Schools: Swimming and Life-saving Skills

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for initiating this debate on the very important—though often underreported—subjects of swimming and life-saving skills. All primary-aged children should learn to swim. It is a basic life skill and a life-saving skill, whether it involves developing the ability to save themselves—and possibly others as well—in difficult circumstances, or learning particular life-saving skills, such as CPR and how to get help in a medical emergency.

The Government seem to be clear on the additional action required to achieve this, as evidenced by the announcement in October 2018 that primary schools were to receive extra support and improved guidance to help make sure that all children can swim confidently and know how to stay safe in and around water. It is to involve the provision of more swimming lessons, extra teaching and improved guidance, supported by the PE and sport premium. All this is to be welcomed.

What was not spelled out was how much of the PE and sport premium would be dedicated to this extra support for swimming and life-saving skills. The premium has around £300 million available to it, so can the Minister say whether the swimming initiative is to be taken from that, or have new resources been allocated to fund the enhanced activity?

Presumably, the intention is to build on the 2017 Review of Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety, published by the National Water Safety Forum—an association of bodies with a range of interests and responsibilities. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, their review contained 16 recommendations to the Government. Almost two years later, how many of those recommendations have been met or are in the process of being met?

The Local Government Association has called on the Government to do more to raise awareness of water safety issues. It stressed that there needs to be greater emphasis in the school curriculum on water safety, drowning prevention and messages around cold water shock and what that can do to those who unexpectedly find themselves in water. The statistics that most resonated with me in the LGA briefing were that more people in the UK die each year from drowning than from fires at home, and that more people drown while out walking or running than while swimming.

These facts underline the need for young people to be prepared for the dangers that can await them. This is why the initiative announced by the Government in October last year is to be welcomed. It will be delivered in partnership with Swim England, as part of the Government’s sport strategy, Sporting Future, committed to ensuring that every child leaves primary school able to swim. This is a very necessary objective.

The measures were announced days after a government-backed review of swimming and water safety in primary schools, entitled Swim England Parents and Curriculum Swimming Research 2018, was published. That survey found that swimming standards vary in schools—as noble Lords have mentioned—despite it being compulsory in the national curriculum. Following its recommendations, the Government was said to be,

“working with Swim England to provide extra guidance to help schools deliver safe, fun and effective swimming lessons”.

This is necessary because, as the RNLI reported in its excellent briefing for this debate, and has been mentioned already, today around 1,000 schools in England do not teach swimming, even though it is a statutory requirement.

I hope the Minister will confirm that schools failing to meet their legal requirements will quickly and decisively be brought into line. These include academies, which may not have to follow the national curriculum but have a duty to see that their children are properly trained to ensure their safety. Children who attend schools that do not provide swimming lessons—and their parents—are being failed. This cannot be allowed to continue.

The problem may be much greater than this. There are around 18,000 primary schools in England. When the Swim England survey asked parents of children in reception, year 3 and year 6 about their child’s swimming provision—as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said—it emerged that a mere 53% of primary school children in England have swimming lessons, just over half. For the figure to be 33% for reception children is perhaps not too much of a surprise, but for year 3 the figure was only 63%, with an even more disappointing 64% receiving lessons in year 6—that is, children aged 10 and 11. To say that there is much room for improvement would be an understatement.

Access to pools may be an issue, although that should not be used as an excuse, because timings can be flexible. The Local Government Association highlighted that 72% of primary schools use publicly owned facilities for their swimming activity, but access can be compromised as a result of issues of cost, availability and transport. Quite a few independent schools with swimming pools work in partnership with state schools to provide access, and I hope that that can be increased.

Swimming comes under physical education, and the narrowing of the curriculum since the introduction of the EBacc has reduced opportunities as a result. Recent research in secondary schools by the Youth Sport Trust found that timetabled PE time is decreasing, and the reduction is greater as students get older. At key stage 4, 58% of schools had reduced timetabled PE in the past five years, and nearly a quarter had done so in the past year. By the time young people are in sixth form, they are doing barely half an hour a week.

The same survey found that nearly 40% of teachers said that their provision had declined because core or EBacc subjects had been given additional time, with students taken out of timetabled PE for extra tuition in those subjects. Those results were cited last week by her Majesty’s chief inspector, who said that the result,

“chimes with our own two-year research programme on the curriculum”.

PE is likely to be a subject that has been affected by that curriculum narrowing, and it would appear that that is not contested by the DfE, because I found Amanda Spielman’s speech on its website. Children learning about water safety cannot be treated as an optional extra and must not be squeezed out of the curriculum.

Life-saving skills are equally important, and we welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State in January that all secondary school-leavers in England are to be taught cardiopulmonary resuscitation and general first aid for common injuries, including defibrillator use, from 2020. The British Heart Foundation described the plans as a decisive moment in attempts to improve on the less-than-10% survival rate for people in the UK with cardiac arrests while not in hospital. It is surely no coincidence that in countries that teach CPR in schools, cardiac arrest survival rates are more than double those in Britain. There are 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every year and, each day, people needlessly die because bystanders do not have the confidence or knowledge to perform CPR and defibrillation. It is absolutely appropriate that all schoolchildren should be given the opportunity to learn these skills. Introducing CPR lessons in health education in all state-funded secondary schools is a significant step that could lead only to increased survival odds for countless people.

Of course, schools alone are not the answer. The responsibility for ensuring that children have enough opportunity not just to exercise and live healthier lives but build the skills that may save lives ultimately rests with parents. The combination of parental awareness and good-quality, consistent learning options in school will lead to future generations being better able to keep themselves and others safe.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to answer this Question for Short Debate, and thank the noble Lord for raising the important issue of swimming and life-saving skills in schools. Swimming is a vital life-saving skill. This is why pupils are taught to swim and about water safety at primary school. I am delighted to be able to update the House today on the work the Government are doing to improve swimming and water safety skills in schools. Being able to swim and learn about water safety, including the dangers of open water swimming and cold water shock, can prevent accidents and drowning fatalities.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked how many sports are impacted by one’s ability to swim. It opens up opportunities to participate in a wide range of water-based activities, such as canoeing, rowing and sailing. I cannot get to the figure of 20 that he mentioned, but he is correct that it impacts on many opportunities, which is why all pupils should have the opportunity to learn to swim.

The Government support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that no child should leave primary school unable to meet a minimum standard of capability and confidence in swimming. This is reflected in the national curriculum, which includes swimming and water safety as compulsory elements at primary level. It also provides a frame of reference for academies in deciding what to offer as part of the broad and balanced curriculum. We know that too many pupils leave primary school unable to meet those expectations. We are working closely with colleagues in government and the sport and education sectors to raise attainment.

In 2015 the Government asked the Swim Group to submit an independent report setting out recommendations for improving curriculum swimming as part of the Sporting Future strategy. The Swim Group includes representatives from across the swimming and education sectors. The report demonstrated the need to do more to support schools in delivering swimming and water safety lessons to all pupils.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked about progress in implementing the recommendations. To date we have implemented four of them. Sport England is also updating its facilities guidance for local authorities. We have increased the flexibility of pupil premium funding, and we are including a communications strategy, which was recommended, for educational stakeholders. For secondary schools we are also including an updated communications strategy. We took the recommendations very seriously, and we are endeavouring to implement as many as possible.

All primary schools in receipt of PE and sport premium, including academies, have to report on how many of their pupils meet the swimming expectations. We have increased support for schools to use their PE and sport premium to increase training and provide additional top-up swimming lessons. New free guidance is available from the Swim England website, which covers everything schools need to know about how to provide high-quality swimming and water safety lessons to all pupils.

We have worked with the Independent Schools Council to encourage meaningful partnerships between independent schools and their local state primaries. For example, Cheltenham Ladies’ College is working with local partners to provide additional swimming lessons to pupils not able to swim after being taught swimming in their core PE lessons.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about SEND pupils. We agree that it is most important that all pupils have the ability to learn to swim. The Swim Group reported that not all pupils with SEND have access to swimming and water safety lessons in school. More work needs to be done to understand the current provision, and any barriers to inclusive lessons. We have funded a project to help address this issue—the Youth Sport Trust-led Inclusion 2020 project has identified five local areas to form partnerships to improve swimming and water safety: Durham, Dorset, Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire and West Yorkshire. We will review the evaluation of these local innovation partnerships when it is available in 2020.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington also asked about the resources available for swimming generally, and I can reassure him that, again, there is a lot going on. Sport England is working with nearly 100 local authorities that have plans for additional swimming pool provision. Since 2012 it has invested £67 million in 46 local authority facilities to include pools, which results in about £700 million in investment from those authorities.

We will continue to build on this work across government, working with and supporting schools, county sports partnerships, and swimming and water safety bodies and charities. We are working with Swim England to publish online videos that will support teachers in assessing pupils’ swimming capabilities. These will be available to all schools this spring. Our swimming and water safety communications activity will focus on supporting a water safety awareness week. This addresses part of the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about highlighting the dangers of being around water. The awareness week will include information on that subject, and a new guidance pack for parents on school swimming and water safety will be published on the Swim England website by the end of March, including information on how to be safe in and around water.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked some related questions—and one in particular, about drowning following excessive intake of alcohol. The noble Lord is right to highlight this as an important subject. Issues around alcohol will make up part of the health education taught in schools. Combating alcohol-related drowning is a priority for partners such as the Royal Life Saving Society, with its national campaign, “Don’t Drink and Drown”. This campaign reaches out to universities and warns drinkers to steer clear of walking by or entering water when under the influence of alcohol.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, also asked about the collection of data on drowning. The collection of data on water-related incidents is an important part of reducing the number of deaths by drowning. I welcome the collaboration on data collection through the water incident database, but I will raise the issue with the Department for Transport, which has the overall responsibility for water safety.

County sports partnerships review schools’ reporting of the use of their PE and sport premium and this year we will be looking at those reports in more detail. We will be launching a school sports action plan in the spring of this year. It will have at its heart how sport can assist in the development of character and well-being in pupils. Swim England is involved in its capacity as a national governing body of sport.

My noble friend Lord Dunlop raised several questions. On the sharing of experiences between English and Scottish schools on swimming, Swim England is working closely with Swim Scotland and other swimming national governing bodies. They are sharing the outcomes of the Swim Group report and the government actions to support these national governing bodies to work with their own Governments.

My noble friend asked about data. The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey will provide annual data on swimming following findings on school swimming and water safety in the December 2018 publication of the survey. These annual findings will give us robust information on the swimming and water safety skills of pupils. We have also changed the reporting for primary schools to ensure that the mandatory requirement to report the use of the premium on their school website includes a requirement to publish information on their pupils’ swimming and water safety ability.

Lastly, my noble friend asked whether the picture is changing. Sports England’s Active Lives Children and Young People Survey collected data on more than 100,000 pupils and reported its first findings in December last year. Seventy-seven per cent of year 7 pupils reported being able to swim the 25 metre unaided requirement in that survey.

Life-saving teaching in schools also relates to work that the Government are doing in health education. We are making health education compulsory in all state-funded schools in England and voluntary teaching will begin in September of this year. In doing this we have responded to the sustained calls for mandatory first aid in schools so that pupils can have the access they need to knowledge about life-saving and first-aid skills.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked about the teaching of water safety and rightly highlighted the importance of learning about it. Our guidance on health education encourages schools to look for opportunities to draw links between subjects and integrate teaching where appropriate. There will be an opportunity for schools to bring together what they teach in life-saving with their swimming lessons. The new water safety guidance pack can help them to do that more effectively.

We have proposed in the updated draft statutory guidance that health education will include first-aid and life-saving skills in core content for the first time. This will support whole school approaches to fostering pupil well-being and developing pupils’ resilience and ability to self-regulate. We encourage teachers to draw upon high-quality resources in the classroom, including guidance on first aid and emergencies from the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance and the British Heart Foundation.

As such, health education should complement what is already taught and develop pupils’ core knowledge and broad understanding to enable them to lead healthy, active lives. It will be up to schools to decide whether and how to build on the core swimming expectations in the context of their wider health education provision.

The debate we have had today has highlighted how important swimming and life-saving skills are.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

The Minister has answered a considerable number of questions but he has not answered one of mine in relation to the funding that supports the announcement in October last year of additional support for schools. The figure of £300 million in the PE and sport premium was mentioned. My question was whether the activities announced in October 2018 are to be paid for through that—and, if so, how much—or is it to be new resources from the DfE?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Apologies to the noble Lord; I omitted that in my reply. Extra help for schools was announced on 18 October but there was no new funding specifically for school swimming. However, we have encouraged use of the £320-million PE and sport fund, from which all primary schools receive each year to support school swimming and water safety. This works out on average at about £18,000 per single-form-of-entry primary available for sports activity. More broadly, as part of the 2012 Olympic legacy, we have invested nearly £1 billion in sport in aggregate since then.

This debate has highlighted how important swimming and life-saving skills are, and the role that schools can play in teaching them. I hope that the range of actions I have set out demonstrate just how seriously the Government take the ambition that all pupils ought to leave primary school being able to swim, and that the new health education requirements can help to build on that. I hope all noble Lords will join me in doing all we can to make sure that schools are aware of the support and take advantage of it.

Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education, and Health Education

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am so sorry.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this important Statement. We welcome the fact that the Government are introducing the provisions of the Children and Social Work Act 2017 on the introduction of compulsory relationships education for all pupils in primary schools, and compulsory relationships and sex education for all pupils in secondary schools. In addition, health education is being made compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools, which is also something that we regard as a positive move in preparing young people for an increasingly complicated world. I have a number of questions for the Minister and will be perfectly content if he wishes to respond in writing if he feels unable to answer them immediately.

The Secretary of State announced that he is making £6 million available for training and resources to support the new subjects, but that averages out at around £250 per school. What does the Minister expect schools to be able to achieve with such meagre additional resources? Can he further provide an indication as to whether these are indeed additional resources or whether they are recycled from within the DfE budget? How many teachers will be trained in the new subjects, and how many schools does he expect to be teaching them, by the date that he mentioned, September 2020?

I agree with the Secretary of State that these subjects are of vital importance, but I suspect I am not alone in wondering what he expects schools to teach less of in order to make room for these new subjects in the timetable.

I understand the Government’s position on the parental opt-out for relationships and sex education, but I have to ask why they would not give a child the right to be included in those lessons at any age instead of selecting what appears to be an arbitrary age at which point the child’s voice will be heard. The Statement says that the parental opt-out could be overruled in “exceptional circumstances”. Could the Minister give examples of what he believes would amount to such exceptional circumstances?

Noble Lords will have read of the dreadful bullying and mental health problems that affect LGBT people. The fact that these issues are included in the draft guidance could be a milestone in ensuring that these people and others can grow up understanding more and living in a safer environment. We are certainly glad that the draft guidance says that these topics must be fully integrated into the curriculum and not taught separately. Does the Secretary of State believe that there are any circumstances in which a school should be allowed to simply not teach LGBT issues as part of this curriculum? Obviously, it would undermine the whole thrust of the provisions if that were the case.

It can be only to everyone’s benefit if we better understand the differing issues that face each of us. I hope these regulations will mean that we can work on a cross-party basis to make that a reality for the next generation.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, following on from the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I would like to say that I agree with virtually every single one of them—indeed, all of them on this occasion. I also congratulate the Government on having done this. Apart from anything else, this is a good thing; there have been very few things from across the House recently which we have been able to say were a good thing, so whatever else, it makes a nice change. Also, it was announced on the radio this morning—I heard it while having my cornflakes—that certain groups were protesting against this activity. Let me congratulate the Government again; if you had not offended somebody when you did this, it would not be worth the paper it is written on.

I have one or two smaller questions, which follow on from those of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. First, on the tools and the £6 million, the noble Lord hit it absolutely squarely; that is a very small figure for the entire education system. How much ongoing training will be given to teachers in delivering this? Will it be worked into initial teacher training or education, whichever one you want to use? How much CPD will be used? This is a new set of skills that has to be worked into lessons. It will not be that easy; there will be mistakes. How will we look at this and review it? I think this is a very valid question. Do not damage a good thing for a ha’p’orth of tar. Make sure you do this correctly.

Also, when going through this process, can we make sure that the entire system comes around and behind it, so that we can deliver this properly? If we push it off into certain departments, or it becomes something which is normally seen in certain lessons, we will always have problems. It would be very helpful, either today or in some later guidance, to have some idea about how the Government will bring the system around this and how they will work this through.

Last, but I hope not least, I have a question about what it says in the Statement about people with special educational needs. What does the Minister mean by this? Of course, this is my own special area. Which groups is he talking about? Is there some style in this? A few people with autism may have some trouble understanding these topics, but only a few. Somebody with dyslexia may well have no problem with this. What do the Government mean by this? If you do not have the answer now, where will it be presented? The phrase about special educational needs takes into account 20% of the school population, so please give some guidance on this.

Universal Credit: Free School Meals

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 21st February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the delay in the rollout of UC is surely a recognition by the Government that inter alia they have not offered proper protection to around 1 million children in poverty who would have become eligible for free school meals under the transitional arrangements. They are expected to miss out, at a cost of around £430 per child. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, teachers know only too well that an undernourished child is in no fit state to be taught effectively. I have to say that the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is showing signs of a caring approach that was singularly lacking in her predecessor. Will the Government now adopt the policy consistently advocated by Labour and support all children living in poverty by completing the rollout while maintaining the existing rules under which all universal credit claimants are eligible for free school meals?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we debated this almost exactly a year ago. The key thing which may be being misunderstood is that the provisions we have put in place for children with parents on universal credit are for an expanded cohort of children. More children are now entitled to free school meals than were before universal credit.

Education, Health and Care Plans

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do not have that information to hand but I will write to my noble friend to deal with it specifically.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, autism is the special educational need that most often features in SEND appeals. Many of the cases are the result of local authorities having refused an education, health and care plan needs assessment, yet the majority of such appeals are won by parents. I very much take on board the point made by my noble friend Lord Blunkett about bringing local authorities together. But does the Minister accept that where a child has an autism diagnosis that fits in with the SEND code of practice, it should not be permissible for a local authority to deny that child’s family a needs assessment?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is right that autism accounts for the highest proportion of all claims at about 43% of appeals. We are very much focusing on this as an area of concern. In December last year we announced a number of measures to help deal with this, including joining up the healthcare and education services to address autistic children’s needs holistically, developing diagnostics services to diagnose autism earlier, improving the transition between children and adult services so that no young people miss out, and improving the understanding of autism and all its profiles, including recently identified forms such as pathological demand avoidance.

Multi-Academy Trusts: Salaries

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

He is helping himself to a salary of some $7 million per year to promote an extraordinary organisation, which is generating mental health issues among many of our young people—and I will deal with that when answering the next Question.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Now that the advertising is over, I make the point that in primary as well as secondary academies, head teachers earn on average more than their counterparts in the maintained sector while paying their teaching staff less than teachers’ counterparts in that sector. This is the sort of avarice that results when schools are allowed to abandon national pay scales. The Minister talked about writing to academy trusts and he did so—to those where senior staff earn more than the Prime Minister. But they can ignore him, because he has absolutely no power to compel them to moderate senior pay. It is not just salaries that are out of control in academies. The academy trusts themselves are out of the control of government Ministers; that should not be the case. Will the Government introduce measures to ensure that academy trusts are held fully accountable for the public resources they spend? The next Labour Government will certainly do so.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord understands the degree of scrutiny to which academy trusts are subjected. It is a far higher level of scrutiny than local authority schools receive. They have to submit audited accounts every year; a comparable school in the local authority sector is audited only every three or four years on average, and that information is not published or easily available. So I disagree fundamentally with the noble Lord’s point. Regarding comparable salaries in the two sectors, a head teacher of a secondary academy is on an average of about £92,000 per year compared with £88,000 for a maintained secondary head, but the heads of academy schools have more responsibilities. The noble Lord says that we do not have any leverage but, according to the results of a recent survey, the Kreston report, in the highest of six bands—schools with 5,000 to 10,000 pupils—salaries have fallen from £140,000 to £114,000.

Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and welcome much of the strategy, as well as the fact that the teaching unions were fully involved in formulating it. It was certainly a long time in the making. The Government published their response to the Workload Challenge consultation four years ago next month, and the Secretary of State promised this strategy 10 months ago.

With official figures showing that teachers leave the profession at the same rate as they enter it—and with secondary school rolls due to rise by 15% in the next six years—we welcome the clarification from the Schools Minister yesterday that the £130 million annually pledged to support the strategy is indeed new money, but we shall watch closely to ensure that that commitment is delivered.

I have two questions for the Minister on issues with which I am sure he will be familiar, as they relate to academies. First, will the requirement in the early-career framework to give second-year newly qualified teachers time off-timetable be extended to every school, including academies? Secondly, the plans for a teaching school review are vague, but it seems the Government want to hand their responsibilities over to multi-academy trusts. Can the Minister say how schools that are not part of a MAT will be able to participate in these collaborative partnerships?

Finally, there is the elephant in the room in this whole debate: teachers’ mental health, which is in crisis, with studies showing that 40% of teachers are on medication. You cannot have a meaningful policy on retention and recruitment—I have advisedly reversed the order because in many ways retention is more important—without properly addressing mental health issues encountered by teachers. The Statement makes passing reference to fully funded mental health training, but what does that mean? Does it refer to teachers’ own mental health or that of their pupils? Even that brief reference relates only to early-career teachers. What do the Government have to say about support for those whose careers have developed further than that, and where is the issue of mental health in the strategy itself? I have been unable to locate it where it most sensibly should have been placed: in Chapter 3 or, failing that, Chapter 2—but no. It cannot be assumed that workload is the sole contributing factor. Making assumptions is always dangerous, and failure even to acknowledge mental health is more dangerous still, not just for the valued professionals who are our teachers but for the children to whom we entrust them.

I accept that the Minister may be unable to respond to all these issues, but we believe they are important and I ask that he writes to me to set out the Government’s position, if that is more convenient.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I thank the noble Lord for his questions. Dealing with the ones that I can address straight away, I reassure him that academies will be included in the early-career framework. This is a strategy for the entire state-funded system.

Regarding the question on teaching schools, we are reviewing this at the moment and have not fully completed our thinking. One issue of concern to us is that there are too many teaching schools that between them are not receiving enough money to meaningfully engage with the surrounding areas that they are being asked to help. We are looking to rationalise that. We hope that good multi-academy trusts will play a role in that, but we are certainly not seeking to exclude good schools.

I agree with the noble Lord that retention is more important than recruitment, because there is no point pouring people into a bucket with a hole at the bottom of it. We have given a lot of consideration to how we improve retention. A big problem is the workload and how it is being imposed, particularly on young teachers. We are aware from the figures for those leaving the profession that the percentage of younger, newly qualified teachers leaving the profession is one of the highest categories. We are working on that. There are several areas of concern; for example, the pernicious expectation that young teachers should be responsible for planning their own lessons, when we want to encourage schools to provide much more support.

I shall write separately to the noble Lord to address his concerns on mental health.

Children: Special Educational Needs

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is right that we are concerned about tribunal costs—indeed, he has asked a Question on this subject that will be taken in a couple of weeks’ time, so we will be able to deal with it in more detail then. Last year, we introduced a new measure to see how many appeals were going to tribunals: it showed that, of all the decisions made in the year by local authorities, only 1.5% were appealed by parents, and a number of authorities are seeing zero or near zero appeals. So the challenge for us is to spread the good practice of those local authorities that have very low levels of appeal, to ensure that those which are less good are learning.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it is no surprise at all that the Minister did not refer in any of his replies to the fact that the Ofsted annual report, published last month and looking at SEND provision, painted a bleak picture. It said that children were being failed by the education system. Amanda Spielman, the Government’s own Chief Inspector of Schools, said:

“One child with SEND not receiving the help they need is disturbing enough, but thousands”—


which is the case—

“is a national scandal”.

And yet the Minister makes no response. At least she provoked the £350 million that my noble friend Lord Blunkett mentioned. But, as he also mentioned, the local authorities are in no way assuaged by that. They have estimated that that amount is less than a third of the deficit in special needs funding which they will be facing by 2021. At least this dysfunctional Government will be history by then. My question for the Minister is this: what would he say to the families of the 2,000 children to which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred, who have EHC plans but who are still not receiving any provision from them?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is taking a figure rather out of context. It is simply wrong to suggest that they are not receiving education; this category is used for several situations, such as when pupils are already in one school but waiting for a place in another, or are over 16 and waiting for a place at a college or sixth form. Some of those deemed to be awaiting provision may also be older and have recently taken up employment, and a decision to end their EHC plan is in the process of being made.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I do not agree with the right reverend Prelate that we should include religious education in the EBacc. There is tremendous demand from various quarters to include a number of different subjects, but we are adamant that all schools should teach a broad and balanced curriculum. That is further emphasised by the changes to the Ofsted inspection framework that will come into force in September. It will put particular emphasis on academies, which have not had the same level of requirement placed on them previously. However, they will now be judged in inspections on the teaching of a broad and balanced curriculum, which will of course include religious studies.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, following in the vein of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Black, I offer the Minister a quote:

“Design and technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject, Using creativity and imagination, pupils … draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art … High-quality design and technology education makes an essential contribution to the creativity, culture, wealth and well-being of the nation”.


I found that earlier today on the Department for Education website yet, since the introduction of the EBacc, GCSE entries for design and technology have fallen off a cliff by more than 50%. That is largely the result of government ideology, which now dictates that studying geography is somehow of greater relevance. I wonder if the Minister can explain the logic of that and, more broadly, how adopting the curriculum of a 1950s grammar school is likely to serve the needs of a post-EU economy and of our ever-changing working life?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, there has indeed been a decline in the proportion of pupils studying design and technology, but great changes have been made to the subject. As I mentioned in response to a Question last week, we have created a different and additional subject called food preparation and nutrition, which has attracted 46,000 entries. It was part of the old design and technology course. We have worked with the James Dyson Foundation, the Design and Technology Association and the Royal Academy of Engineering on the content of the design and technology curriculum. However, in the spirit of collaboration with the noble Lord, I shall quote an eminent left-wing academic on the sociology of education, Professor Michael Young of UCL, who says that social justice demands that children from low-income backgrounds have as much access to knowledge as their advantaged peers.

Education: Art and Design

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. One of the things I have prioritised in my discussions with the independent sector is how it can improve and increase its support for the state education sector. Harris Westminster, which I referred to a moment ago, would acknowledge that it received a lot of help from Westminster School in the extraordinary outcomes it got—but there is always more to be done.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to hear from the Minister that Ofsted is to look at this, because arts subjects are compulsory in the national curriculum only at key stages 1 to 3. As the noble Earl said, referring to the Fabian Society report, even there they are in decline. Arts subjects in state schools are being squeezed out by the English baccalaureate, yet the artistic, creative and technical sectors of the economy are worth around £500 billion a year and need just such skills in our young people. Will the Minister accept that the English baccalaureate is the problem here, not the issues he raised previously? Will he commit to fundamentally changing that so that—as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said—the broader curriculum can be performed, allowing us to serve the future needs of our economy?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am afraid I do not accept for one moment the claims made by the noble Lord. Indeed, in 2009 150,000 pupils took art and design, while 141,000 did so in 2018—that with a cohort of 50,000 fewer pupils in the system for that phase. The noble Lord always seems to avoid the number of subjects we stripped out of the curriculum we inherited from the Labour Government. We took out over 3,000 useless subjects that children were being taught, including fish husbandry, practical office skills and nail technology services. We have brought back rigour to the education that children are learning. In 2009 only 365,000 pupils took science. Last year it was 499,000—that is 130,000 children getting a much better education.

Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the return of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to the fray. For two years, we sparred across our respective Dispatch Boxes, which I very much enjoyed, but suddenly, he was gone. We subsequently learned that this was to spend more time with his family, but not in the fashion normally associated with political withdrawals: the noble Lord’s family is synonymous with the Future Academies trust, which runs six schools, including a free school. I note that, at one time, the Minister was also one of its trustees.

I was aware of the Leader of the House’s background when she was appointed to a ministerial post from her role at the New Schools Network. Prior to today, I was unaware of the role of the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy; the noble Lord, Lord Nash, described his as having “invented” the free schools programme. Adding the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to the mix, someone less charitable than myself might point to a pattern in those connections.

I listened closely to what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said in his introductory remarks. I have to say that he did not surprise me. I say that because my research for the debate revealed a newspaper article from October 2013 in which the noble Lord was taken to task by my predecessor, my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and accused of misleading Parliament on the performance of free schools. I understand and accept where the noble Lord is coming from, which naturally colours his view of free schools. Mine, however, is rather less rose-tinted.

As has been pointed out by noble Lords and in recent reports by the Education Policy Institute and the Sutton Trust, judging the contribution of free schools to improving educational standards after seven years in existence is somewhat premature. Even with that caveat, it should be pointed out that free schools account for just 2% of all state-funded schools in England and parents in two-thirds of the country are not within reasonable travelling distance of either a primary or secondary free school. Surely any improvement that it is possible to demonstrate can only be a tiny one; there is no evidence that free schools are better overall than any other schools, once intake is taken into account.

I chuckled at the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, for ideology to be put to one side. Free schools form part of a wider ideological drive by the Conservative Party, aided and abetted for five years by the Liberal Democrats, to undermine and weaken local authorities in general, particularly through preventing them developing the maintained school sector. Since 2015, there has been a presumption that no new school can open unless it is part of the free school programme. In the main, new free schools have been opened since then as part of academy chains, meaning that they are not in the mould originally intended.

My noble friend Lord Winston pointed to the successes that he has encountered in free schools, but when these schools were launched, they aimed to encourage parent groups to establish their own schools, increase the number of schools with innovative approaches to their curriculum or ethos and meet the demographic needs of specific areas. Having noted that research bodies have expressed the view that not enough time has passed for meaningful judgments to be made on free schools improving education standards, I will be careful in assessing those aims, but it is not unfair to say that, thus far, free schools have not lived up to their billing of being either led by parents to a sufficient extent or a major source of curriculum innovation. The number of schools established with parental involvement was at its height in the early years of the programme, with more than 40%, but that figure has now dropped to less than 20%, which is most regrettable.

Of those that parent groups did launch, several have since been taken over by academy trusts. One high-profile casualty was reported last summer, when the Greenwich free school—one of the first to be approved under the scheme and founded by a group that included a former head of strategy at the DfE—was handed over to a large multi-academy trust. That free school is now just another academy, suggesting the Government’s vision of schools created by enthusiastic activists has run out of steam.

Academy chains now dominate the free school programme, as we have heard. Some 39% of all free schools have now been opened by multi-academy trusts, which is reflected in the view of the Sutton Trust’s report that,

“as free schools have now become the default model for new schools, with all new academies characterised as such, it has become a vehicle for the expansion of MATs”.

In other words, it is a monopoly—something referred to disparagingly by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, as Marxist. As a Marxist, I can say that he needs to do some more reading on that subject. I am not advocating monopolies. I really worry about the blindness of anything that can be seen to be countering the argument for academies and free schools we encounter from the Government side.

On the assumption that it was not the Government’s intention that free schools should become a vehicle for the expansion of MATs, I would be interested to hear the Minister’s view on that development and whether he and his ministerial colleagues intend to take action to redress the balance and provide the necessary resources for the pendulum to swing back towards parents. That is what we want to see, and it is why Labour in government will end the programme to further extend free schools and academies, to be replaced by a model that I will refer to later.

There is also the question of a failure of free schools to address demographic need. The Government have allowed the situation to develop where local authorities have statutory responsibility for providing school places in their area, yet they cannot tell free schools or academies to take in more pupils to meet that need, even where those schools are below capacity. That anti-local authority policy makes no sense and Labour will bring it to an end.

In its report of November 2017, the Education Policy Institute found that free school growth had been greatest in the areas most in need of new school places, as it should be, but it also found significant numbers in areas where there was already an excess number of places. More worryingly, I suggest, the proportion of pupils who attend free schools that are eligible for free school meals is 13.3%, against 14.7% in all schools. That was even worse in reception year, with proportions of 32% eligible for free school meals, but only 24% in free schools. That is clearly an issue that has to be addressed by the Government.

I am also concerned that free schools drive a coach and horses through sensible planning of school places and consequently waste considerable amounts of money, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Morris. I do not welcome the closure of any school so I will not overemphasise the fact that 10% of free schools have closed, but they have obviously done so at considerable cost, as outlined by my noble friend Lord Winston.

The question of what price is paid for school sites is obviously a serious one, because it has been highlighted by the National Audit Office that considerably above the going rate or the market rate has been paid. That represents profligacy with public funds, especially at a time when school budgets are stretched to breaking point. Transparency should be at the heart of state-funded schools policy. Perhaps the Minister would care to say whether the DfE is still playing fast and loose with public finances as regards free schools and with the information provided on those finances, which is often difficult to achieve?

As the shadow Secretary of State has made clear, Labour will end the free school programme and restore the right of local authorities to open and commission new schools, but we are not doing so at the expense of parents. We have often voiced our concern about the cost-effectiveness of the programme, but we will ensure that there is sufficient capital investment and that the manner in which we spend public money is not hidden from the public. Labour policy is centred on accountability and, wherever possible, local accountability. We will return decision-making about new schools and changes to schools to the local level. We are clear that this kind of decision-making should be centred in one place and that there should be proper local engagement. Local authority decision-making is done through a proper and transparent process, unlike, I have to say, regional schools commissioners, who make decisions behind closed doors with no proper public consultation or process. That will come to an end under the national education service that we will establish.

We will introduce a new generation of co-operative schools. Those community-run schools were introduced under the Government of Tony Blair, and there are currently around 350 of them in place at the moment, which is not widely known and perhaps not widely enough talked about. We want to encourage more of these schools to open again where new schools under parental control are sought. We will allow parents and teachers who want to get involved in running them to work with local authorities to do so. But the ultimate decision as to where they should be established will rest with local authorities, not with the DfE. I think it somewhat bizarre that it is the Conservatives who favour central planning over a devolved structure, but that will change as soon as we have a general election.

What we will not do is close existing free schools or academies. Going forward, the educational landscape will be based on local accountability at the heart of it, not central control, with parents increasingly marginalised, as we have heard, under the free schools programme. That may not involve the major structural change that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, fears, but it will offer a more positive and participative approach to our children’s education in the future.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Nash for calling this debate to provide the opportunity to speak about the successes of the free schools programme and the contribution that they have made to improving educational standards across our country. I thank my noble friend for his continued commitment to the free schools programme and the dedication he showed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the School System before me. I acknowledge his work with Future Academies, the trust responsible for establishing Pimlico Primary, a free school that has been rated outstanding.

The free schools programme was established in 2010, with the first ones opening in 2011. The Government invited proposers to take up the challenge of setting up a free school—groups which were passionate about ensuring that the next generation is best placed to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Now, eight years on, the benefits of their hard work can be seen across the country. As of 1 January this year, 444 free schools are open, which will provide 250,000 places when at full capacity. To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, 121 of 152 local authorities now have at least one free school in their area, and we are currently working with groups to establish a further 265 free schools, currently at different stages of pre-opening.

I agree, obviously, with my noble friend Lord Popat that the free school story is a positive one. There is a growing body of evidence to show that free schools are improving educational standards. I will come to that in more detail later. I am pleased that my noble friend highlighted in particular two free schools in Harrow: Pinner High School and Avanti House. These schools are a credit to those involved in setting them up and the teachers who work there.

Ofsted’s latest information shows that, of those free schools that have been inspected, 85% are rated good or outstanding. This is a fantastic achievement, and I congratulate the proposers and teachers who have worked so hard to achieve this. The performance data of free schools speaks for itself. Free schools are among the highest- performing state-funded secondary schools, with pupils at the end of key stage 4 having made more progress on average than pupils in other types of state-funded schools in 2018.

In 2018, four of the top 10 provisional Progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools: William Perkin Church of England in Ealing, Dixons Trinity in Bradford, Eden Girls’ School in Coventry and Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn. The latter two were opened by Star Academies, which has grown, through the free schools programme, from running a single school in the north-west to running 24 across the country, made up of nine academies and 15 free schools, and it has approval to open two more free schools. Of the 10 free schools that have been inspected by Ofsted, every single one has been rated outstanding. In addition, Dixons Trinity Academy achieved extraordinary results in 2017 and last year with its first set of GCSEs, placing it among the top schools in England for progress achieved by its pupils. Strikingly, the progress score for disadvantaged pupils was higher than for the whole school, including their more affluent peers.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, asked about some longitudinal analysis on the impact of free schools. I have offered data here and I can offer some more, but I will write to him to bring all these strands together. On a personal note, I happened to be at that lecture at Pimlico Academy six or seven years ago. I was as inspired as the hundreds of children listening to the noble Lord that day. I speak as someone who failed chemistry O-level, but the noble Lord brought that subject alive to me that night.

My noble friend Lord Kirkham and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about disadvantage. There are numerous examples of free schools helping to improve outcomes for these children. There is the Reach Academy Feltham, which opened in 2012, which is a small all-through free school set up by a group of teachers in an area of high deprivation. Ofsted rated it outstanding in 2014. It was one of the top-performing schools nationally for progress in 2017, with disadvantaged pupils making more progress than other pupils. In 2018, provisional results show that the school has a progress score well above the national average.

I join my noble friend Lord Hill in publicly thanking my noble friend Lord Harris for the achievements of his trust. In just one example, Harris Westminster, which opened in 2014 and with close ties to Westminster School, 40% of its pupils are from disadvantaged backgrounds and 18 pupils got into Oxbridge last year. These schools show that the socioeconomic background does not need to be a barrier to excellence. To reassure my noble friend Lord Kirkham and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the whole of the country is benefiting. Last year, 16 free schools achieved outstanding judgments from Ofsted. Eleven of those were outside London, including Birmingham, Lancashire, Slough, Leeds, Coventry and Stockton-on-Tees.

Free schools have challenged the status quo, injecting fresh approaches. We are drawing on the talents and expertise of groups from different backgrounds, giving local communities and parents more freedom and choice so that every child can go to a good school that suits their child’s needs, whether that be a mainstream school with a specialism or an alternative provision or special school. Indeed, I give public credit to my noble friend Lord Baker for his tireless work in creating the UTC programme. In 2016-17, 21% of UTC key stage 5 pupils went on to an apprenticeship, which is three times the national average.

My noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy made the crucial point that this is all about creating more good school places. This is not the only route, but it is leading the way through social entrepreneurship. Many noble Lords in this debate have played a crucial role in the free school programme, but I can safely say that my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy has to be one of the godfathers.

My noble friend Lady Stroud also asked about disadvantage. It is important to stress that nearly half of all open free schools are in the 30% most deprived areas in the country. We are proud of that fact. Results also show that when disadvantaged pupils attend these free schools they perform well at key stage 4. However, we know that there is more to do to ensure that free schools reach out to pupils in these areas, and with the most recent free school wave, Wave 13, we targeted the third of local authorities with the lowest standards and lowest capacity to improve, putting free schools in places most in need of good schools. We are currently evaluating those bids.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, is concerned about the cost of school buildings, but it is important to point out that we have reduced the building cost per square metre by over 30% from the framework that we inherited from the Labour Government. My predecessor, my noble friend Lord Nash, created LocatED as a specialist buying agency for property sites for free schools and it is already showing data that it is acquiring sites below the red book value, which is the benchmark for the cost of buildings.

I turn to special schools and AP schools. Our ambition includes children with special educational needs and disabilities, and children in alternative provision. We want them to be able to do their best in school, reach their potential and find careers leading to happy and fulfilling lives. To help achieve that ambition, as of 1 January this year we have opened 34 special and 41 alternative provision free schools. This includes the Pears Family School, which achieved an outstanding rating from Ofsted in 2017, with inspectors noting the high-quality therapeutic care and teaching alongside the strong progress made by its pupils.

My noble friend Lady Finn pointed out that we have now opened two maths schools in partnership with highly selective maths universities, King’s College London Maths School and Exeter Maths School. The aim of these schools is to prepare our most mathematically able students to succeed in maths disciplines at top universities and pursue mathematically intensive careers. We have two further maths free schools in pre-opening—one with St John’s College Cambridge and the University of Liverpool Maths College.

At the other end of the educational spectrum we have in pre-opening the London Screen Academy, supported by Working Title, which last year was the inaugural recipient of Screen International’s outstanding contribution to UK film award. This new school will provide film industry-focused vocational training for 16 to 19 year-olds alongside a broader curriculum. I give that as just one example to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy of the innovative groups still becoming involved. We are certainly encouraging free schools to be part of MATs to draw on the central support that they offer. This is simply part of the evolution of the programme and addresses the problem mentioned by my noble friend Lord Polak about school collaboration.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I take the point that the Minister is making, but will he address the point about parental involvement and the decreasing number of free schools being established at the behest of local parents?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord will be aware that any academy needs to have an academy council that must include two parental representatives.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

That is not the same point.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

No, I accept that, but we review all bids and they are selected on merit. One of the lessons that we have learned from the programme is that free schools are better inside MATs. Being inside a MAT does not mean that it is one size fits all. I speak as someone who set up four free schools myself inside a MAT. There is a wide range of different practice inside those schools. To reassure the noble Lord, just because a free school is in a MAT does not mean that it is outside parental involvement or input.