my own. I think he and I have only two things in common. One is clearly membership of your Lordships’ House. The other, I have learned, is that we were born in the same year. I am not about to divulge the year, but we were born just five weeks apart—and that provides me with both good news and bad. The good news is that the Minister was born first. The bad news is that it does not show.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I take the opportunity once again to thank the Minister for being prepared to listen. There have been a number of changes—including changes of interpretation—to the Bill. I said to my colleagues at the beginning, “I am sure that Lord Nash will listen”, and he has done. This is a very small Bill, really. On the adoption side, I think real progress has been made.

On the school side, there are a few issues for me. The first is whether this is not just about the academisation programme and the slow strangulation of maintained schools and local education authorities. Maybe there is a much fairer way of achieving that. I recall the statement from the Chancellor that he wants all schools to become academies, and the same from the Prime Minister.

The second issue is that of parents. I have always believed that one of the hallmarks of a successful education system is that parents are at the heart of it. I think we said in Committee that if the school that your children go to is being closed, that is quite a traumatic occasion; you want to be involved in those discussions and to know the reasons and what is happening. To then be told that you are not even going to have a say on the new school or new academy sponsor is something that I am concerned about.

Another issue follows a couple of Questions that I tabled regarding the governing bodies of schools. Again, it seems bizarre that you can have academy trusts abolishing governing bodies. In maintained schools, of course, you have to have a governing body—quite rightly; parents are an important voice in a school—but in multi-academy trusts you can have one governing body for, say, 50-odd schools. In the Harris Academy chain there are now, I think, 52 schools. One governing body—which could be in another part of the country, for that matter—being the parental voice is really not good enough. It could be said—well-meaningly, I am sure—that parents’ associations are quite important. But many schools do not have parent associations; they tend to be, I have to say, in middle-class areas.

The area of schools commissioners is one that has vexed us for some time. Light needs to be shone on the work and there needs to be transparency, and I am delighted with the comments the Minister has made on that. It is a very important step forward.

Some of us have always believed that driving up standards in our schools is not about waving the proverbial big cane but about professionalism and trusting in the leadership of schools. One of my regrets from the coalition period was that we abolished the leadership academy. That was a great mistake. You need to make sure that the people you put as leaders of your school are of the highest calibre, quality and training. You have to have good leaders.

Secondly, it is all for nought if you do not have quality teachers. It is about ensuring that teachers are respected, highly trained and highly valued. It worries me that 40% of teachers leave in the first five years of their teaching. That is a very worrying trend. I hope that, now that the Bill is out of the way, we can do what the Minister is good at—listen and evolve policies or procedures that work for all our education services.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 6 and 7, which I thought would be treated as individual amendments but, to my surprise, have been grouped. So here we are.

Amendment 2 has been resubmitted, because we share the concerns of the professionals in the field about what the future might hold for voluntary adoption agencies after the full establishment of the regional adoption agencies. Having said that, I think that moving Amendment 2 should be a formality, because, within the past few days, the Minister has to all intents and purposes already indicated—in writing no less—his tacit acceptance of it.

In moving what was then Amendment 32ZA in Committee, I highlighted the fears of many voluntary adoption agencies that they could be squeezed out with the establishment of the regional agencies and that considerable difficulties remained as far as their involvement was concerned. I went on to say that we owed a duty to them to air those views and seek the Government’s help in prioritising them. Well, we did, and the Government did. In fact, those of us involved with the Bill received letters from Ministers in both Houses, and both responded positively. The Minister of State for Children and Families, Edward Timpson, clearly stated the Government’s commitment to making sure that voluntary adoption agencies are involved in regional adoption agencies. He stated that,

“the excellence in practice of VAAs is at the heart of the regionalised system”,

and that he wanted VAAs to be leading players in the design of that system, which was why,

“I have not approved a proposal to set up a regional adoption agency without a clear commitment to involving voluntary adoption agencies in the design of the service—and I will make sure local authorities keep that commitment”.

That is very welcome—so far, so good—but it leaves the umbrella body for voluntary adoption agencies, the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies, with concerns, because it believes that the Minister’s commitments do not go far enough in explaining how the Government will achieve that aim. In the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, the paragraph on the matching process is important—and this refers also to Amendment 7. The Minister states that a regional adoption agency will have one pool of adopters that it will draw on when matching children in its area and that this will minimise sequential decision-making.

However, the issue of concern is that, within that single pool of adopters, those approved by a voluntary adoption agency will have a price attached to them in some way. Voluntary adoption agencies somehow have to cover the cost of recruiting, training and approving those adopters, as well as supporting them after placement. This may be through the current inter-agency fee of £27,000, through “block purchase” arrangements where a regional adoption agency pays for a set number of VAA adopters a year, or through other arrangements. It is not yet known how this will be arranged in the various regions; the point is that individual regional arrangements will decide it, and that is an area of uncertainty for the voluntary agencies.

If that means that voluntary adoption agency-approved adopters will be seen as coming with a cost attached to them in a way that adopters approved by the regional adoption agency will not, that is potentially an issue. Of course, adopters approved by the regional agency also come with a cost, although that is less visible. The evidence also suggests that, despite perceptions of voluntary adoption agency-approved adopters being expensive, the costs of providing an adopter are virtually the same across both the statutory and the voluntary sector. There are further concerns, as it is accepted that the inter-agency fee does not cover this full cost. Indeed, the CVAA, the consortium, estimates a shortfall of at least £10,000 per placement, which suggests that local authorities get excellent value for money from using voluntary adoption agency adopters.

In Committee, I raised the issue of what is known as sequential decision-making. In his letter to noble Lords, the Minister said:

“A regional adoption agency will have one pool of adopters that it will draw on when matching the children in its area. Individual local authorities will therefore no longer have their ‘own’ adopters to match their children with ‘in house’ as they do currently. This will ensure that sequential decision making is minimised”.

Yes, it will be minimised, but not ruled out. That remains an issue for the voluntary adoption agencies.

Part of what drives that behaviour, understandably, is the fact that local authorities often have a preference for adopters they have approved. This, in addition to the perception that voluntary adoption agency-approved adopters involve an additional cost, causes a mindset that leads to sequential decision-making. There is no reason to suppose that this mindset would be any different in a regional adoption agency. Voluntary adoption agency-approved adopters would still have to be paid for by some means, and that would not be approved in-house by the statutory part of the regional agency.

The basic issue is that, within regional agencies, voluntary adoption agency-approved adopters will still be the second preference of those deciding on matches. This is bad for children because it causes delay, and bad for local authorities because delay in placing children incurs huge costs. I was surprised—I wonder if Ministers are aware—that providing local authority-based residential care costs more than £100,000 per child per year. That is why there is a need to reform the matching process to ensure that those making the decisions are focused solely on finding the best match for the child as quickly as possible. This would be better for all parties involved and would help the Government achieve their aims of reducing delay for children and involving voluntary adoption agencies in regional adoption agencies.

Further, there is the issue of voluntary adoption agencies having to divert resources towards administrative and governance processes during the transition. We know that the Department for Education has allocated £4.5 million for this purpose but can the Minister say whether any further funding will be made available? Voluntary adoption agencies are already saying that the funding is beginning to dry up and, with the transition likely to be spread over a number of years, the problem can only intensify.

The final reason why the ministerial letters have not assuaged the concerns of those involved at the front line is that it is unclear how the Department for Education will influence the role for voluntary adoption agencies and a given regional agency. That is where typically smaller specialist voluntary agencies would be contracted to regional agencies. The assumption is that it will be for a regional agency to decide when to contract out and to which agencies. Given such uncertainties, there is clearly an issue about predictability of income for smaller voluntary agencies, some of which have already expressed fears that they will be at risk. Can the Minister offer any encouraging words to the voluntary adoption agencies to meet those worries?

Amendment 6 aims to clarify whether the Secretary of State’s powers in relation to adoption functions could be used in respect of a particular group. The key concern is about accountability and ensuring that the new system results in meaningful improvements for vulnerable children, especially the harder-to-place ones, and specifically those in the categories listed in the amendment.

The overhaul of the adoption system introduced by this amendment to the 2002 Act will have failed in its objective if it does not meet the challenges inherent in the current system. There is universal agreement that where adoption is in the best interests of the child, that child should be placed with a suitable family at the earliest opportunity. That must not mean a wait of more than two years, which it often does.

Overall there is not a shortage of prospective adopters. In March of this year, across England there were 2,810 children waiting to be matched and 3,350 approved adopters. The mismatch between these figures highlights the need for an improved system and the introduction of regional adoption agencies may in time produce that. However, there is an existential shortage of prospective adopters for certain groups of children. These groups contain harder-to-place children and include those over the age of four, those with disabilities, black, Asian and minority ethnic children and sibling groups.

The length of time between the decision being made that adoption is in the child’s best interests and the adoption taking place is, of course, key. According to the Adoption Leadership Board, in June of this year no fewer than 71% of children waiting more than 18 months between the placement order and the placement fell into a harder-to-place category; more than half of children from black, Asian and minority ethnic back- grounds waiting to be placed had been waiting 18 months or more since the placement order was made; and 64% of disabled children had been waiting 18 months or more, as had 47% of sibling groups. These indicate the scale of the problem, the extent of the improvement needed in the adoption system and the need for greater emphasis to be given to harder-to-place children.

For the new regional adoption agencies to be deemed a success, it is essential that the time these children spend waiting to be adopted is reduced, and quickly. Understandably, it will always be more difficult to find prospective adopters willing and able to adopt children in the groups to which I already referred. Part of the rationale offered by the Government for the introduction of the regional agencies is that they will lead to a larger pool of adopters from which it will be easier to find a match for harder-to-place children. There is some justification for that, and I certainly hope it proves correct. There is, however, no automatic link between creating regional adoption agencies and improving outcomes for these groups. In fact, there is a risk that the new agencies might feel under pressure to increase the overall numbers and speed of adoptions, creating an incentive to concentrate on the most straightforward matches which, of course, involve babies.

The Prime Minister’s speech on 2 November mentioned new measures to double the number of children placed with adoptive families sooner, halving the time they spend in care waiting to move into their new home. That was greeted with caution among professionals, who have serious doubts that the necessary resources will be forthcoming to allow that increase to become reality. I hope the Minister might be able to offer some reassurance to them in his reply. Equally, concern has been expressed that what I call this “hell-for-leather approach” might contravene the legal duty of local authorities under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. That legislation states that it is the general duty of every local authority to,

“safeguard and promote the welfare of children within their area who are in need; and … so far as is consistent with that duty, to promote the upbringing of such children by their families by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs”.

Therefore, for the Government to prioritise more and quicker adoption is questionable both morally and legally, unless local authorities are providing a good Section 17 service to families. As a consequence of the cuts that local authorities are required to make—ironically, not least in Oxfordshire, about which the Prime Minister himself has been moved to complain—there is major concern among professionals that this is not so.

Equally, there is real concern that the process of creating new regional adoption agencies will divert existing resources, leading to an undermining of current relationships. The new system will inevitably take some years to become fully effective, and there are concerns among the various agencies as to whether they will have the necessary resources during the transitional period to invest in effective services and support for children and adopters.

The £30 million made available by the Government to assist harder-to-place children is welcome, but it will not last long. It was disappointing that the Autumn Statement seemed to have nothing to say regarding additional resources for these children. Without that, it is not clear how the Government can ensure that the system will improve the waiting time for harder-to-place groups. That brings us back to voluntary adoption agencies, which have particular expertise in working with harder-to-place children; perhaps that is another aspect of their invaluable work that should be recognised.

In Committee, the Minister stated that regional adoption agencies would be,

“incentivised to find the right family for a child as quickly as possible”.—[Official Report, 17/11/2015; col. GC 47.]

Can he outline what form these incentives might take?

Returning to Amendment 6 specifically, the Government must prioritise and ensure that these groups do not continue to be left on the fringes of the adoption system. One means of achieving that would be to accept the addition to Clause 13 contained in this amendment, to allow them to become a full part of the Secretary of State’s powers under that clause. As I stated at the outset, this seems to be very much in line with the content of the Minister’s letter, so I hope he will not find any reason not to accept this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 4, which is in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I think that the noble Earl has withdrawn from that, so I am now—

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, we turn now to mental health support, which is very important indeed. Amendment 3 follows on from what was Amendment 33 in Committee, to which I spoke. I emphasised then that the issue of support once a child is placed in adoption can be crucial to whether that adoption becomes permanent—the point we were making a few moments ago in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. Often, specialist support is needed to care for a child appropriately.

I also quoted figures supplied by the NSPCC which I think bear repeating because they show that 45% of children in care have a mental health disorder, compared with only 10% of the general child population. The mental health needs of children in care were debated thoroughly in relation to that amendment and those in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The NSPCC has now met with Ministers, yet the organisation still believes that specific measures need to be included in the Bill to provide mental health assessment and support as early as possible during a child’s time in the care system. Amendment 3 sets the placement order as the milestone point by which children should have received that assessment.

What is needed is to prioritise vulnerable children, particularly those who have experienced abuse or neglect, which includes a significant majority of looked-after children. The Government must give a commitment to create the earliest possible provision of automatic assessment and support for those children within the adoption system. I will not repeat the point I made in Committee—that Clause 13 aims to provide for only 5% of children in care. We believe that the Bill is wrongly skewed in favour of adoption to the exclusion of all other forms of care. The vast majority of professionals in the field want nothing more than good provision for all looked-after children, whether their welfare be met by adoption, special guardianship, a child arrangements order—what used to be a residence order—long-term fostering or kinship care.

I say in passing that Sir Martin Narey’s announcement that he will be standing down as chair of the Adoption Leadership Board next year offers the Government an opportunity to demonstrate that they value all forms of care equally. The arrival of a new person to head the board should be used as an opportunity to broaden its remit to include all forms of permanency.

Recent research carried out by the NSPCC highlighted that one-fifth of children referred to local specialist NHS mental health services are rejected for treatment. This was described by the NSPCC as creating,

“a ‘time bomb’ of serious mental health conditions”.

Children in care not being able to access the mental health support they need to rebuild their lives represents a serious gap in provision—one that I highlighted in Committee—but I am afraid the Minister did not provide an answer as to how that gap might be filled. I ask him again: does he grasp the extent of the problem being set out for him by the professionals, the people working daily with children with mental health problems? If so, does he believe that sufficient resources will be made available to meet the needs of children in care who are not currently receiving the support they desperately need? Ultimately, the care that can be provided in mental health and other areas for children in care comes down to resources.

In Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, referred to the £1.25 billion that the Government have made available to improve mental health services for children and young people over the next five years, through the implementation of the report Future in Mind. She also mentioned that clinical commissioning groups were involved in that process, although how that huge sum of money is being spent continues to be something of a mystery. Although Future in Mind makes a number of recommendations, there is real doubt as to where we are in the delivery of those recommendations or detailed plans for spending the promised funds. With the majority of that money being spent through clinical commissioning groups, and given all the layers of devolution that there are in the National Health Service, it remains unclear just how that report’s priorities will be met.

The answer to those questions seemed to become less, rather than more, clear last week with the Autumn Statement, when the Chancellor said that “we build on that”—the £1.25 billion—

“with £600 million of additional funding, meaning that by 2020 significantly more people will have access to talking therapies, perinatal mental health services and crisis care”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/15; col. 707.]

The question is: what might this mean for the mental health needs of children in the care system? The Chancellor did not indicate whether the extra resources were for children, but—let us look on the positive side— he did not rule out children being prioritised within its reach either.

In response to a Question from Luciana Berger in another place as to how that £600 million will be prioritised, the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Alistair Burt, confirmed that the sum is to be spread,

“over the next five years … and … is additional to current spending. The levels of funding in individual years and the specific mental health service improvements it will fund will be determined in the new year, once the Mental Health Taskforce has reported”.

We know that there are to be additional resources available, so my question to both Ministers today is: what representations will they and their officials in the DfE be making to ensure that a proportion of that money is earmarked to fund the improvements required in mental health services for children and young people in care over the five-year period that is meant to be covered?

In conclusion, given the spending pressures which councils face and a situation that can only deteriorate still further as a result of the Autumn Statement, surely the Government should now be prepared to acknowledge that all children entering the care system should receive an automatic mental health assessment, in addition to the physical assessment that they currently receive. Why on earth should that not happen? Children in care should then immediately receive the report that the assessment shows is necessary to enable them to deal with their condition. Thereafter, common sense surely dictates that there must be regular monitoring of children’s mental health while in care to ensure that the support they are being given is contributing to their improved state of health. I suggest that these demands are not unrealistic and should become expectations on behalf of children who need support to enable them to develop into adulthood. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 3 and 4. I was taken with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, in Committee when, speaking for the Government, she said:

“I absolutely agree that the mental health of adopted children is a key issue”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. GC 38.]

She went on to say that the £1.25 billion would be available and how the Future in Mind report would be implemented. Of course, we all want to see children who are in adoption find the right parents to adopt them as quickly as possible, but we also want to make sure that that adoption works. It is no good children being adopted if the adoption then breaks down.

One of the reasons that adoption regularly breaks down is that we have not properly assessed the children, particularly in relation to mental health. If we want to make sure that adoption works, we must put this crucial area right. I will not—well, I will—repeat the figures that 45% of children in care have a mental disorder, which is a huge number, while 60% of those who come into care have experienced neglect or abuse.

How do we ensure that we get this right? To me, it is very simple; to use an old expression, it is not rocket science. It is about providing the expertise and the resources but also about making sure it happens, which is why these amendments actually specify how it should happen. Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I cannot understand why the Government would not agree to that. It will be to their credit, and to the success of the Bill, that children who are adopted or who go into care are in the right situation and getting the right support.

We have come a long way in terms of mental health issues in the last few years—and it literally is only in the last few years. One of the areas I am concerned about is that we say, “Oh, there’s a strategy; there’s X amount of money available”, but often those resources do not go to the right people. I know from experience and from talking to other teachers that getting CAMHS into schools now is much harder than it was a few years ago. Never mind a few weeks’ wait, it can often be several months before that support is given. So I wonder whether, when the Minister replies, we might hear how mental health support might be given to schools in a more orderly and speedy way.

I repeat that I want it enshrined in the Bill that we do the assessment for children and young people as soon as possible so that we get it right. In replying, perhaps the Minister could say whether, if the mental health strategy comes out and says that, the Government will agree to it and implement it as well.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

No.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Are you in the right Room?

[Lord Storey]

I could see all these faces nodding—

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[Lord Storey]

I will try a second time.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, has a view that he has expressed a number of times: that there is not time for consultation with parents; that if a school is failing, we have to get on with putting it right; and that, the longer we delay doing something, the more effect it will have on the progress of a child and the success of the school. That is a view that I can understand, but I equally understand that parents play a hugely important part in the development of a child’s education. The notion that a school should close down and become an academy without any discussion among those parents is very strange. That does not seem the correct way we have viewed education over the last X number of years. We have always seen parents as pivotal—as part of that partnership.

On my second point, again the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, resonated with me. On Second Reading, he talked about his own experiences in Pimlico, and I think he alluded to some of the abuse that he and his wife received when they were consulting to start up the school. As someone who closed more schools in Liverpool at the time of falling rolls than anyone else, I know those sort of pressures. Yes, some people will use consultation as a means of maintaining the status quo or for political reasons, but that does not make this the right thing to do. Surely we can look at this objectively and say that it can take place at an agreed period of time or if there is an agreed means of doing it. However, the principle of consultation must be enshrined as we go forward on this.

I do not have any objections to academies. I have come to the view, which I have expressed on two or three occasions, that I would rather see all secondary schools become academies than create a whole pattern of different types of schools. Therefore, I do not have any ideological view against academies. We should not be getting to the point where a school is failing and a pupil is languishing in it—we should be in there before that happens. I cannot understand why we get to a point where we suddenly say, “This school is failing, so let us close it down”, with all the trauma that the pupils face when that happens. We should be there before that happens. However, if a school is going to close, an academy is going to be established and an academy is going to be chosen for that school, we should consult with parents. I hope that the Minister will look creatively and objectively at how we might achieve that, with the minimum fuss and the minimum amount of time, but in the interests of that all-important partnership.

Once again, I apologise for getting the amendment wrong.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 24 and 25 in this group and to whether Clause 9 should stand part.

Amendment 24 aims to bring some much-needed transparency to the process of selecting academy sponsors. There is an unanswerable case in general terms for consultation but there is also a case for consultation on this very specific issue. Local communities should not have sponsors imposed on them without having some say in the matter. Sponsors are not just interchangeable. They have particular approaches to managing schools and to the curriculum. They have very different records, in terms of both their effectiveness and their record in managing public money. Again, I urge the Minister to acknowledge the essential fact that public money is involved here—which ought to mean that transparency and accountability are guaranteed. It is public money, yet the Minister wants to cancel the public’s right to have any say locally as to how it is used in educating their children. It is unacceptable that a Minister can come to Parliament, propose such a fundamentally undemocratic measure and hope to get away with it.

Currently, there is absolutely no public quality control of would-be sponsors. On academisation, we know that Ministers are determined to press ahead at full speed and are thus required to find sponsors at all costs. We also know that regional schools commissioners are paid by results—that is, how many academies they can bring into being—and so they need to find sponsors at all costs. That is surely not a healthy situation. Someone, somewhere, needs to have the responsibility to say, “Wait a minute—these people are just not up to the task”. If that means that some schools cannot be converted as quickly as had been intended, surely that is preferable to signing up sponsors who are inadequate. More needs to be done by government—in whose name we are told the regional schools commissioners act—to get the sponsors right, rather than to get them right now.

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[Lord Storey]

My Lords, in our endeavours to ensure that we have the highest standards in our schools, we look at three processes. One, of course, is testing and examinations. When schools are not achieving the level anticipated it is a sign that we need to take action. The second method is inspections when we inspect schools in, I hope, a supportive way, and when there are concerns we are able to act on them. The third area is the quality of the leadership and the teachers in those schools. The amendments in my name—Amendments 30, 31 and 32—are linked to those three areas.

I will deal first with Amendment 31 on teachers. You would not go to your local medical centre to see your doctor and be given an unqualified opinion. You would not go to the dentist and be seen by an unqualified dentist. It is hugely important, not just for the status of teachers and how they are valued by society, that we make it absolutely clear that in whatever type of school—local comprehensive, free school or academy—every pupil has the right to be taught by a qualified teacher. The notion of bringing unqualified people in to teach because they might be enthusiastic beggars belief. That is not to say that there will not be people who have a particular interest and enthusiasm but they will be part of an ongoing project and there would be a qualified teacher with them; nor is it to prevent those people who are aspiring to be teachers from teaching, again alongside a mentor who is a qualified teacher.

The previous Labour Government permitted non-teachers to teach by allowing classroom assistants to teach. I have real reservations about that, I have to say. We allowed NVQ level 3s to teach lessons but not to prepare, plan or mark, and NVQ level 4s to teach, plan and mark lessons. We almost passed the buck when we allowed that to happen. It was interesting when the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said at Second Reading that this present Government and the coalition Government had more unqualified teachers in schools. Actually, that was not correct. There were more unqualified teachers in schools under the previous Labour Government than currently.

I am not trying to score points here. We should not be trying to score points off each other, we should all—Government and Opposition—value the role of teachers, and we should say that every pupil should be taught by a qualified teacher and it is as simple as that. Linked to that should be the quality of the training of teachers, which is not covered by this amendment—

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I am not going to gainsay what the noble Lord has said. I am sure he has done his homework. But will he accept that there are different categories of unqualified teachers? When Labour was in government, a lot of the teachers involved were from other countries so had gained their qualifications abroad and were in the process of bringing those up to standard here or did not have the appropriate qualifications at that time. Quite often, under the current academy status, we are seeing people move into jobs simply on the grounds of enthusiasm and the ability to communicate, and we need a bit more than that if we want to get people through GCSEs and higher exams.

[Lord Storey]

I agree with that. Of course, the other reason is, despite what the Minister constantly tells us, that there is a shortage of teachers and we are desperate to find people. Figures published last week suggested that one in six teachers comes from overseas. I do not have any problem with overseas teachers, provided that they are qualified. I come back to the issue that I want to see every pupil in every type of school having a qualified teacher. Linked to that would be the quality of the teacher training and of the professional development while that teacher is in post.

On inspection—and this goes back to the previous debate—it is interesting that some academy chains are now bigger than local authorities. My local authority had 50-odd schools. The Harris academy chain has more than 50 schools. We inspect local education authorities but we do not inspect academies. Amendment 30 suggests that if a school is coasting or failing or going to become an academy, do we not want to know the reasons why that is happening rather than just saying, “It has failed, let’s move on”? Do we not want to understand what has happened in that school so that we can put it right? Do we not also want, when we move that school into an academy, to be absolutely sure that the academy that is chosen is up to inspections and up to the mark, and that we do not move the pupils from one difficult situation to another? I beg to move.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 32ZA, I will speak also to Amendment 33. This group focuses on the voluntary adoption agencies, about which quite a bit was heard at Second Reading, but considerable difficulties remain as far as the agencies are concerned. We owe a duty to them to air those views and to seek the Government’s help in prioritising them.

The DfE’s Regionalising Adoption document, published in June this year, was interesting. It devoted two pages to the role of voluntary adoption agencies, beginning with this statement:

“We are particularly keen to consider models that have an element of cross-sector collaboration, bringing together the best of the voluntary and statutory sectors”.

If the DfE had finished the consultation document there, I am sure that the voluntary adoption agencies would have been perfectly happy because that is basically what they seek. The document then proceeds to list three options for local authorities,

“to acknowledge and use the potential of the voluntary sector to provide services at a regional level and have the confidence to take forward these partnerships”.

The first is:

“Involving a voluntary adoption agency in a regional partnership as a specialist adoption support provider”.

The second is:

“A voluntary adoption agency leading a regional partnership, providing adoption management services to a group of local authorities, and working with and through local authority staff in social work positions”.

The third is:

“A voluntary adoption agency providing specialist services to a number of local authorities as part of a formal partnership arrangement”.

I have perhaps been remiss in not welcoming the fact that we are on Clause 13 and now dealing with adoption. I have been slightly thrown because of the way in which the amendments have been grouped, with Amendment 32ZA at the beginning rather than Amendment 33, which I was going to speak to first. This is an important issue. I do not believe it is an afterthought in the Bill, as has been suggested. It is a relatively small but very important part of the Bill and will affect a great deal of people.

The voluntary adoption agencies play a very important role within that. I got the impression from reading the sections I have quoted from Regionalising Adoption that the Government value the role of voluntary adoption agencies. My question stemming from that is: why not formalise that role? Voluntary adoption agencies are seriously concerned at the possible dilution of their role and this would help to allay those fears.

Although the Minister had quite a bit to say about Clause 13 in his opening remarks at Second Reading, in summing up he had very little to say. In fairness, I should remind noble Lords that he revealed that he was extemporising on that occasion. That was perhaps somewhat ill advised because he devoted just five lines in Hansard to the question of voluntary adoption agencies, and what he did say betrayed a misunderstanding of the concerns expressed by the voluntary adoption agencies. When adoption agencies in Wales were reorganised into five regional groupings, smaller voluntary agencies were the casualties. What assurances can the Minister give that the same will not happen in England? That fear was expressed by several witnesses who gave evidence to the committee in another place. That view is also held by the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies and by its biggest member, Barnardo’s.

The key concern here is about accountability and ensuring that the new system results in meaningful improvements for vulnerable children, especially the hard-to-place ones—those in the categories of age four and over; children with a disability; sibling groups; and children from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. Voluntary adoption agencies have particular expertise in work with hard-to-place children and the danger is that local authorities may look to protect their own interests after the introduction of regional adoption agencies, leading to a squeeze on the smaller but still influential voluntary agencies. As I have said, that concern was raised by several witnesses who gave evidence to the committee in another place.

It was also said at Second Reading that voluntary adoption agencies play a key role and yet, despite government support over the past few years, they are struggling for survival. Many are reducing the size of their social work teams as the proportion of adoption work that was done by the agencies decreases. In some areas, local authorities—despite clear direction from government, which I acknowledge—exclude them from discussions. It is not clear how voluntary adoption agencies will play a part in the proposed new regional structures while retaining their individual independence, or how funding arrangements will support their activity.

Voluntary adoption agencies are concerned about transitional instability because some are losing their relationship with local authorities, which feel that they may not need the voluntary agencies when the local authorities become part of a regional adoption agency. As I have said, voluntary adoption agencies play a key role. However, it is not clear how they will play what they would regard as a meaningful part in the proposed new regional structures while retaining their individual independence. Equally, they are concerned as to how funding arrangements will support their activity.

Amendment 33 would require the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament containing information about how she has exercised the power given to her in Clause 13 and the safeguards she has put in place to protect the voluntary agencies, other models of care and the provision of post-adoption support. In referring to the power to direct local authorities to come together in regional adoption agencies, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said at Second Reading:

“I assure your Lordships that we expect to use this power rarely”.—[Official Report, 20/10/15; col. 586.]

That is as it should be. However, if that is the case, an annual report to Parliament would not involve many examples of their use and could hardly be regarded as onerous or particularly bureaucratic by the Government. I trust the Minister will not look for reasons to avoid meeting what I believe is a fairly modest requirement.

The Bill provides the Secretary of State with the power to intervene directly in adoption arrangements. That leads us to believe that in cases where she uses her powers of direction it will be because she has failed to achieve the hoped-for consensus and voluntary arrangements that are clearly the Government’s ambition. In such circumstances, is it not right that Parliament should be told what persuaded the Secretary of State of the need to exercise her powers? Meeting the requirements of Amendment 33 would make that information available to Members of both Houses of Parliament, allowing appropriate scrutiny to be undertaken.

There is clear need for the Secretary of State to report on the impact of voluntary adoption agencies, the whole area of children in care and the question of support for adopted children and their parents, especially concerning mental health issues. Why is it the case that children currently entering the care system are subject to a routine physical health check but, despite the often chaotic, sometimes traumatic lives that led to them being placed in care, they are not automatically given access to a mental health check? For those reasons, it is important that the Government are prepared to report on an annual basis to ensure that that information can be made available to Members of both Houses, and that progress relating to this part of the Bill can be tracked. We all wish it success but we also want to see that that is actually what is happening.

Returning to the question of voluntary adoption agencies, these organisations undertake only about 16% of adoption placements. There is therefore a real danger that they could get lost within the new system when the local authority with which they work becomes part of the regional adoption agency. It would be a great shame, and a real loss, to a sector that has recently seen the demise of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering if they fell by the wayside. I look to the Minister to reassure them that their vital and long-established role will be both recognised and protected. She can meet that hope by accepting our amendment and agreeing to report annually to Parliament. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey]

I will speak just to Amendment 34 in this group, which seeks to develop the work we did on the Children and Families Bill, where quite important progress was made on the whole issue of adoption. There was an important amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the increasing length of time that children stayed with foster parents.

Let us build on that: Amendment 34 seeks to support that progress by saying that children in the care of local authorities are perhaps the most vulnerable children. Many of them have mental health problems. In fact, the figures—I will not repeat them now—are really alarming. Many local authorities and agencies which carry out the role for local authorities make tremendous progress with those looked-after children. But there are real concerns, and this amendment suggests that we should always have those concerns in the front of our minds through having an annual report on the support we are giving those young people, so that we can adjust our provision and policies where we need to. I hope the Government might consider supporting this amendment.

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[Lord Storey]

I am so pleased that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, managed to get this amendment down. I tried, and could only get the wording to say “report”; he actually got a lot more, and I am very grateful for that. He obviously has charm and persistence that we need to learn from. I very much want to support the amendment.

There are moments in our lives that obviously have a profound effect on us and our personal circumstances. Some of those can be life-changing. I can remember one such occasion when, after being a bit blasé, thinking, “Do I really have to go?”, I went to meet a group of looked-after children in Liverpool. This was about five or six years ago. Liverpool Education Authority was the guardian of these looked-after children, and it had formed a committee that invited me to tea. It was one of the most life-changing moments for me because these young people talked about their problems: how they had been pushed from pillar to post, and how nobody had understood their concerns or needs. It made me realise that looked-after children had so many problems and concerns on their shoulders that you would not expect people of that age to have. We have the duty and responsibility to make sure that we do everything possible to help and support them.

I am glad to say that the whole issue of mental health is now moving much further up the political agenda: that is a good thing. The previous coalition Government, for the first time, made resources available for mental health. The present Government are carrying on with that commitment. I noticed that the Labour Opposition have appointed a shadow Minister for mental health, Luciana Berger, which shows how important mental health is. That is to be praised. Certainly in schools, it goes back—dare I be so bold as to say—to this teacher with incisive knowledge of physics, where the issue with the student in front of him might be a mental health issue. Unless that teacher has that knowledge or understanding, or somebody else in the school is able to pick up on this, it is to nought. Just as my noble friend Lord Addington went on and on and on about dyslexia—and probably all of us were waving the white flag and saying, “We give in”—we need the same focus on issues of mental health. We should keep at it like a dog with a bone. We talked about bullying in schools and the issue shot up the agenda. Many of the bullies have mental health problems. If we were able to identify them and deal with them at an early stage, they would not be bullies and some of the problems and the suffering that they and the people they bully face would not happen.

We also need to learn from others. I read about an interesting mental health project in the United States of America for young children. That is why I was nervous when the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was talking in a previous discussion about play—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rightly jumped up and asked about obese children—but this project looks at how you deal with mental health through role-playing. The results have been quite stunning. So we should be learning all the time from different projects as well.

Looked-after children need us to go the extra mile more than anyone else. I hope that we can all get behind and support this amendment.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I commend the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for tabling Amendments 32A and 34A, for the eloquent manner in which he introduced them and for the eloquent examples he gave of some of the existing stresses relating to adoption.

However, I have a question for him. Given the wording of Amendment 32A, which calls on a local authority or an adoption agency designated by a local authority to act, it might be better to tie the National Health Service into this provision because I wonder whether local authorities have the authority or the power to undertake what he is seeking they should do. I would like to see it done but I am not clear in my mind whether this is the best way to do it.

The issue of support once a child is placed in adoption can be crucial as to whether or not that adoption becomes permanent. Often specialist support is needed to care for a child appropriately. This is because, having experienced abuse or neglect, 45% of children in care have a mental health disorder compared with only 10% of the general child population. However, the mental health needs of children in care often go unidentified and there is a subsequent lack of mental health support. The Government urgently need to provide specific measures and greater resources around mental health assessment and support for the tens of thousands of children entering care, whose welfare must remain a priority concern.

The Department for Education’s document Regionalising Adoption, which I referred to in the debate on the previous group of amendments, stated:

“We still have too few adopters willing and able to adopt harder to place children”.

Harder-to-place children are a particular concern and yet the document does not suggest any solutions for this serious gap in provision. I hope the Minister will be able to say what the Government propose to do in terms of increasing the number of harder-to-place children who find a permanent home. She may well say, “It is out for consultation; let us see”, but this is an urgent matter. The argument advanced by Ministers in terms of the academisation of schools with no day to be lost perhaps applies even more urgently in the case of harder-to-place children.

I am aware that it is only a consultation document but, worryingly, it does not make a single mention of children with mental health problems. In something like—I cannot remember offhand—20 pages there is no mention of that. I wonder whether the Government appreciate the need and fully understand the issue and how it impacts on so many children in care. That is often a significant factor in their being in care in the first place.

The document goes on to say:

“Currently, adoption support services are provided by a mix of local authority provision, the NHS and independent providers”.

But—it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a “but”—

“There are regional gaps, gaps in the types of services on offer, and little evidence of spare capacity”.

We had some gaps a minute ago and here are some more, which are highlighted in the Government’s own document. It is fine to flag them up but we need some suggestion from the Government—the Minister might tell me it is a bit early just now—as to how those gaps are going to be filled because they are pretty glaring and very serious.

Education: British Values

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, first I thank all noble Lords who are taking part in this debate. Following the so-called Trojan horse scandal in Birmingham and the subsequent Ofsted inspection and reports, our Education Secretary of State commanded that every primary and secondary school should promote British values. The Prime Minister went on to say that we should be “more muscular” and less “bashful” about asserting our national identity. The Prime Minister said that every child in Britain should be taught about Magna Carta, the foundation of all our laws and liberties. I hope the teaching of Magna Carta will be better than that which the Prime Minister himself received. Noble Lords will recall that he had a bit of difficulty recalling Magna Carta on American television. I am sure an understanding of baronial rights and regulation of fish weirs and moneylenders can be made as relevant today as it was then.

As a direct result of the Ofsted reports into Birmingham, new clauses have been added to the model funding agreement for academies. It now stipulates that governors should demonstrate “fundamental British values” and gives the Secretary of State powers to close schools if they do not comply. These British values include respect for the law, for democracy and for equality, and tolerance of different beliefs. Of course, we have to be a little bit careful and not think we are the best in the world in our values. We have only to look through our own history to see recently how discrimination ripped through our country, how it affected gay people, how there was slavery and even the burning of people for their religious belief. Values are not set in concrete or stone; they change.

Both the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998 prohibit discrimination on the grounds of disability, sex, race and religion, and today in Great Britain these liberal principles have never been in doubt. British individuals may identify themselves in different ways, but the notion of British identity is multifaceted and inclusive. British values reflect the pride we feel as a nation when we see a multicultural and ethnically diverse population working together to protect our democratic ideals and ensure that every child has access to the best possible education, regardless of their background. We cannot deny that the elements of Britishness stated by the Secretary of State are complex and open to interpretation. However, these intentions should not be written off as a pipe dream. We must not assume that such values lie out of our reach.

My previous experience as a teacher in a large inner-city primary school has highlighted to me the importance of citizenship education and its role in helping to shape future generations of young people and young adults. Citizenship education and improved political and social awareness are crucial to help youngsters understand one another. Education should be about not prescribing values or abiding by arbitrary morals and customs but being part of a respectful community of discourse on topics that affect us all. It is my firm belief that citizenship education is no different.

The Prime Minister expressed his desire for the Government to start inculcating British values in the curriculum. Having considered that, I find myself slightly bemused to see that academies and free schools—roughly half our secondary schools—can choose not to teach the subject at all and that routine Ofsted inspections do not review it. As a consequence, its omission goes overlooked in a majority of our schools. That needs to be reconsidered urgently. Our schools need clarity that citizenship must be delivered effectively under the national curriculum and will be inspected routinely—perhaps even with no notice, if that proves an effective tool to ensuring accountability—as part of the broad and balanced curriculum that every child deserves.

What happened among a few Birmingham schools does indeed raise a number of educational issues, which we have debated on many occasions in your Lordships’ House. Does it really make sense for some schools to be given the power to choose what they teach? Is not the curriculum too important to be solely in the hands of individual schools? Our inspection regimes must be universal and up to the mark. The Office for Standards in Education has to be the guarantor of quality; Ofsted’s reports must be the key to understanding how schools have performed. The suggestion that grade 1 schools might be exempt from inspection is dangerous. No school, however good, comes with a guarantee of permanent success. Standards can and do slip. Some 31% of schools graded “outstanding” in an inspection do not maintain that standard in the next inspection. Indeed, as we know, one of the Birmingham schools received an “outstanding” Ofsted inspection.

I was interested to read in an article written by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, in the Guardian:

“In truth, both the old model of local authority control and the new model of autonomy are flawed – and events in Birmingham should make us face up to it. Three organisations had the responsibility to spot and prevent failure in the Trojan horse schools – the Department for Education, the local authority and Ofsted. They all failed”.

I do not feel that being British or respecting British values is something that can be prescribed. The best way to unite Britons is to gain a mutual understanding and respect for each other.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

On that point of the people of Britain’s mutual understanding and respect, can the noble Lord explain why the wording of the Motion calls on Her Majesty’s Government to promote British values in all education institutions—presumably including colleges and universities—throughout the country, when Her Majesty’s Government have no control over education in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as a result of devolution?

[Lord Storey]

I am glad the noble Lord raised that point, because it is something I have said on a number of occasions. In actuality, when we debate education issues in this House, we talk only of the education service in England; we do not talk about Wales or Scotland. It would be nice to have a debate where we learn from some of the examples of the Scottish and Welsh education systems. For example, Wales, which is often derided in this House for some of its failings in education, is up to the mark on careers education and counselling. I am sure there are such issues in Scotland. I very much support and agree with what the noble Lord has said.

As I was saying, children should at a young age achieve an understanding of each other through citizenship lessons. The idea of citizenship is based on mutual respect, which the Government have vehemently championed in recent weeks. These sentiments are based on tolerant, helpful and liberal values. In your Lordships’ House we engage in respectful and meaningful discussions. That is why we must encourage our young scholars, whether in England, Scotland or Wales, to do exactly the same.