Social Mobility Committee Report

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Corston for chairing the committee that produced the report and introducing the debate so eloquently and effectively today. I also offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Corriegarth, for his maiden speech. There was some interesting Scottish historical perspective in it, which got my attention; I look forward to hearing more of that in his contributions as time goes on.

I hope that noble Lords will not be in any way offended if I say that I found the most enjoyable contribution this afternoon and evening was that of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who to some extent was slightly left field in saying that he wanted to deconstruct or perhaps even reject the concept of social mobility. He talked about social opportunity, which I think is very interesting in itself. I think that he may have been talking about inculcating confidence in young people—that seemed to me to be what he was saying. If independent schools do one thing for people who attend them, it is to give them a sense of confidence, and we need to ensure that that is spread more widely. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that he seeks a debate on the question of social opportunity in the not-too-distant future, because that would be useful and interesting.

Since the report that forms the basis of this debate was published eight months ago, we have seen much activity of direct relevance to it. We have had the government response; the Sainsbury review and the Government’s response to that; the Technical and Further Education Bill, which will arrive in your Lordships’ House next month; the latest State of the Nation report by the Social Mobility Commission; and, just yesterday, the revelation—that is what it was, because there was no announcement; it was slipped out as a Written Answer in another place—that the Government are to abolish their Child Poverty Unit, a point made forcefully by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. He also mentioned, stealing my thunder a little bit, that the Social Mobility Commission has been rebranded from what was the Commission for Social Mobility and Child Poverty. So within weeks we have witnessed the Government effectively airbrush the term “child poverty” from the face of their Administration. Are they telling us that child poverty has been eradicated? If only. According to the DWP, in 2014-15 there were 3.9 million children living in poverty, which is 28% of children, or nine in a classroom of 30. The Government are in absolute denial about child poverty, which is shameful, and it says more than the Minister will be able to about the subject of this debate. The Government lack any credibility when it comes to promoting social mobility, a concept that they do not even give the impression of understanding. That is demonstrated by their lukewarm response to the report’s recommendations.

By my calculation, of the eight recommendations in the report, two were accepted, both involving administrative requirements, three were partially accepted, and three were rejected. Listening to my noble friend Lady Corston, I understand that I have been kind in interpreting the Government’s response, because she and other members of the committee clearly feel badly let down by what appeared in the response. For a report of some 140 pages to be treated in such a fashion is less than respectful to my noble friend Lady Corston and other noble Lords who worked hard to produce the report. The rejection of the committee’s recommendation that there should be a transition stage from 14 to 19, a point taken up and advanced forcefully by former Secretaries of State for Education, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and my noble friend Lady Morris, I find particularly regrettable. It is a point that we must revisit soon. I was taken by the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, about the national curriculum finishing at 14, although we have to part company on what he then went on to say about grammar schools starting at 14. But the age of 14 is a hub that the Government need to look at, because it could be an important development for the sort of issues that we are discussing in the report.

It is noticeable that the Government responded more favourably to the report from the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, the Report of the Independent Panel on Technical Education, which found that the current system was too complex and failed to provide the skills most needed for the 21st century. The panel said that there was an obvious need to simplify the system, which the Government accepted by announcing that in future 16 year-olds will have to choose between academic and technical options, according to the post- 16 skills plans. Streamlining young people into a limited number of high-quality routes makes sense, but there must be some flexibility to take account of technological advances, particularly in digital and technical skills. The 2019 target for implementation is optimistic to say the least, and forcing young people to choose the route to their future career at the age of 16 risks institutionalising the divide between vocational and academic learning. Ironically, the proposals are reminiscent of Labour’s 14-19 diplomas, which aimed to create parity between academic and vocational routes. Those qualifications were launched in 2008 in 14 subject areas, but they were scrapped within a few years by the coalition Government. Now the wheel has had to be reinvented.

The Explanatory Notes to the Technical and Further Education Bill claims that the Bill,

“takes forward policies relating to Technical and Further Education which support the government’s social mobility agenda”.

That remains to be seen, but it is not a view shared by the Social Mobility Commission, which stated in its recent report:

“Funding is being diverted from second chance education in further education … colleges to apprenticeships, which are often of low quality, in low-skill sectors and not linked to the country’s skill gaps”.

The commission went on to say:

“The Government should encourage sixth-form provision in areas where it is lacking and give schools a central role in supporting FE colleges to deliver the Skills Plan. It should aim to reduce the number of 16- to 18-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training to zero by 2022”.

That is the Government’s own commission. Perhaps the Minister would comment on these recommendations and say whether they are likely to be met with a positive response within the DfE.

Although the Social Mobility Committee’s report concentrates on the bridge between school and employment as a means of promoting social mobility, as other noble Lords have pointed out, there are other stages in life when intervention can have a telling effect on social mobility if allowed to do so with the necessary funding. I think it is widely accepted that above all else the key factor in increasing social mobility is investment in the early years of a child’s life. That can have a lasting impact because there are stark social class differences in how ready children are when they arrive for their first day at school. For a Government genuinely concerned about promoting social mobility, that is where their priority would lie. That is why Sure Start centres were launched by the Labour Government in 1998, with a particular remit to provide early help to infants from disadvantaged backgrounds before they started school. But a succession of government cuts—direct as well as indirect—since 2010 has seen many closures, to the point where 156 centres in England closed in 2015, almost double the number which shut the previous year.

It seems that this Government still have not grasped that reality. They are not willing to commit the necessary resources to early years funding, so children continue to fall behind, often losing ground to their contemporaries from better-off families— ground which can never be recovered, a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. Unfortunately, one area where the Government have committed significant funding, just referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, is grammar schools, where miraculously they have found £250 million of new money.

The Prime Minister likes to refer to “just about managing” families, which is taken to mean those who, despite largely being in work, are squeezed by low pay and the high cost of housing and family bills. The focus on this group has also been linked with education, with grammar schools claimed to be of particular help for the children of low-income households. All the evidence shows that that is a fallacy. Indeed, the overall effect is the opposite, but I will not quote the figures on this occasion.

While the focus of research has traditionally been on the disadvantaged, there is little evidence for the effect of grammars on those slightly higher on the socioeconomic scale—a fact highlighted in the recent DfE consultation—that is, those just managing families. Recent research by the Sutton Trust shows how a lack of access to grammar schools is not merely restricted to those at the very bottom of the scale: there is a steep social gradient across wealth distribution, which may be one reason that the Social Mobility Commission stated in last month’s report that the Government should,

“rethink its plans for more grammar schools and more academies”.

How hypocritical it is that many in the Conservative Party who railed against supposed elitism during the EU referendum campaign are now willing the return of grammar schools, which can create only a more elitist society.

Many noble Lords—particularly my noble friends Lady Morris, Lady Prosser and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler—have stressed the importance of career guidance in this whole question of the link between school and work. My noble friend Lady Corston referred to the need for a “gold standard” of careers guidance, referring to the Social Mobility Committee’s Recommendation 8. Unfortunately, the Government did not respond to the suggestion of a cost-benefit analysis on careers education in schools. They simply came out with a figure of £90 million that was being spent. However, I think that few people at the moment believe that careers guidance delivers value for money. I urge the Minister to look again at carrying out such a cost-benefit analysis.

Meanwhile, the Social Mobility Commission’s report stated that poor careers advice and lack of work experience mean that, even with the same GCSE results, one-third more poorer children drop out of post-16 education than their better-off classmates. It went on to recommend that independent schools and universities should be required to provide high-quality careers advice, support with university applications and to share their business networks with state schools. That seems to me a very sensible suggestion, and more sensible, incidentally, than the suggestion in the grammar school consultation paper that universities and independent schools should sponsor schools in the state sector. I invite the Minister to comment on those suggestions, although I am quite content for him to do so in writing.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and my noble friend Lady Donaghy all suggested that it was unfortunate that the committee whose report we are considering is no more, and that there was certainly more work for such a committee to undertake. I very much subscribe to that view. Perhaps your Lordships’ House should consider setting up a committee to look at social mobility in terms of educational opportunities for older students. It is widely accepted that part-time higher education is a catalyst for widening participation. Recent analysis by the Open University of official government data has reconfirmed the dramatic fall in the numbers of part-time higher education students in England aged 21 and over from 2007 to 2015. During this time, nearly 400,000 part-time students have been lost from higher education and the sharp increase in tuition fees over that period is without doubt a major contributory factor. Yet, in a move that almost defies belief, in the 2015 Autumn Statement the Government committed to cutting university funding for widening participation work by up to 50% by 2020. This funding is known as the student opportunity allocation and is vital for institutions with a strong commitment to social mobility. Again, I ask the Minister to revisit this issue and perhaps consider having a discussion with the Chancellor to see what support can be provided for widening participation of part-time learners in the period in which that cut is still due to take place.

I commend the Social Mobility Committee for its thorough, and thoroughly convincing, report, which demonstrates that commitment by government is necessary to make sure that all our young people have the best chances of success. It has to be said that, up to this point, no such commitment from the Government is in evidence.

Independent Schools: Free Places

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Earl makes an extremely good point—one that is very close to my heart. I have initiated a campaign to try to encourage more local authorities to send young children who are on the edge of care to state boarding schools and independent boarding schools. It is an area where there is quite a shortage of information. We have a new project that is providing a website essentially to market to local authorities the opportunities of sending some of their children on the edge of care to state boarding schools and independent schools very cheaply because they may qualify for full bursarships.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, what this offer reveals is that the cost of educating a pupil in the state sector is around £5,500, while the average level of private school fees is three times that, which is very revealing in terms of the different offers to children in the different sectors. Does the Minister know whether this offer will be conditional on a selection test being operated to see who is able to take up these places? If that happens, does he not agree that what will then occur is not so much that poorer children per se are helped but that already bright children will be helped to achieve what they would very likely have achieved in the state sector anyway? Does he agree that, if selection is to be involved in this offer, the Government should not accept it?

[Lord Nash]

A range of proposals is being submitted under the consultation document, some of which will involve selection and some of which will not. We will look at them all before we design the final proposals more carefully.

National Funding Formulae for Schools and High Needs

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

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?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right and I am sure that she will be delighted to hear that, at the moment, additional-needs funding accounts for 13% for the overall schools budget and that it will be increasing, under these proposals, by an additional £1.7 billion, so it will be 18%. So in fact substantially more money will be made available for that group.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, perhaps I may follow up an answer that the Minister gave to my initial question. He mentioned a figure of £200 million of new money. Why is it not in the Statement, how is it proposed that it should be allocated and where has it come from? I also asked about further education; can he allay any fears that this sector might have as a result of this Statement?

[Lord Nash]

The way the funding formula has worked means that we have been able to find an extra £200 million. We did not put it in the Statement because we felt that it was more important to focus on the percentage variation overall. As I say, this afternoon we will publish details on a school-by-school basis so that all schools can see where they stand.

Educational Attainment: International Rankings

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate, and I pay tribute to the Church’s performance in education—it is particularly good at this. Of course a love of learning is important, and we believe that being taught by teachers with a very high subject knowledge can inspire pupils.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

The Minister was rather dismissive of the results, although it is fair to say that the methodology means that to some extent the findings disguise almost as much as they reveal about pupil performance. But one finding in the report that was very important was that almost half of all the head teachers of schools in England—45% in fact—who took part in the survey regard the question of teacher supply as the key barrier to more effective education, whereas the average in other countries was just 30%. In England, the question of teacher recruitment and retention is an existential problem, so can the Minister tell us why the Government insist on continuing to apply caps on the number of places allowed in teacher training universities?

[Lord Nash]

As the noble Lord knows, our emphasis on teacher training has been on in-school training, but we have the highest number of trainees in science for five years; physics—traditionally our hardest subject to recruit for—is up 15% on last year; and we have recruited in excess of our targets in biology, geography and history.

Coasting Schools (England) Regulations 2016

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords I welcome these regulations; this is a very constructive approach to picking up on schools that are not doing as well as they should be. I am pretty happy with key stage 2. At the end of it, we have a criteria-referenced examination; we have set the bar at 85%, which is none too high and, as a result, I think we are going to pick up a number of schools that need help that we might otherwise have missed. I hope, though, that the Government will make some further progress on key stage 4.

First, we still have the problem that the GCSE has become a norm-referenced exam involving the use of comparable outcomes. It is assumed to be impossible for the secondary school system to produce improved outcomes year on year above the level of the increase, if any, in key stage 2 results. That really says that all we expect of secondary education is that it does just as well as it has ever done, and that there is no inherent improvement taking place. I know the Government are experimenting—or perhaps still thinking of experimenting—with national reference tests, but I would be very grateful if my noble friend told me where we are getting with those. Otherwise, we face a serious difficulty, because key stage 4 is still producing examinations that pupils need to carry on into life afterwards. If we are effectively limiting the percentage of pupils who can achieve a pass grade in these exams, we are doing our people a great disservice over the longer term; it may be all right for now, but it is certainly not all right for the future.

Secondly, I am disappointed that the Government have chosen to set the bar so low for selective schools. There are coasting selective schools, but at the level the bar is set, I really do not see that we are going to catch them. I very much hope that the Government will keep this matter under review, and that when enough time has passed and we have seen the first year of this system in operation, having looked at it and made judgments on it as a whole, the Government will find some way of reporting to us or to the public on how it has gone, enabling us to have a conversation about how it could go better.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations and talking us through some of the mechanics involved.

A year ago, during your Lordships’ consideration of what is now the Education and Adoption Act 2016, the Department for Education undertook public consultation on the proposed definition of coasting schools. It received more than 300 responses. The department claimed,

“wide support for the use of progress measures as the basis of the coasting definition”.

I noted what the Minister said about the consultation, and I understand why he said it, but it is a fact that only 25% agreed that the principles underlying the definition of coasting were correct. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was fairly clear in its criticism of that spin, asserting that,

“the claim made in Explanatory Memorandum of ‘wide support’, does not accurately represent the views put to the Department”.

That, to some significant extent, highlights the rather flimsy foundations on which these regulations sit. I shall have more to say about the committee’s report in due course.

Identifying and supporting coasting schools was not an initiative of this Government, nor indeed of the previous one; it was of course a Labour government policy, introduced in 2007. At that time, it was based on a school’s performance in tests and examinations but it also involved a professional assessment by Ofsted and discussions with the identifying schools about improving performance. By contrast, the present Government’s “coasting school” concept is based solely on a calculating-machine approach to school improvement and does not use professional judgments.

Perhaps the major difficulty in identifying coasting schools using performance data alone is that not all pupils make the same rate of progress as judged against the former national curriculum levels. Those from lower starting points, who are often from disadvantaged backgrounds, tend to make slower progress than those from higher starting points, who are often from more advantaged backgrounds. Rates of progress in schools with a higher proportion of lower-achieving pupils tend to be lower for all pupils in that school, which can lead to a wrong designation of “coasting” for some schools, while those with highly advantaged intakes—including, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has just mentioned, grammar schools—can escape the coasting designation.

Last month the department published Coasting Schools: Provisional Data, which includes a breakdown of where the schools are geographically and their type. Therefore, it is logical to assume that Ministers know precisely which schools have been identified from this exercise. The provisional estimate includes 479 schools at key stage 2 and 327 at key stage 4. Among primaries, a high proportion of academy schools meet the coasting criterion compared with local authority maintained schools, while at secondary level the proportion is the other way round. It appears that the schools most likely to fall within the scope of the coasting schools regulations are those already converted into academies as a result of government intervention.

No school will be formally identified as coasting until the 2016 key stage 2 results are finalised and published in three days’ time, although we will not receive the results for key stage 4 for a further month. For that reason, I ask the Minister why we are being asked to consider the draft regulations now. We believe that parliamentary scrutiny should have been delayed until both sets of results had been published with time allowed for them to be assessed. That would have permitted judgments to have been made, for example, as to whether this data-only approach to coasting schools, without professional Ofsted advice, was identifying good and outstanding schools in areas of significant deprivation.

On 15 December, nearly 400 local authority maintained primary schools will be labelled publicly as coasting. Can the Minister say whether regional schools commissioners have notified these schools, the relevant local authorities and Ofsted in advance? In how many of these schools is intervention already taking place? I say in passing to the Minister that I have quite a few questions to put to him and I shall be more than happy if he cares to write to me in due course, to use a familiar phrase.

Decisions about what happens to a school will be taken by regional schools commissioners assisted by their head teacher boards. There is some concern that those bodies are neither widely accepted nor operate with a great deal of transparency. This issue has been raised before and I do not intend to pursue it today, but it is an issue. That concern was stated unambiguously earlier this year by the Education Select Committee in another place in its report on regional schools commissioners, concluding that their role remained unclear. That point is now thrown into sharp focus by the fact that these regulations give extended powers to the commissioners to intervene when schools are designated as coasting. Yet one of the Government’s key performance indicators for the commissioners is not schools standards but how many schools they are able to convert into academies. There is a clear conflict of interest there and, as stated by the shadow Schools Minister, Mike Kane, when these regulations were considered last week in another place:

“That prompts the question whether the RSCs are independent arbiters in terms of judging whether our schools are failing, successful or coasting”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/11/16; col. 7.]

It certainly does, and I hope that the Minister will seize this opportunity to answer that question.

That leads us to another question: what will happen to maintained schools once these regulations come into force? The ministerial Statement on primary education issued on 19 October stated that regional schools commissioners should work with local authorities to determine actions for coasting schools. However, additional information provided in the DfE memorandum of 26 October to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee states that even though the legislation allows local authorities to take action in a coasting school that they maintain, this is expected to have little impact on the public sector as the regional schools commissioners will predominantly take action when maintained schools are regarded as coasting. It goes on to say:

“We do not, therefore, expect the additional power to be burdensome for local authorities”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, first, I will take back the point made by my noble friend Lord Lucas about key stage 4 and discuss it with my colleague Nick Gibb MP, who is the Minister for this area. On the bar for selective schools, we will keep that under review. Of course, the coasting definition applies equally to all schools and we will certainly keep it under review.

I am afraid that I will not be able to answer all of the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but perhaps I may respond to some of them and write to him on the others. I take his point about different pupils making different levels of progress from the starting point, but I think we have come up with a definition that is generally acknowledged to be fair and easily understood. Obviously, trying to work out exactly which pupils make what progress is very complicated, but the general definition we have come up with, which is based on measures that are already understood by schools, is the fairest and simplest way to proceed.

As for the noble Lord’s point about regional schools commissioners taking into account the wider context, they will, as is clearly set out in our procedures. That wider context includes Ofsted and the particular circumstances of the school, such as whether it is in a location that has intergenerational unemployment. We all know that, sadly, that is an issue in certain areas with a heavily white working-class population, for example. All this will be taken into account. The regional schools commissioners will work closely with local authorities. It is acknowledged now—I think the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said it himself—that school-to-school support is the best way to improve schools. They will be working closely with local authorities to help identify the help available, whether from other schools nearby, which may be local authority maintained schools or academies, or NLEs that can help them. They will also be able to access the school improvement fund, which I mentioned earlier.

All schools will know exactly where they are in terms of the results of the past two years, and will now have an estimate of their figures for this year. These will be published shortly. Of course, the regional schools commissioners will be working with some of these schools anyway—they may have asked for help—but they will all know exactly where they stand.

As for the resources available to regional schools—

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

Although the Minister was not talking specifically about this, will he address my question on whether the schools that are going to be named publicly on Thursday have already been told by the regional schools commissioner that that is about to happen, and whether the local authorities have been told?

Childcare (Early Years Provision Free of Charge) (Extended Entitlement) Regulations 2016

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, there is much to welcome in what the Minister has said. He may well recall the graph of disadvantage, where an intelligent boy or girl from a low income family will start high on the graph but over a period of time will decline and a less intelligent and less able middle-class child will rise past that child. As the Minister so eloquently put it, “High quality early years childcare and education can make a huge difference and promote the social mobility of such young people”. So I welcome the extension of the funding.

As the Minister is aware, I am concerned that future costs, such as the new cost of the minimum wage—a welcome addition, but challenging for childcare providers—is something that the Government need to take into account in future funding arrangements. I am grateful to the Minister for indicating that he and his colleagues will be monitoring this very closely and I recognise that this is the most that any Government have invested in high quality early years childcare.

I have two questions for the Minister. One relates to the penalties part of these regulations. I do not know how they will work in detail and there may not be grounds for concern, but I am thinking again of homeless families. I thank the Minister for ensuring that the piloting of these arrangements has ensured that homeless families are given attention and reached out to. I am concerned that with their movement, they can be hard to communicate with, that they might miss letters, and I would not wish to see them penalised because they missed some correspondence that they should have responded to—the Minister might like to write to me on that particular point.

The second point is in regard to foster children. I am sure that we discussed this at length during the course of the Bill, but I cannot recall why it is that foster children are excluded from this; perhaps the Minister could remind me of that. Since we discussed the Bill, we have had a report from the Family and Childcare Trust highlighting that 14% fewer looked-after children access high quality early years care than the general population. I think that emphasises how more needs to be done to ensure that they do access it. It may be that their access needs to be kept under review. I have nothing more to add and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations. It goes without saying that we welcome the extension of free childcare to 30 weeks from next September and it is helpful to have these regulations as the route map to delivering that—or at least in theory. I suspect that the practice will be more challenging and that the Government will, I fear, face real difficulty in meeting the demand unless greater resources are committed to that end.

My fears on that score stem from the current difficulty in ensuring uniform delivery of 15 hours a week and from what we hear of the plans for the future. Indeed, the Government have been accused in some quarters of “raiding the budgets” set aside by local authorities to help disadvantaged children in order to fund the doubling of free childcare for working families, some of them relatively well-off families. Local authorities currently receive government funds for 15 hours of free childcare for three and four year-olds. Under the present system, local authorities have been able to pay extra cash to schools with nurseries from that budget because they employ qualified teachers and are used disproportionately by poorer families. They have also been able to set aside extra funds to ensure that children from the most disadvantaged families get more than 15 free hours. However, local authorities will now no longer be able to offer additional funding above a set hourly rate per child. Instead there will be a requirement to pass on 95% of centrally provided funds directly to childcare providers.

The new offer of 30 hours of free childcare is of course available only to working families, so any child from an unemployed family currently getting more than 15 hours will lose that extra support. About 80% of three year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas currently attend childcare with a qualified teacher or early years professional. By preventing local authorities from continuing to offer what are known as “quality supplements”, it is likely that schools will need either to reallocate funds from the main school budget, which is already stretched to breaking point in many council areas, or reduce the status of their school nursery. This policy threatens to take cash away from disadvantaged children to pay for the childcare costs of better-off families. I am confident that the Minister will use this opportunity to deny that that was the Government’s intention, and I am not suggesting it was, but if that is the outcome then will he commit to finding a way of ensuring that children from disadvantaged households do not become the victims of unintended consequences that could seriously hamper their development?

The significance of this issue cannot be overstated. We know that the Government are struggling to find the resources to finance 30 hours of free childcare, but targeting non-working families or those who are disadvantaged should be off the agenda. This is because investing in early years is not just about quality childcare for working parents. It is also critical to closing the education inequality gap, which can already be very wide before children arrive at school. I suspect that the Minister will respond by saying that local authorities are able to offer additional cash to childcare providers from their wider budget, but the reality is that few local authorities have the flexibility to do that, and even where they do, it may not be on a sustainable basis.

At the beginning of this month the Early Years Minister, Caroline Dinenage, announced that councils will receive a minimum rate of £4.30 an hour in the new early years funding formula. This came in response to the consultation which was carried out over the summer and the DfE has now found an extra £30 million in its budget to support the introduction of this rate. While any extension of the supplement is welcome, the Government’s funding plans still fall well short across the sector of what is needed to deliver on their promise of 30 hours of free childcare. It has to be said that their record is one of closed Sure Start centres, rising childcare costs and parents waiting for much-needed support. The Government have also announced an extra £50 million for councils to build nursery schools, which is of course an important part of the whole process, but last week the shadow Early Years Minister, Tulip Siddiq, released figures that show a huge black hole in the Government’s nursery building programme which is needed to provide for the new demand. With only one-third of councils having submitted their bids, the total asked for has already exceeded £55 million, which suggests that there could be a shortfall of around £100 million if all local authorities are to have their needs met.

It is all very well promising free childcare, but we need assurances on the infrastructure and resources to back it up. Even if the Government dispute the figure of the shortfall, there will be one, so where do they intend to make it up because surely they did not intend that local authorities which apply for this funding should be turned away empty handed? If they are unable to get the funding, that will underline the evidence that the Government’s funding plans fall short across the sector of what is needed to deliver on their promise of 30 hours free childcare a week from September next year. At the same time, the childcare profession faces a recruitment crisis, with the nursery sector struggling to pay staff even the national minimum wage.

Caroline Dinenage announced that the increased rate in the early years funding formula will be made up of a base rate, plus an uplift for additional needs, based on measures for free school meals, disability living allowance and, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned, English as an additional language. The Minister also said that the disability access fund would provide £615 a year for every eligible child. That, together with the recognition in paragraph 9.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum to these regulations, is welcome. Currently, children with special educational needs or a disability are not adequately supported, and it is hoped that this additional funding will, to some extent, address that.

The response from providers and sector organisations still suggests that the latest offer from the Government is unlikely to be sufficient to achieve the requirements set out in the regulations and to deliver the policy more broadly. When these regulations were considered in another place last week, my colleague Tulip Siddiq asked the Minister whether such concerns over the latest funding announcement were well founded. She did not receive a response, so perhaps the Minister will be able to oblige today. I heard his opening remarks but, given the concern in the sector, I think that that point needs to be reinforced.

The doubts about sufficient resources remain. Sir Michael Wilshaw’s annual report notes that the current increase in early years places has not kept pace with the increase in the early years population. So, again, I invite the Minister to assure us that he is confident that there is sufficient capacity to meet demand.

I thought that last week the Early Years Minister sounded somewhat complacent, saying that she did not expect the 30 hours of free childcare offer to double the demand for childcare places, because many parents already access more than the 15 hours a week and pay for the additional hours. That may well be the case but surely, human nature being what it is, these parents will now cease paying for it themselves as they will be entitled to have it covered by government—within earning limits, of course. Therefore, why the demand is unlikely to double is at best unclear.

I have one final point of clarification to put to the Minister. A new organisation called Childcare Works is to be established. It is intended to be a conduit between the DfE and local authorities to ensure that there will be sufficient 30-hours places from September next year. I wish it, and the local authorities involved, well, but the DfE website describes the new organisation as a consortium consisting of two companies of consultants and a charity. I am happy for this to be done in writing but can the Minister outline some details of the kind of assistance—I assume it will not be handing out cash—that Childcare Works will provide to local authorities to meet the demand for 30-hours places?

I hope that the Minister will accept that I have no interest in scoring points at his expense—at least, not on this issue. Naturally, I wholeheartedly welcome the introduction of 30 hours of free childcare, but I repeat that it will be meaningless for many parents if it is not fully funded.

[Lord Nash]

In relation to the noble Earl’s points about future costs, as he knows—we have discussed this—we have thought about this carefully through our review. In answer to that point and the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about capacity, it is true that the system has responded remarkably well to the substantial increase in provision that we have brought in over the last six years, including the funding for disadvantaged two year-olds. I think it is fair to say that the childcare system is in very good shape, but we will monitor it closely.

I will look carefully at the issue of homeless families and the point that the noble Earl made about penalties. I am sure he will also be interested to hear that in Swindon 30 hours of free childcare is being piloted in a refuge for women who have suffered domestic violence. This includes providing childcare at the refuge and using the space to provide training for the women living there.

At the moment, foster children are excluded from these arrangements but we have been listening carefully to concerns raised on this point. As we all know, foster carers play a vital role in supporting some of our most vulnerable children, and we recognise the importance of effective support for their recruitment and retention. However, we also need to consider whether it is possible for children in foster care to take up the additional hours in a way that promotes their best interests. We will consider whether the blanket exclusion of all children in foster care from the 30-hours policy is the right way to balance this and will clarify our eligibility criteria in relation to this group in advance of September next year.

Technical Education and Apprenticeships

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That is a good point. It is very much up to schools to make those decisions but, again, as part of our campaign—our PR—we are encouraging schools in what they do to give advice on careers in general. This is very much part of it.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, employers spend some £3 billion each year on training but only about 15% of that works its way through to further education colleges. Now the Government are poised to make another £350 million of cuts to the adult skills budget, which will impact on part-time and adult learners at FE colleges. If the Government really are committed—as I believe they are—to widening access to and participation in technical and vocational education, what action does the Minister intend to take to promote the importance of the further education college sector and encourage more employers to use it?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

One of the initiatives—there are several—is that we will be setting up, by April 2017, an institute for apprenticeships. The aim will be to have an employer-led approach to ensure that there are more apprenticeships. I think the House will know that we aim to set up 3 million over this Parliament. Also, through the Technical and Further Education Bill, we are extending the remit of the apprenticeship institute to cover college-based, technical education from April 2018.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I pay tribute to all noble Lords who made this such an informed and interesting debate over the past seven hours—yes, it is seven hours. I pay tribute to the honourable Member for Orpington for his indefatigability. He seems to have been here throughout the whole process and that is much to his credit.

I also welcome and very much enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg. I am sure we can remember when we entered your Lordships’ House that there was a feeling of some trepidation; perhaps we were daunted by the prospect. However, when, as we heard, you have dropped from a helicopter on to a nuclear submarine as the noble Baroness has, I am sure that coming into your Lordships’ House was an absolute breeze. We may not often agree, but I look forward to her contributions in future.

As I had long understood to be widely acknowledged and accepted, our university sector is hugely successful, but it would appear that that is not widely accepted enough in government circles. A higher education Bill was certainly due, but it should have concentrated—as the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, said—on celebrating that success and building on it, not imitating my five year-old son with his latest Lego set. He opens it eagerly, builds it according to the instructions and admires it. The next day, he moves on to what really challenges him: he deconstructs it, then rebuilds it to his own design specifications and the result bears no resemblance to the picture on the box. That analogy with what the Government are trying to do to the university sector in the Bill is, I think, apt. They are attempting to solve problems that do not really exist. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked, what is the Bill designed to fix? We have not been told.

The 2016-17 world university rankings again demonstrate the continued strength of the sector, but the latest set of rankings highlight a marked increase in the number of our Entrepreneurial University of the Year institutions in the overall list, which includes many newer universities. As is often the case, the wider value—particularly the social value—of what universities do is overlooked by league table compilers. That includes providing opportunities for older learners and part-time learners who continue to study while at work—issues on which the Bill is silent. My noble friend Lady Bakewell and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, spoke eloquently on these issues, which we shall address in Committee.

My noble friend Lady Blackstone emphasised the diversity of the sector as a source of strength. That is important to avoid a narrative that only the “top” universities matter to the Government, which would be very damaging for both the sector and its students. For example, last week London South Bank University won the Entrepreneurial University of the Year Award. Other modern universities such as Bath Spa and Southampton Solent regularly sit atop the league tables on creative courses, while Abertay University in Dundee—about which I should disclose an interest as that institution awarded me an honorary doctorate—was the only university in the whole of Europe to feature in the rankings for computer game design, a hugely important earner for the UK. It is important to note that excellence is to be found across the sector, and both the UK and its economy are the richer for it.

Yet we have a Bill that is in thrall to the market, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Royall. It proposes an open-door approach to new institutions. My noble friend Lady Kennedy warned of the consequences. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, told us that his daughter called it a power grab. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, called it a changed dynamic.

It is not just the Department for Education or the newly fashioned Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy seeking to influence that control; we now see the Home Office playing an increasingly intrusive role, one in which the objective is to reduce immigration, irrespective of the damaging effect that will have on not just higher education and research but the broader economy. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to the need for an appreciation of the threat to international visas. International students’ fees subsidise home-based students and anything that undermines that would have a seriously detrimental effect on the viability of some institutions.

The international perspective was mentioned by many noble Lords, among them my noble friend Lord Stevenson and the noble Lords, Lord Smith of Finsbury and Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. It is also a potential problem in respect of the TEF, which would result in universities being graded—some might say shamed—very publicly in a way that no other country does. The TEF as proposed, with its flawed metrics, would not provide quality assurance on teaching. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, rightly highlighted, the Scottish perspective on the TEF, even though it would not apply north of the border, is another important issue. For obvious reasons, that matter is of personal interest to me and it will be probed in Committee.

The Bill has nothing to say on links with the further education sector and technical and vocational education, nor on higher education delivered through further education colleges. These issues were raised by my noble friend Lord Stevenson, the noble Lord, Lord Patten, and, most strongly, by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. I think the noble Baroness’s contribution was the feistiest one we heard today and I am relishing the prospect of her getting to grips with Ministers in Committee. I say to Ministers that they should anticipate a wolf in wolf’s clothing.

Like many noble Lords participating in this debate, I am of the generation that benefited from the expansion that followed the Robbins report. Of course, the landscape has changed out of all recognition in half a century, and nostalgia is of little value, but some of the Robbins principles stand the test of time. Robbins said that universities should have,

“four objectives essential to any properly balanced system”.

The first was “instruction in skills”. The second was the promotion of,

“the general powers of the mind … to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women”.

The third was to maintain research in balance with teaching since teaching should not be separated from “the advancement of learning” and “the search for truth”. The fourth was to transmit,

“a common culture and common standards of citizenship”.

However, having read the Bill, we are left with these questions for the Government to answer. In 2016, what is a university? Does it have a public purpose? That is an important issue because under this heading is the guarantee of free speech, which the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Polak, rightly stressed.

The Bill makes no mention of scholarship or the pursuit of truth, yet it displays a relentless pursuit of a free-market approach, with students as customers or consumers—terms that my noble friends Lady Cohen and Lord Judd rightly derided. That is not the best means of ensuring that we prepare the workforce of the future—the drivers of industry and the economy. To some extent, that is happening already, with too many universities, as we have heard, employing academic staff on short-term—sometimes zero-hours—contracts, sometimes even paying on an hourly basis. This applies to universities with which more than a few noble Lords have an association and perhaps they might ask some questions of their CEOs.

The student experience is an essential part of what should inform the choice of university that a young person makes. It is also essential to what the student emerges with at the end of the course. If academic staff have no sense of job security or a commitment to the institution, that can only devalue the student experience. Noble Lords will have seen the case reported this week of an Oxford graduate taking legal action, claiming that the university was at fault for his failure to achieve a first and therefore a more lucrative career. I doubt that that case has much future and it dates back 15 years, but it could presage a glut of modern cases relating to a poorer level of teaching stemming from the increasing demoralisation of junior academic stuff. Job insecurity is a major concern and universities need to be aware of the consequences of any race to the bottom in employment practices.

Institutional autonomy and academic freedom are vital, as we heard from many noble Lords, particularly my noble friends Lord Giddens and Lord Triesman, and the noble Lord, Lord Patten. That is why I find the relative silence on these matters—indeed, on the Bill in general—from Universities UK and the Russell group at best puzzling. Have they been leant on, by any chance? We understand that they are more concerned at the implications of leaving the EU, but surely it ought not to be beyond the means of those well-resourced organisations to respond to two major threats simultaneously.

Part 3 of the Bill makes changes to the arrangements that govern the funding and support for research. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, provided some figures on UK research and used them to illustrate the extent to which the country punches above its weight. My noble friend Lord Darzi referred to this country as a research superpower—a status that should be guarded jealously. These Benches share the concerns of many noble Lords who attach great importance to the objective of ensuring that the UK remains a world-class centre of research and innovation, with strengthened capacity to address cross-cutting and cross-disciplinary issues. We accept the argument that there can be economies of scale, but there is potential for there to be adverse effects. In Committee, we will probe how adequately the new arrangements will ensure that the benefits of the current system are not lost.

There have been considerable advances ascribed to the autonomy of the research councils. Certainly, we are of the view that it is important to ensure that they have independent chairs and that the devolved Administrations are given a proper voice, not the token one which emerged from a government amendment on Report in another place. The Bill will, in our view, be enhanced with the Haldane principle written into law.

The Bill has many flaws and will require significant amendment to make it fit for purpose. We shall use the Recess to gird our loins for the battles that lie ahead in Committee and hope that at the end of that process the Bill is in a much more acceptable shape.

Child Health: Physical Education

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness raises a very important issue. We know that mental health is an increasing issue in schools. Last year we funded the PSHE Association’s guidance on how to teach about mental health across all four key stages. A range of training on specific issues is also available through the MindEd website to all professionals who work with young people. We have been testing in a number of places the concept of a single point of contact in schools and CAMHS to improve collaborative working across schools and mental health services.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that physical education is compulsory for all children between the ages of four and 16. That is of course correct, but rather at odds with that is the fact that Department for Education guidance merely recommends a minimum of two hours of curricular PE for each pupil each week. I may be anticipating something that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, is about to say, but independent schools would laugh at the suggestion that there should be only two hours of PE for pupils each week, and the Government should not be prepared to accept anything less in respect of state schools. What proportion of schools meet that DfE recommendation, and what role does the physical education and sport premium for primary schools have in increasing that figure?

Childcare: Early Years Funding

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We are focused on that. As the noble Baroness will know, we have a massive investment in this area, and on improving the quality of people coming into the profession. In terms of specific details on this, I will write to her.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it is widely accepted that investment in early years childcare is one of the most effective means of increasing social mobility, which the Government say is one of their aims. In July 2015, the then Childcare Minister Sam Gyimah announced a consultation on Sure Start centres that was to begin that autumn. We are still waiting for that consultation. Indeed, two weeks ago his successor Caroline Dinenage could only say in a waffling Parliamentary Answer that an announcement would be made “in due course”. The Minister has been there throughout that period. Is he not embarrassed about having to defend a Government who have been reneging on a commitment that is so important for the future of children’s centres?

[Lord Nash]

I know that the party opposite always raises this point. An independent study made it quite clear that the number of people accessing these centres has remained remarkably consistent over the last few years, even though a number have merged and indeed, a number have closed. The important point is their quality and location. I refer back to the point that no Government in history have ever invested as much in early years and childcare as this one.